Metacognitive Strategy Training In Vocational College English Listening Instruction

HVTE (Higher Vocational and Technical Education) English Course aims to develop students' basic English knowledge and skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing. This thesis reports a tentative study for developing vocational college students' listening proficiency from the viewpoint of metacognitive-strategy-centered training. This study investigates the general level of vocational college students' metacognitive awareness about English listening comprehension and tries to explore the relationship between metacognitive strategy training and listening comprehension.Eighty-four English major students from two intact classes of a vocational college participated in the one-semester study: one class of 42 students who received metacognitive-strategy-centered instruction comprised experimental group; the other class of 42 served as control group, receiving normal strategy instruction without metacognitive components. Data were obtained and analyzed through questionnaires, the subjects' weekly diaries and the performance of the listening tasks on a pre-post basis by both groups.The results show that metacognitive-strategy-centered listening instruction effectively increases vocational college students' metacognitive awareness and plays a positive role in actual listening comprehension, which verifies the feasibility and effectiveness of the metacognitive-strategy-centered instructional model.Based on the findings of the current research, some pedagogical implications for metacognitive strategy training are discussed, and corresponding limitations and suggestions are included in the thesis to promote future research in this field.