A Study Of English Listening Metacognitive Knowledge Of Chinese Vocational College Students

Metacognition, which is called"cognition about cognition", is one's awareness and regulation of his cognition. It serves as self-directed, executive and self-regulatory functions in cognitive activities, including metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategies. Lots of scholars have done numerous researches and found metacognitive knowledge is a necessary condition for autonomous learning, while insufficient attention was paid to metacognitive knowledge especially the relationship between metacognitive knowledge and English listening comprehension.Based on metacognitive knowledge, this study investigates the general level of vocational college students'metacognitive knowledge about English listening comprehension and try to explore the relationship between metacognitive knowledge and listening comprehension. Meanwhile, gender, school-type and motivation difference are discussed to make out if they will make any difference in metacognitive knowledge in listening comprehension. The data are collected from questionnaire, listening comprehension test and the scores of the nationwide examination of English application ability respectively. All the data collected are operated on the computer by SPSS 13.0. A total of 129 students majoring in accounting in Ganjiang Vocational College participated in this study.Several conclusions are made based on the findings of this study. Firstly, generally speaking, Chinese vocational college students have a poor coverage and usage of their metacognitive knowledge in listening comprehension, especially strategy knowledge. In the aspect of person knowledge, there are many problems with listening ability, personal characteristics and self-efficacy though they are all aware of the importance of listening comprehension. In the aspect of task knowledge, most of them give much attention to the requirements of the listening tasks and they notice the main ideas as well as key points, but they are puzzled at using different strategies in accordance with different listening tasks. In the aspect of strategy knowledge, the subjects are not good at planning before listening, nor monitoring in the process of listening comprehension. Secondly, their metacognitive knowledge has a significantly positive relation with their listening comprehension abilities and English proficiency; to be more specific, person knowledge has a closer relationship with listening comprehension and planning is one of strategy knowledge which is closely linked to listening comprehension.Thirdly, high and low metacognitive groups of students make different performance in proficiency test. In other words, students with more metacognitive knowledge make better performance in English listening comprehension than those with fewer listening metacognitive knowledge.Finally, we also find that gender difference and learning motivation do influence their listening metacognitive knowledge, while there is no gender difference in listening proficiency. In addition, although no difference is found in listening performance between students from key and ordinary middle schools, students from key middle schools make better performance in listening comprehension than those from ordinary middle schools in general.In the end of this study, some suggestions are provided for teachers and students to promote their listening metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategy ability, which has some implications for teaching and learning.