A Study Of The Application Of Metacognitive Strategies To College English Writing

The College English Curriculum Requirements of2007indicated that the goal ofcollege English teaching is to cultivate college students ability to apply English in anall-round way. English writing competence, as one of the basic skills forcommunication, plays a quite significant role in specific communicative occasionsand it should be the main concern in college English teaching and learning. However,the current situation of teaching and learning of college English writing is far fromsatisfaction. On one hand, college English teaching is lack of systematic training onEnglish writing. Teachers do not give enough priority to English writing competencecompared with other basic skills such as listening, speaking and reading. On the otherhand, some students think that the final target of college English learning is to passthe exams, so they give more attention to the study of vocabulary, grammar andsentence patterns compared with that of English writing. According to statistics, theaverage score of English writing in CET4is just between5to7against the total scoreof15(Du Ai Hong,2004). Therefore, improving college students writing competenceis an urgent task for college English teaching.Based on the theoretical framework of Metacognition, this paper focuses on theapplication of Metacognitive strategies to college English writing, which aims to findout new methods to improve college students English writing proficiency. J.H.Flavell (1976) first proposed the term “Metacognition” which means “cognition aboutcognition”(Wellman,1985:1). Since then, researchers did a lot of empirical studies onMetacognition, especially on Metacognitive strategies. On one hand, Metacognitivestrategies belong to learning strategies, while, on the other hand, Metacognitivestrategies have a higher status than other learning strategies such as cognitivestrategies and social/affective strategies since they can adjust learner s cognitiveactivities and coordinate other learning strategies. But, the empirical study ofMetacognitive strategies in English writing is deficient in China. According to thestatistics collected by Wen Qiu Fang and Wang Li Fei in the year of2004, theempirical study of English writing strategies in China is almost a vacancy. With thedevelopment of foreign language teaching and learning theory in China, manyChinese scholars have done a series of empirical studies on Metacognition and English writing in recent years. However, compared with the achievements made byscholars and researchers abroad, a large number of further studies are still needed inorder to improve the teaching and learning of English writing based on MetacognitiveStrategy in China.This paper is an empirical study of the application of Metacognitive strategies tocollege English Writing. The subjects of the empirical study are60non-Englishmajors in their first year study in Chengdu University of Technology and they aredivided into two groups at random:30students in the Experimental Group and therest in the Control Group. Students in Experimental Group will receive MetacognitiveStrategy Instruction in English writing besides the routine English instruction whilestudents in Control Group just receive the routine English instruction. The instrumentssuch as Metacognitive Strategy Questionnaire and Essay Writing will be adopted inthis research. Three major questions will be answered in this study: Firstly, what is thegeneral state of college students application of Metacognitive strategies to Englishwriting? Secondly, can Metacognitive Strategy Instruction in English writingeffectively improve college students English writing proficiency? Thirdly, DoesMetacognitive Strategy Instruction in English writing have the same effect on thewriting performance of college students at different English writing proficiency levels?Results of this empirical study show that: firstly, college students have littleMetacognitive awareness and knowledge as writers. The level of college students application of Metacognitive Strategies to English writing is low. In other words,students apply Metacognitive strategies to English writing less frequently; secondly,students of the Experimental Group have made significant progress in their Englishwriting after the course of Metacognitive Strategy Instruction in English writingcompared with that of the Control Group. It shows that the course of MetacognitiveStrategy Instruction in English writing can indeed effectively improve collegestudents English writing proficiency; thirdly, the statistics analysis of ExperimentalGroup shows that the Intermediate Learners and Less Advanced Learners benefitmore from the Metacognitive Strategy Instruction than that of the Advanced Learnersand the Less Advanced Learners benefit the most. It proves that the degree ofimprovement is different for students at different English writing proficiency.