Metacognitive Strategies Training In College Students' Listening In Autonomous Learning Context

Learner autonomy is defined as the ability to control and manage one s own learning. Western educationists propose that it is the ultimate goal of education to cultivate students ability in learner autonomy. A Chinese proverb goes as follows, Give a man a fish and you have fed him today; teach him how to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime . In fact, this proverb shows vividly the importance of cultivating students learner autonomy. And the recent years have witnessed a great number of researches from different countries on developing learner autonomy in language learning from different perspectives. Meanwhile, the researches from both cognitive psychology and educational psychology have provided strong support for the development of autonomous learning theories among which metacognition and the interrelated concepts are considered as the foundation to dominate learner autonomy and autonomous behaviors.Generally speaking, the university students in China lack the ability in learner autonomy and are less efficient in using metacognitive strategies so that their English learning is in a very passive position, especially in the situation of English listening. It is well-known that listening takes up an extremely important position in College English teaching and is an important means of ensuring language standardization and strengthening language practice. But it is also the most difficult skill for Chinese students. The College English Curriculum Requirements (2004) state: The objective of College English is to develop students ability to use English in an all-round way, especially in listening and speaking. Taking all these into consideration, this study tries to prove three points: in autonomous learning context, the integration of metacognitive strategy training into listening course for non-English majors will strengthen the awareness of students metacognitive strategy, develop students ability in learner autonomy and effectively improve their listening level. Furthermore, it will improve the current teaching in listening.Qualitative and quantitative approaches are deployed in this study. By conducting the listening tests, questionnaires, interviews and analyzing students diaries,the author carried out a 16-week empirical study among 75 non-English major sophomen in Grade 2009 in Chengdu University of Technology. We carried out listening proficiency tests and two questionnaires before and after the training respectively. The data was keyed into SPSS to do descriptive statistics. The statistical result shows that there were no significant differences between the experimental group and the control group on metacognitive awareness, learner autonomy and listening proficiency before training; while after 16-week training, the result reveals that the experimental group was obviously superior to the students in the control class on those aspects mentioned above. Therefore, we can infer that the training of metacognitive strategy has effectively enhanced students metacognitive awareness, their ability in learner autonomy and their listening proficiency. To sum up, the students in the experimental class can effectively plan their study, monitor their learning process and evaluate their listening results after they received metacognitive strategy training. As a result, they are more autonomous in listening and become the real masters of their English learning.