A Research On The Development Of Non-English Majors' Learner Autonomy Through Metacongnitive Strategy Training

Learning is a life-long process. Most scholars believe the ultimate goal of learning is to teach students how to learn and how to develop learner autonomy. Metacognitive strategy, defined as a "higher order executive skill, entails planning for, monitoring or evaluating the success of a learner activity", which fits in with the core notion of learner autonomy, plays a vital role in nurturing students to be responsible for their learning and independent of teachers in the learning process. Owing to the essentiality and importance of learner autonomy for Chinese English learners, and the inseparable mutual relationship between the metacognitive strategy and learner autonomy, the thesis intends to explore the effectiveness of metacognitive strategies training in fostering learner autonomy in College non- English majors' learning.The study investigated the inter-relationship between metacognitive strategy training, learner autonomy and language proficiency. Based on the previous findings, this study integrates explicit and implicit metacognitive strategy instruction into regular teaching activities to develop learner autonomy and further explore the effects of metacognitive strategy training on L2 proficiency. Three questions were put forward, "Is metacognitive strategy training helpful in developing metacognitive strategy use? Does metacognitive strategy training have positive influence on learner autonomy? What is the effect of metacognitive strategy training and autonomous learning ability on L2 proficiency?"To answer the questions, the thesis first reviewed the literature on learner autonomy, metacognitive strategies, metacognitive strategy training and the inter-relationship between the three concepts, then described the methodology and procedure of Metacognitive strategy training, in which the research adopted metacognitive strategy and learner autonomy questionnaires to give a quantitative description of the relations between metacognitive strategy, learner autonomy and L2 proficiency. By adopting journals and interviews, this paper is to give a qualitative description about the changes of metacognitive awareness, metacognitive strategies, including goal setting, self-monitoring and self-evaluation as well as learner autonomy. By using SPSS 13.0 to analyze the data of descriptive statistics, independent- samples T-test, paired-samples T- test and the qualitative study, the study comes to the conclusion that answered the questions suggested.Before the training, there was significant difference in language proficiency between the experimental group and the control group. The former is much lower than the latter one. But they had no significant difference in metacognitive strategy and learner autonomy. The training lasted one semester, the researcher focused on raising metacognitive strategy awareness, setting goals, self-monitoring and self-evaluation. At first, students in experimental group were instructed with concepts and relative theories of metacognition , metacognitive strategy and learner autonomy. Then, they were instructed how to make plans, monitor the implementation of plans and how to monitor their learning process and how to evaluate their learning results by writing journals. Their journals were collected weekly, and their progress and problems were also reflected in interviews. The whole process was under the management of the researcher. After the training, experimental group was significantly higher than control group in metacognitive strategy and learner autonomy. And there was no significant difference in language proficiency. This demonstrated the great increase of experimental group through training. This testified the hypothesis "An autonomous learner should have the ability to set certain learning goals, to manage and monitor learning activities, and to evaluate learning achievement." The training achieved success, and students in experimental group also developed to be responsible for their own learning, and use metacognitive strategy from consciousness to unconsciousness.