The Effect Of Metacognitive Strategies Training On Technical College Students' Vocabulary Learning

Many linguists have conducted a great many studies on metacognition since the American psychologist John Flavell put forward the concept of metacognition in 1970s. Extended studies have demonstrated that metacognitive strategy is a higher executive technique, which can apply metacognitive knowledge to plan, regulate, monitor and evaluate language learning, thus enhance the ability of language learning.A good command of certain amount of vocabulary is prerequisite for English learning. In order to improve learner's vocabulary, many researchers both at home and abroad, have conducted a number of studies on vocabulary learning strategies, they classify vocabulary strategies, study the correlation between specific vocabulary strategies and vocabulary achievements, and compare different learner's vocabulary strategies, which have contributed a lot to different aspects of vocabulary learning strategies. However, it appears that there is no published research about the efficacy of metacognitive strategies instruction on Chinese non-English-major technical college students'vocabulary development.This research try to use metacognition as theoretical basis, combine related vocabulary learning strategies and follow the sequence of the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA) to conduct a 12-week explicit metacognitive vocabulary learning strategy instruction on Chinese non-English-major technical college students. SPSS has been adopted to analyze questionnaires, pretest and posttest data. These data were submitted to Two-Independent-Samples nonparametric Tests by Mann-Whitney U Test, Two-Related-Samples nonparametric Tests by Wilcoxon Test and Bivariate Correlations by Spearman's rho.The statistical analyses reveal that: (1)there are significant differences between the experimental class and control class after a period of explicit metacognitive strategies training, and the experimental class outperforms the control class in the use frequency of vocabulary learning strategy; (2) the two classes have significant difference in the posttest scores. The posttest scores of the experiment class are higher than that of control class; (3) the actual use of metacognitive strategies in the experimental class is positively correlated with their posttest; (4) interviews with the students in experimental class further verify the efficacy of explicit metacognitive strategies instruction. This research put forward a preliminary lens into the area of explicit metacognitive strategies instruction on technical college students'vocabulary learning. It is expected that this study can serve as a practical reference for researchers interested in the nature of vocabulary in foreign language teaching and learning and then lead to a development in vocabulary teaching and learning.