The Study On The Effect Of Metacognitive Strategy Training Upon Junior Middle School Students’ English Learner Autonomy

Middle school English teaching should not only cultivate the students’ comprehensivelanguage using ability, but also teach students the learning methods, guide the students tolearn to learn, cultivate students’ autonomous learning ability.“Full-time compulsoryeducation, ordinary junior middle school English curriculum standard”(experiment draft)made it clear that “learning strategy is the guarantee in improving the learning efficiency anddeveloping the autonomous learning ability. Middle school stage is the best period of strategytraining, moreover English result and the improvement of ability are directly related to theeffective use of learning strategies. Therefore, it is of significance to improve this stage’sstudents’ awareness of English learning strategies, and to study their applying in learningstrategies.Metacognitive strategy, a higher execution strategy, it makes plan, monitor and evaluatebecome the necessary factors in learner’s success, which is consistent with the core concept ofautonomous learning. There are a lot of researches about improving the independent learningability through metacognitive strategy training at home and abroad, but less on the study ofmetacognitive strategy training in junior middle school students. Therefore, the purpose ofthis paper is to explore the effect of metacognitive strategy training in promoting autonomouslearning in junior middle school students, and then to study the relationship betweenmetacognitive strategy training, autonomous learning ability and English proficiency.The subjects for this experimental research are selected from two classes of third gradestudents in junior middle school in Datong. The author gives the experimental class studentsmetacognitive strategy training for four month. In this period, metacognitive strategyquestionnaire, autonomous learning questionnaire and English tests are used to analyzemetacognitive strategy training’s impact on metacognitive strategy use, learner autonomy and English proficiency with quantitative research methods. Qualitative research is also applied ininterviewing two students to further probe the change of their levels in different aspects.In this thesis, the author adopts four steps training method to explore the relationshipbetween students’ metacognitive level and their level of autonomous learning based on acareful analysis of the statistics obtained from the Pre-tests and Post-tests. The results indicatethat metacognitive strategy training can enhance the students’ metacognition consciousnessand that students’ higher metacognitive level can improve their ability in autonomous learningand then promote their achievements in English learning.At last, according to the findings of the experiment, the author gives some suggestions,for example, we should embed meta-cognitive strategy training into English class and shouldhelp junior middle school students find their own learning strategy. So that to improvelearners’ ability in several aspects.