A Study Of Meta-cognitive Experience In Listening Comprehension

With the development of international communication, English has been attached more and more attention to. Therefore, many EFL teachers and scholars spend great effort on the research of English learning and instruction as a foreign language. In the past few decades, influenced by the cognitive view of learning, the research focus of second language researchers has shifted from teaching method to the research of the language learners themselves. As an indispensable factor influencing second language acquisition, meta-cognition caught the eyes of the researchers. Since Flavell (1976) proposed the meta-cognitive theory, many researches concerning meta-cognition have been carried out. They have mainly focused on the meta-cognitive framework and the two aspects of meta-cognitive awareness and meta-cognitive strategies of Flavell's framework. Few researches on the aspect of meta-cognitive experience have been conducted. It should be noticed that most researches are on the impact that students' meta-cognitive experience exerts on English learning as a whole, with few on a certain aspect of English learning, fewer on English listening learning.What is meta-cognitive experience? What kind of meta-cognitive experience do college English majors commonly have? What relationship do these meta-cognitive experiences have with English listening proficiencies? How to cultivate college English majors'positive meta-cognitive experience, so as to improve their listening? With these questions, the author reviewed a large amount of related literature and conducted a series of research.This thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter one is a general introduction to the importance of meta-cognition on EFL writing learning, the problems in English listening learning and instruction, as well as the necessity of the present research. Chapter Two is a thorough description of literature review and theoretical framework on meta-cognitive experience, beginning with the definition of meta-cognition, followed by the framework proposed by Flavell and Nelson and Narens. Based on the literature review of Chapter Two, a questionnaire was designed and completed by 55 third-year College English majors from Northeastern University. Chapter Three is mainly concerned with the research design of the survey study and the think-aloud experiment, beginning with an introduction of the objectives, materials, approaches, instruments, and subjects, followed by a description of the questionnaire and think-aloud materials. In Chapter Four and Chapter Five, the author made a detailed presentation of the both the qualitative and quantitative data collected by the survey and think-aloud study. In Chapter Six, the author concluded nine findings on the basis of the research analyses and made three suggestions on enhancing EFL learners' English listening.