A Study Of Metacognitive Strategies Training And The Cultivation Of Autonomous Learning Ability Of Senior High Students

Meta-cognition is about his or her cognition of cognitive processes andindividuals' understanding of their cognitive systems, as well as the informationprocessing system and indecision-making processes. Meta-cognitive strategy refers tohigher order executive skills that may entail planning for, monitoring, or evaluating thesuccess of a learning activity. It can be generally divided into three parts: planningstrategies, monitoring strategies and adjusting strategies. It is considered as the corelearning strategy because they are applicable to a variety of learning tasks and also infavor of the development of the students. It is one of the teachers' responsibilities tocultivate the students' autonomous learning ability and improve their application ofmetacognitive strategies.Autonomous learning is a modern learning concept based on the cognitivepsychology and humanistic psychology, and also an important topic of research inapplied linguistics today. Modern learning scholars view that the autonomous learningcan be divided into eight parts, learning motivation, learning content, learning methods,learning arrangement, learning process, learning effects, learning surrounding andlearning sociality.How does a good learner learn English? The answer is that they learn how to learnand they master the learning strategies which contribute to adopting appropriateapproaches. They can learn confidently, correctly, flexibly and independently, so theirlearning are autonomous. Form here we can see the learning strategy has a greatcontribution to the learning efficiency and learning effects. There are a lot of expertshave made researches on the relationship between metacognitive strategy andautonomous learning. The researches show that the autonomous learning meanslearning on one's own and taking charge of one' own learning. The autonomous learnershould be positive to accept and deal with the information, which requires mastering the learning strategies and applying them effectively. The three basic strategies ofmetacognition are considered to be the important learning goals for prompting theautonomous learning. Therefore, enriching the metacognitive knowledge and trainingmetacognitive strategy are the basic requirements of improving autonomous learning.In the third year of postgraduate, the author got a chance to be an English teacherin ChongQing HeChuan middle school for one semester. The author taught a normalclass in senior grade one. She first made a questionnaire survey and oral interview toknow the present situation of application of metacognitive strategy and autonomouslearning. Then she carried on an experiment to develop the students' Englishautonomous learning ability by cultivating their metacognitive strategies, on which thispaper is based on. The author designed the training from three aspects, namely settinga learning goal and making a learning plan, self-monitoring and self-assessing whichare closely related to the autonomous learning. The author first has introduced thecharacteristic of senior English learning and the learning requirements. The author hasintroduced the metacognitive knowledge and strategy to improve the awareness ofapplying metacognitive strategies. Through various approaches, the author assistsstudents to set a clear learning goal and make a learning plan, cultivate the awarenessof self-monitoring and train the ability of self-assessing. The author organizes variousactivities to enhance students' learning interest and insists integrating themetacognitive strategies into English teaching. The author has kept a democraticclassroom atmosphere and filled he emotional gap to improve the students'autonomous learning.After the training, the author first has listed the scores and the pass rates of formerexam and final exam between class16she has taught and a top class, class25. Then,she has compared the progress rates of every item between the two classes, whichshows that the training has contributed to the improving of students' scores in the exam.Secondly, in order to know the understanding and situation of autonomous learningafter the metacognitive strategy training, the author has picked up thirty students totake an interview. The author hopes to find out the training of metacognitive strategycontributes to cultivating autonomous learning ability.