A Study Of Metacognitive Strategies Instruction In English Writing In Junior Middle Schools

Since the 1970s, research on language learning strategies has been a key issue in foreign language teaching. The concern with teaching and learning has shifted from the teachers'teaching to the students'learning. Some researchers consider promoting learning proficiency by means of strategies training to make learners more autonomous in language learning.Among all the learning strategies, metacognitive strategy is a higher-class one. Metacognitive strategy is the procedure of management adopted by learners to learn a foreign language successfully,an act regulated by learners themselves. Metacognitive strategy includes determining and adjusting learning aims, choosing learning methods and skills and evaluating learning results. To enable foreign language learners to become more aware of their cognitive activities, metacognitive strategy is used to plan, regulate and evaluate the whole process of foreign language learning effectively.In the past more than twenty years, quite a lot of researches on English learning strategies have been carried out by scholars both at home and abroad to explore the relationship between metacognition and second language acquisition (SLA). Research on English learning strategies in China has made rapid progress since the 1990s. More and more language researchers have recognized the importance of language learning strategies in foreign language learning. However, very little research has been done on metacognitive strategies instruction in junior middle schools in China, especially in English writing. The research of metacognitive strategies instruction in English writing has important significance for EFL instruction because developing English language writing competence presents a major challenge to middle school students who have limited language environment and inadequate metacognitive awareness. Therefore, the hypothesis that developing students'writing proficiency by implementing metacognitive strategies instruction in English writing teaching is conducted by the author of the thesis. Combining metacognitive strategies training with English writing, the study is in an attempt to facilitate the students'internalization of linguistic knowledge, cultivate learner autonomy and encourage students to manage their own studies. The study aims at carrying out a research on combining metacognitive strategies training with writing cognitive strategies training. It consists of four parts: developing students'metacognitive awareness; planning and arranging writing goals; managing and monitoring writing process; evaluating writing results. Three research questions are addressed to guide the study: (1) Can metacognitive strategies instruction in English writing enable students to have a positive attitude towards English writing? (2) Can metacognitive strategies instruction in English writing improve students'English writing proficiency? (3) Can metacognitive strategies instruction in English writing influence students'overall language proficiency?To answer the questions above, 91 students in Grade Four from two parallel classes of Rizhao Port Middle School participated in the five months'experiment. First of all, students were taught to have a better idea of metacognition, what was involved in the training significance of metacognitive strategies instruction in English writing. In light of the notion that the combination of metacognitive and cognitive strategies would achieve better results, both cognitive and metacognitive strategies of writing were explicitly trained with the three-step approach: presentation of strategies; cued practice; evaluation. The effects of monitoring were reinforced through self-evaluation, peer evaluation and teacher evaluation, which were used to assess the results of decisions made during a writing task, allowing students to evaluate their ongoing learning and take necessary remedial actions by reviewing difficulties and justifying choices. And the teacher monitored the teaching process through interviews, questionnaires, exercises, tests and so on.After five months'experiment, we find that, in the course of English writing, strengthening the teaching of metacognitive knowledge and intergrating strategy training into the classroom teaching can improve students'metacognitive awareness. The training not only plays a positive role in actual writing performance, but also has a potential positive effect on students'language proficiency improvement. The study implicates that integrating metacognitive strategies instruction into English classroom teaching to urge students to realize, consolidate and utilize proper strategies to their learning experience has good results on students'language learning. From both quantitative and qualitative analyses we can conclude that, with the teacher's instructing, metacognitive strategies are very important and helpful to students in English writing. Metacognitive strategies not only can improve students'English writing proficiency, but also can promote their language proficiency.