An Investigation On The Metacognitive Ability Of Senior High School Students In English Vocabulary Learning

The theoretical framework proposed by Flavell who claims that metacognition consists of metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive experiences has created a new field of research for"the development of cognitive psychology"(Flavell1979: 4). This framework has provided a new perspective for researchers to study cognitive behaviors—from the point of view of"meta". Numerous studies show that metacognition is one of the important factors influencing foreign language learning. Since the 1920s, more and more researchers in second language learning begin to focus on metacognitive phenomena in this field (Wenden1991, 1998,1999, Li & Munby 1996; Goh 1997; Zhang 2001; Wu Hongyun 2005). They analyzed the concept and elements of metacognition and presented the theoretical framework of metacognition. What's more, they did a lot of empirical research by applying the framework to second language learning.This article is a research on the metacognitive abilities of high school students in English vocabulary learning, with its theory based on the framework proposed by Flavell (1979) and other researchers. It is divided into six parts. The first part is introduction, which describes the research background and research questions. The second part is the literature review, which describes a comprehensive theoretical background, including the definition of metacognition, the elements of metacognition, vocabulary learning theory and constructivism, as well as domestic and foreign research on cognitive stratigies and Second Language Vocabulary Learning. The third part is the research design. With the main method of a questionnaire, maily using a survey coming from two secondary shcools in When Zhou, the research aims to study the overall metacognitive ability level of high school students in English vocabulary learning, and the characteristics of metacognitive ability of students with different academic performances as well. The fourth part is discussion on the research results. The results show that the overall metacognitive ability level of high school students in English vocabulary learning is in a medium rate, and that metacognitive person knowledge, metacognitive strategic knowledge, and metacognitive experiences are closely related to English proficiency. The fifth part provides some teaching suggestions. Some teaching advice is offered to teachers based on the research findings. Moreover, teachers should upgrade their theoretical knowledge, communicate with other teachers, infiltrate metacognitive knowledge and strategies in the classroom, and promote students'active learning experiences. The sixth part is the conclusion.