A Study On English Majors' EFL Writing Based On Metacognitive Training

How to teach English writing, which is the most comprehensive skill for the English majors, has been a big headache haunting both teachers and learners. Metacognition and metacognitive strategies, as knowledge and strategies of"thinking about thinking", ignite one's thinking and can lead to higher learning and better performance. Recent researches suggest that metacognition plays a critical role in English writing. But a systematic and profound study still lacks in English majors'EFL writing based on metacognitive training.The present paper systematically studied on the metacognitive training of English majors'EFL writing based on metacognitive theory and an empirical study. Two groups from Huaqiao Foreign Languages Institute, with 30 students in the experimental group and 30 students in the control group, were chosen as the subjects of the study. The experimental group was given the metacognitive training in EFL writing and the control group only received traditional teaching. The instruments used in this study include closed questionnaire, half closed and half open questionnaire and open questionnaire. Class writing activities include free choice of topics, model essay analysis, student essay analysis, teacher modeling, peer modeling, self evaluation, peer evaluation, teacher evaluation and error analysis.The current study addresses the following four questions: 1. What is the general situation of students'metacognitive proficiency in EFL writing, and which proficiency is the lowest among metacognitive knowledge , metacognitive experience and metacognitive strategy? 2. Can metacognitive training improve students'metacognitive ability in EFL writing? 3. Can metacognitive training improve EFL writing proficiency? 4. What's the students'attitude toward the metacognitive training?By the 15 weeks'training course, the experiment offers data to find that: 1. It's very urgent to make students to become more aware of the metacognitive knowledge and more skilled at using metacognitive strategies; 2. The metacognitive training in EFL writing had significant effects on increasing students'metacognitive awareness. The experimental group makes a significant improvement in comparison with either the control group's employment of metacognitive ability or its own pre-test of metacognitive ability after the training. In contrast, the control group makes no significant improvement in metacognitive ability; 3. The experimental group also outperformed the control group as far as writing performance is concerned; 4. There are 27 (90%) students of the experimental group feel"very satisfied"or"satisfied"about the training. This study proved that metacognitive training in the English majors'EFL writing can promote self-study and as a result can improve students'English writing skill.This experiment has the following features:1. The metacognitive training principle for EFL Writing was designed based on the students'attitudes and needs;2. A comparatively rich variety of instruments were used: the instruments not only include the usual metacognitive ability tests such as Metacognitive Strategy Questionnaire, Writing Autobiography, Writing Questionnaire and writing proficiency test but also include some tests to investigate students'attitudes toward the training such as an interview and a feedback questionnaire of the training;3. A new questionnaire---the metacognitive ability questionnaire was designed to test completely students'metacognitive ability: This questionnaire, which includes questions about metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive strategy and metacognitive experience, was designed according to Oxford (1990), O'Malley & Chamot (2001), Wen Qiufang (1996), Dong Qi & Zhou Yong (1994), Dong Qi, Zhou Yong, Chen Hongbing (1996).