Metacognition-based Writing Strategy Training For EFL Learners In College English

In recent years, the focus of teaching has gradually been transferred from imparting knowledge to developing students'learning ability. Teachers'task is not only cramming knowledge to students, but more importantly teaching students"how to learn", cultivating their ability of autonomous learning.For Chinese students who learn English as a foreign language (EFL), it is a big challenge to improve their writing ability. There are a lot of studies done from various perspectives centering on how to improve learners'English writing ability, of which a number of researches suggested a potential link among learning strategies, metacognition and second language writing performance. These findings are especially useful for English writing instruction in China since developing writing proficiency remains a great challenge to both Chinese teachers and students. So far, studies are mainly about the whole or macro writing process, for example, pre-writing step, while-writing process and post-writing step, the use of metacognitive strategies, process writing and product writing and so on. However, studies that concern the connection with metacognition of a particular point or the micro strategies in the writing process is limited.To make a little contribution to the research in this aspect, the author decided to probe into metacognition-based writing strategy training. Starting from training students'use of discourse cohesive devices in writing, the study aims to raise students'consciousness in strategy use, and improve their English writing ability. In the meantime, this kind of conscious training of strategy use will be further extended to other aspects of English learning, or even other fields of learning, cultivating learner autonomy. The study adopts lecture as a kind of direct training approach. After the training program, learners'knowledge of discourse cohesion, such as reference, conjunction and lexical cohesion, and consciousness of strategy use in writing are expected to get improved, resulting in a more logical and fluent piece of writing, and a promotion in English writing proficiency. In the empirical study, the author intends to investigate the influence of the training approach, training of discourse cohesive strategy use in English writing through consciousness-raising, on English writing proficiency. The research questions intended to be answered are as follows:1) What strategies are the learners use at present, and do they use them consciously?2) Through lecture-based direct training, will learners'consciousness of discourse cohesive strategy use be raised?3) After three times'(once in a week) metacognition-based discourse cohesive strategy training, aiming at raising learners'consciousness of strategy use, will the writing proficiency of the experiment group be improved?The results obtained from pre-test and post-test, thinking aloud and the interview showed that the writing score of the experiment group was significantly better than the control group. As expected, the experiment has proved a success. The model of metacognition-based discourse cohesive strategy training has raised and enhanced learners'consciousness in discourse cohesion, and improved the English writing proficiency to a considerable degree.Therefore, in the course of English writing instruction in China, it is necessary to strengthen metacognition-based strategy training, helping learners to improve their writing proficiency. Strategy training will encourage students to manage their own studies.