Metacognitive Strategy Training In Self-regulated Learning

Self-regulated learning is advocated and required in the 21^st century. Promoting learner autonomy and cultivating autonomous learners have become the primary goal of education in the new era. At the same time, research fruit from the field of cognitive psychology and educational psychology provides strong support to the development of self-regulated learning theory, among which metacognition and correlative concepts are considered the foundation of what dominates learner autonomy and autonomous behaviors (self-regulated learning in this thesis). The idea of metacognition is introduced into researches on language learning strategies, which belongs to the field of applied linguistics, thus bring forward the term of metacognitive strategies, which is defined as a series of actions or measures that coordinate their own learning process by allowing them to control their own cognition, with the central factors of centering, planning and arranging, monitoring and evaluating learning (Oxford 1990). Since learning strategies are operational and trainable, the training of metacognitive strategies has been attached more and more importance as a practical means of improving learners' level of metacognition.It is a novel trial to integrate metacognitive strategy training with self-regulated English learning in university, so it is of vital necessity to design a training model that functions as a general guidance with extensive application. The training model in this thesis covers two major aspects: 1. the basic steps of metacognitive strategy training; 2. the five key factors to promote self-regulated learning through metacognitive strategy training: 1) metacognitive knowledge, 2) metacognitive strategies, 3) language learning tasks, 4) cooperative learning, and 5) transfer of strategies.To testify the rationality of this model, an action research of metacognitive strategy training in self-regulated English learning in university is described and analyzed in details. This research aims at the freshmen majoring in art and PE, and its emphasis is laid on the training process and problems reflected. Besides, all the main aspects are involved in this research. At the beginning of the action research, the status quo of the subjects' English learning, especially their autonomy, has been investigated by replying to "Inquiry for Self-inspection of English Learning" (or ISEL). The result indicates that there is no significant difference between EP and CP, and that the two groups on the whole share answers about attitudes towards English learning in university, understandings of their English proficiency, identification of their learning problems, and English learning habits. There is a deficiency of autonomy by students from both groups, but most of them have realized it to some degree. Besides, they have vague ideas of language learning strategies, and even the students with a comparatively good performance in exams are often unclear about their own learning methods. It is worth noticing that both groups respond positively towards the survey and they anxiously hope the teachers provide some methods of learning English.Then the students of EP receive metacognitive strategy training that has lasted for twelve weeks, and CP follows the traditional ways of teaching about the same teaching material. The training is divided into classroom strategy instruction and after-class reinforcement according to the subjects' real conditions. It combines metacognitive strategies with classroom tasks, basic language skills and other learning strategies (especially cognitive strategies). The demands and opinions of the subjects are well considered, for example, how to memorize new words, which is their greatest concern, has been incorporated into the training. Extracurricular learning is a crucial component of university English learning, and is also a vital precondition to improve self-regulated learning. Therefore, training should not be confined within the classroom, and it should also be reinforced in extracurricular learning. To achieve the goal within a short period of time, learner profiles are employed in the after-class part of the training to enhance the subjects' level of using metacognitive strategies.At the end of the training, both groups have finished filling in the Inventory for Metacognitive Strategies and Autonomy (IMSA), and the data processed by SPSS reveal that the there is significant difference between EP and CP in the use of metacognitive strategies and learner autonomy, and that EP has excelled CP in the two aspects. Statistic result proves that metacognitive strategy training in self-regulated learning can largely improve the development of learner autonomy.