The Effectiveness Of Metacognitive Strategy Training For Less Efficient EFL Learners In Reading

While learning strategies have aroused growing interests and evoked extensive studies in the field of second language learning and teaching over the past three decades, the necessity and feasibility of strategy training remains a controversial issue among English teachers, and the practice of strategy training, especially metacognitive strategy training, is far from common in College English teaching in China. This paper sets out to obtain some empirical evidence in this aspect with the expectation to investigate the effectiveness of metacognitive strategy training in reading.The study reported in this thesis was a ten-week metacognitive reading strategy training for less efficient EFL readers of non-English major sophomores. A reading comprehension test and a questionnaire on reading strategies were designed to provide data for quantitative analysis with the help of SPSS. Apart from these, open-ended questions included in the second part of the questionnaire along with the interview with some of the participants and their learning logs served as data for qualitative analysis.The major findings presented in the thesis are as follows:1) Relatively poor university students in reading performances have limited knowledge of reading strategy. They lack sufficient awareness of how various strategies may help them improve their reading proficiency more effectively, especially how metacognitive strategies manage and monitor their reading activity and bring cognitive strategies into full play. Metacognitive strategies are usually not employed by these students while cognitive ones are sometimes used.2) Reading strategy training is welcome in general, and effective among university students in their use of strategies or at least in their awareness of strategy use, especially metacognitive ones.3) The treatment for poor students on a short-term basis does not prove to be as significantly effective in reading performances as in strategy use. The experimental group does not outperform the control group as much as expected in the immediate test after 10 weeks' treatment. However, short-term treatment makes contributions to helping develop the learner autonomy.In the light of the above findings, this study provides some pedagogical enlightenment for EFL teaching and learning in Chinese universities. First of all, both language teachers and learners should come to realize the importance of learning strategies in teaching and learning effective reading. Teachers are supposed to raise the students' awareness of language learning strategies. Second, teachers should give learners a relatively long-term training in strategy use both inside and outside EFL classrooms. Third, language teachers may apply metacognitive strategy use training to learners of different levels, and in various teaching and learning tasks, including listening, speaking, word study and writing. Last but not least, teachers should also be taught how to teach learners to use learning strategies. More emphasis should be laid on the parallel and mutual development towards learning strategies for both teachers and learners.