Metacognitive Training In English Writing-A Case Study In Chinese High School

Learner Autonomy is the ultimate goal of high school education.Teachers are concerned about how they can teach students to learn more independently, autonomously and efficiently.Learning to learn means acquiring learning strategies which are necessary for autonomous learners.Among all the learning strategies for English writing proficiency,metacognitive strategy is the most effective skill which involves an ability of consciously using metacognitive knowledge,including the knowledge of oneself as a learner,task and strategies,to plan,monitor and evaluate the learning process.In the past twenty years,quite a lot of researches have been carried out by scholars both at home and abroad to explore the relationship between metacognition and second language acquisition.Research into English learning strategy in China has made rapid progress since the 1990's.More and more foreign language researchers have recognized the importance of language learning strategy in language learning. However,generally speaking,relatively few empirical researches have been conducted to investigate the relationship between metacognitive strategy and competence of English writing as a second language,especially in the high school. Therefore,the case study aimed at investigating the relationship between metacognitive strategy and English writing proficiency of Chinese high school students was conducted by the author of the thesis.Before training,a questionnaire was administered by the author to investigate the metacognitive awareness and knowledge of the eight subjects,who came from Grade One in No.35 Middle School in Shijiazhuang,Hebei Province.Then different trainings for experimental group and control group were conducted by the author.The control group received only the routine writing training based on the regular syllabus, while at the same time a 15-week metacognitive-strategy-based writing instruction program for experimental group was conducted to cultivate learner autonomy and encourage students to manage their own studies.The research project,with a training package of metacognitive and writing strategies throughout an intensified practice of topic writing focused on three aspects:the effects of the training on actual writing performance;the potential positive effects of the training on language proficiency improvement;the differences relating to metacognition between good and poor writers.The training program adopted an embedded metacognitive strategy model, which consisted of four parts:developing students' metacognitive awareness, planning,self-monitoring,evaluating.After being instructed on metacognitive knowledge,the four subjects were guided to make plans before writing,self-monitor while writing,self-evaluate,and peer-evaluate.The teacher-evaluation was carried out afterwards.The study achieved encouraging results.Data analyses suggested that,through enhancing students' metacognitive awareness,the training not only improved students' EFL writing proficiency,but also promoted their language proficiency indirectly,and that the successful and unsuccessful students differed significantly with regard to their employment of metacoguitive strategies.The study showed that integrating appropriate metacognitive strategy training into writing teaching enables students to manipulate their writing process successfully by enhancing learner autonomy,independence and self-direction.