A Study On Meta-cognitive Strategy Of High School Students In Bilingual Education

This Thesis researches the general situation of using met-cognitive strategies tolearn English in bilingual education by Chinese high school students.In recent decades, due to the economic globalization and our country’s reform andopening policies, English is becoming more and more important in enhancinginternational communication and promoting scientific research; and in return, oursociety have more requirement for learners’ English abilities. To successfully learn aforeign language, learners have to acquire the skill of using the target languageproperly and idiomatically in different situations. In order to accelerate the cultivationof talents, change the situation of foreign language teaching model and improvelearners’ general English level，Bilingual Education, as an innovative approach ofeducation is favored by more and more schools and learners. Especially some highschools in developed cities of eastern China, they do experiment of the bilingualeducation teaching, and have achieved certain effect, and their practice proved thefeasibility of bilingual education. In the current educational field, bilingual educationis a hot topic. As an innovative approach that involves two or more languages,bilingual education originated in western countries, with aims of improving ourEnglish level in order to make our communicating skill keep pace with the demand ofthe quick development of the society. In this thesis, the author takes ShenzhenSonggang Middle School as the object of study; investigates in the bilingual education,the English learning strategies, especially the using of meta-cognitive strategies byhigh school students. Combined with the general situation of China, this research aimsto arouse the interest in bilingual learning and teaching of the learners and teachers; tohelp them set up their confidence and develop their autonomy and activation inbilingual learning and teaching; to enrich bilingual teaching, related theories, and tospeed up bilingual education development efficiently and healthily in China. Thisresearch is conducted through investigation and answering the following fourquestions: (1) What is the general situation of using the meta-cognitive strategy byShenzhen Songgang Middle School students in bilingual education?(2) What are the differences of meta-cognitive strategy used in bilingual learningat different grades level.？(3) What are the differences of meta-cognitive strategy used in bilingual learningbetween male and female students.？(4) How does the use of meta-cognitive strategies affect students’ learning?In this thesis, the writer reviews the related theories and different types ofbilingual education and language learning strategies, especially the meta-cognitivestrategies. The author adopted questionnaire investigation, interview and classroomobservation to collect the first hand information. The questionnaires were hand out to300students in Songgang Middle Schools, a key school at provincial level approvedby the Shenzhen Government. The author also made interview to50students betweenclasses, the students were chosen from different grades. Two periods of bilingualclasses were observed. The result shows that in bilingual education, language learningstrategies especially the met-cognitive strategies are very important.From the study, the author gets the following conclusion, the general situation ofmeta-cognitive ability of high school students is not very good in bilingual class, andthe students in higher grades use meta-cognitive strategies less frequently than thestudents in lower grades；Boys use meta-cognitive strategies less frequently than girls;meta-cognitive strategies play a very important role not only in helping raisinglearners’ English ability but also in promoting their general academic achievement inbilingual education. The students who are good at using meta-cognitive strategieslearn rapidly and efficiently. The author also makes some suggestions for teachers, inorder to promote learners’ bilingual learning efficiently, teachers should putimproving the consciousness and ability of students’ meta-cognitive strategy into thebilingual teaching routine; help students raising their meta-cognitive awarenessespecially for the students in lower grades and train students’ meta-cognitiveawareness taking gender differences into consideration, some suggestions are alsogiven to solve the problem of gender difference in bilingual education.