Experimental Study Of Metacognitive Strategies’ Training Effects On Teaching English Vocabulary In Senior Middle School

English vocabulary is the foundation of communication and it directly affects the language level of an English learner. So vocabulary teaching plays a decisive role in senior middle school. After the new curriculum reform implementation, English curriculum has set higher requirements to the quantity and quality of teaching vocabulary. This has challenged the vocabulary teaching in senior middle school. How to make students learn vocabulary independently and efficiently has become a hotspot of study on teaching vocabulary.Studies at home and abroad show that metacognitive strategies can accelerate students to learn knowledge by themselves, enhance independent learning ability and advance learning efficiency. This research adopts the concept and classification of metacognitive strategies by O’Malley&Chamot (1990) as the theoretical foundation. The theory emphasizes that metacognitive strategies are higher-level strategies, which can help students to improve the ability of planning, monitoring, and evaluating their learning process. With this theoretical framework, we do an experimental study of metacognitive strategies’s effect on teaching English vocabulary in two liberal arts classes in Senior Two in Gaoyao No.1Middle School. The two classes are taught by the author. The aim of the study is to answer the following two questions:1) Can the training of metacognitive strategies improve students’awareness of using metacognitive strategies in learning English vocabulary?2) Is there any significant difference between the experimental class and the control class in the posttest performance after the training of metacognitive strategies?There are five steps in the study. The experimental steps are as follows:1) questionnaire;2) vocabulary pretest;3) the training of metacognitive strategies4) vocabulary posttest;5) students’reports. Every step is given to both the experimental class and the control class except step3and5. Step3and step5are only given to the experimental class. Step3, the training of metacognitive strategies, is the most important step in the whole experiment. We do the training according to Oxford’s training model (1990). The model provides a three-phase sequence:1) Preparation, which enhances the awareness of strategies of strategies and let students get ready for the training of metacognitive strategies;2) Presentation, which introduces the metacognitive strategies and leads students to use them while teaching English vocabulary;3) Practice, which provides students more chances to use the strategies.The results of the vocabulary tests are analyzed by SPSS16.0. At the same time, the results of the questionnaires, the learning logs and the reports are qualitatively analyzed by us. After analysis we find that:First, after the experiment, in the experimental class students’awareness of using metacognitive strategies has been improved while they are learning English vocabulary. Second, after the training, there are significant differences in the results of the posttest between the experimental class and the control class. Students in the experimental class do better than those in the control class in the posttest. Therefore, there is a great need for further metacognitive strategy using and training to improve students’awareness and use of metacognitive strategies in future teaching and learning. It can also improve students’language learning as a whole.