A Study On The Use Of Meta-Cognitive Knowledge And Meta-Cognitive Strategies By Junior High School Students

The relationship between metacognition theory and education has aroused wide concernsin academic circles. Metacognition means that the thinking subject has some knowledge abouthis own thinking, ability, mental state, task object and cognitive strategies, and the thinkingsubject may monitor and regulate the course of his own thinking. Although the presentresearches have achieved some accomplishments, most of them focus on the study of seniorhigh school and college students and lack systematicness. And there are few systemicresearches about the metacognitive level of junior high school students.The study aims to find out the metacognitive differences among students good atlearning, average students and students with learning difficulties in different grades throughquestionnaire survey method and interviewing. The subjects in this study are students fromone of the No.11Junior High Schools in Fuzhou. The instrument of the study is thequestionnaire adapted from Wang Ling and Guo Dejun’s Meta-cognition Questionnaire andSchraw’s MAI. The study has come up with the following conclusions：first, students’metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategies levels develop as they study Englishfurther in the school, however, the general level of the third grade students is lower than thatof the second grade; second, students’ metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategieslevels have great diversities: students good at learning have the highest score, students withlearning difficulties have the lowest score, and the average students are in the medium level;third, students of different grades and different levels also differ in some dimensions ofmetacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategies.According to the survey result, the study puts forward the following suggestions forEnglish teaching in junior high schools in China: first, teachers are advised to help studentsget positive self-image, enhance their self-efficacy and enable them to pay attention to theimportance of the learning task knowledge; second, teachers should introduce metacognitiveknowledge to students, teach them metacognitive strategies through effective teaching modes with the consideration of their different situations, and help them to use metacognitivestrategies freely.By this study, the author wishes to learn the present level of junior high school students’metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategies and find out the inadequacy in theapplication of them so that the teachers can teach according to the specific situation of eachstudent and help him or her learn English better.