The Application Of Metacognitive Strategies To English Writing Teaching In High Schools

Writing is a very important part of English learning. It is also an important quality standard of English teaching .But it is a weak point for most of English learners and a difficult procedure for English teaching. How to improve English writing ability has become the most concerned issue.With the affirmation of the importance of metacognition in language learning by researching into the second language learning strategies, the potentiality for the application of metacognition has been known. Many scholars at home and abroad, such as Wenden, Brown, O'Malley, Chamot, Wen Qiufang and Wu Heping, have claimed that metacognition could facilitate foreign language learning. What's more, some experiments have been conducted to see the training effects of metacognitive strategies in learning specific skills. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of corresponding metacognitive research into writing skill, especially in high school English writing skill. As a result, the thesis applies metacognitive strategies to EFL writing in order to find an optimal learning approach. .On the basis of metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategies, the writer designed a metacognitive training experiment of ten weeks. The subjects involved in the experiment are 93 senior middle school students of the author in Wugang Futian Middle School. The experimental group (EG) was given instructions on writing strategy and metacognitive strategy, while the control group (CG) was only given writing strategy training. Through the experiment, the current study tries to answer the following three questions:1. Can the students' metacognitive awareness be improved after writing strategy and metacognitive strategy training?2. Can metacognitive strategy training improve the students' English writing proficiency?3. Can metacognitive strategy training affect the students' overall English level?In order to find the keys to the above-mentioned questions, the writer collected data by means of pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire, pretests and posttests. And the data were processed by SPSS. The instruments included questionnaires, pretests, posttests and interviews. Results were analyzed with quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative analyses involved descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, independent t-samples test and paired samples test. The qualitative analyses were based on the supplementary information got from case study and interviews. The findings of the study can be summarized as follows:1. After the experiment, subjects in EG obviously use more metacognitive strategies and writing strategies than those in CG do.2. Writing strategies indirectly help to improve the students' writing ability. But writing strategies along with metacognitive strategies play an important role in improving students' writing ability.3. Metacognitive strategy not only improves students' EFL writing proficiency, but also promotes their language proficiency indirectly.The results have pedagogical implications for English teaching, especially for EFL writing. In the course of EFL writing, strengthening the teaching of metacognitive knowledge and integrating metacognitive strategy training into English classroom teaching enable language learners to cultivate their autonomy, encouraging them to manage their own studies and hence form good learning habit and effective learning strategy.