A Study On The Application Of Metacognitive Strategy Training To Non-English Majors' Reading

Reading is an indispensible part in English learning, and its nature is viewed as an active psychological activity, which entails that reading is not a simple decoding process, but an interactive one with both symbol-decoding and readers'relevant background knowledge. Moreover, in the psychological field, metacognition plays an important role. Metacognition was first proposed by American psychologist Flavell in 1970s, and afterwards it became a concern in educational and linguistic psychology. According to Flavell, metacognition is simply"cognition about cognition", which means individuals manage and monitor the cognitive process. As reading is gradually regarded to have more connection with psychology, recent research has focused more on the relationship between reading comprehension and metacognitive strategy. Many of the research prove that metacognitive strategies are closely related to reading comprehension. However, few explore the relationship between metacognitive strategy training and reading comprehension. Therefore, the present study explores the relationship of the two with the following questions:1. What is the situation of metacognitive strategy use of non-English majors in English reading comprehension in college?2. How can the metacognitive strategies be trained in college English reading class?3. Is metacognitive strategy training effective to improve non-English majors'reading ability in college?In the exploration of these questions, questionnaires and reading comprehension tests are adopted to investigate 124 students, whose majors are Automobile and Computer in Changchun University. After the collection of data on the metacognitive strategy use and the test on reading proficiency, metacognitive strategy training is conducted in experiment class and a traditional instruction is carried out in the control class. Afterwards, all the data analyzed and the findings are listed as follows:Non-English majors are still at medium level in terms of metacognitive strategy use;"think-aloud"method is helpful in metacognitive strategy training; metacognitive strategy training is effective to improve non-English majors'reading ability.Though the research is not without limitations, it possesses pedagogical implications, such as employing metacognitive strategy to improve reading proficiency, implementing"think-aloud"method to facilitate the acquisition of metacognitive strategy, and the others.