Metacognitive Strategy Training In Vocational School Language Classroom In Jiangxi

The past three decades witnessed numerous studies in autonomy, self-regulation, self-directed learning or self-instruction. It is accepted that teaching should aim at producing autonomous learners who can take charge of their learning when no school instruction is available. Former research done in the field of metacognition all seems to prove that training in strategies is the facilitator of learner autonomy. In China, where appliance and discipline are so much valued, where teacher have been dominating the classroom, and where countless passive, dependent learners are produced, there is great value for instruction in strategies, to improve the self-regulation level of adolescents.A lot of research has been done the field of metacognition, too, mostly in cognitive psychology. But all saw its focus on identification of the development of metacognition in the field of maths, memory, Chinese, etc. Little has been done in the training of metacognition strategies, especially in English classroom. This paper presents a training program conducted with Grade One students in Vocational Education Centre of Xinyu, an ordinary secondary vocational school in Jiangxi. The study lasted for two semesters with the objectives to enrich the students's metacognitive knowledge, to improve the learners' level of self-regulation and to test if there is any correlation between metacognition and the learners' school record or language proficiency. Two questionnaires are designed to investigate the subjects' improvement on metacognition. District General Examination is used to examine the effect of training on language proficiency. Data collected is analysed by means of SPSS and reveals the results as follows:1.MST has equipped the learners with large varieties of strategies to cope with different learning problems;2.The subjects have greatly improved in metacognition. They could well plan their learning, monitor the process, evaluate their progress or performance and the use of strategies;3.MST helps improve learner' language proficiency, but no significant effect has been identified in the short phase of training;4.There is no high coefficiency between metacognition and school records. Many factors contribute to it.The analysis also reveals some limitations of the program and leaves much to be improved.