An Empirical Study On The Effect Of Meta-cognitive Strategy Training Upon Senior Middle School Students' English Learner Autonomy

Having been teaching English in middle schools for more than ten years, the author found most of my students are not so efficient in their English learning and they usually are not autonomous. It is urgent to find a way to help them out of trouble. Autonomous language learning has been developed both in theory and practice ever since its appearance in the 1960s. It is still a hot topic of English teaching and research today. And the studies on meta-cognitive strategies become common recently in China. However, a lot of researchers only paid attention to the aspects of autonomous language learning. More focus is paid on learner's meta-cognitive descriptive investigations and little has been reported about meta-cognitive strategies based instruction. Here I try to foster learner autonomy through systematic strategy training.Based on the model proposed by Cohen, the program aims to help the students be aware of the importance of responsible attitude and develop independent learning ability through meta-cognitive strategy training in class. An experiment is made to test whether meta-cognitive strategy training can enhance senior middle school students' autonomy in their English learning and finally improve their English proficiency.Eighty senior middle school students from the 8^th Middle School of Xiangtan City participated in the experiment and were evenly grouped into two classes. Both use the same textbook and are under the guidance of the same teacher and follow the same syllabus. The only difference lies in the teaching methods, with one class using the traditional teacher-centered teaching approach (the control class) and the other focusing on meta-cognitive strategy training. Analyzing their pre-test and pre-questionnaire scores, we find the two classes are almost of the same level in terms of language proficiency and meta-cognition level. During the program, the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) questionnaire and PETS-2 tests are used. Comparisons are made in the following three aspects: the language performance in the test, a change of meta-cognitive strategies, and enhancement of autonomy.As far as the scores in the post-test are concerned, the experimental class has a higher mean score than the control class. The two sets of questionnaire results show that the experimental class benefit from the program by using more meta-cognitive strategies. Besides, most of the students in the experimental class are reported to have a higher motivation in language learning after the experiment. While the control class shows no great difference in all aspects.According to the findings of the experiment and referring to other researches, the author gives some suggestions on how to embed meta-cognitive strategy training into English learning practice and improve senior middle school students' autonomy at the end of this thesis. The integrated training program may serve as enlightenment for further innovation in more effective modes of teaching in foreign language education.