Training And Applications Of Metacognitive Strategies In Autonomous Listening For Non-English Majors

Listening, speaking, reading and writing are the four basic learning skills forEnglish learners. Among which listening, as a language learning and communicatingskill, has received abundant attention from both educators and learners. Researcherscarried out studies on how to improve learners listening abilities effectively. It is aquestion worth considering that how to help learners raise their listening abilitieseffectively and cultivate their autonomous learning ability as well. Metacognitivestrategy, compared with other learning strategies, is a higher standard one. It impliesthat students can using planning、monitoring、and evaluating strategies actively in theirlearning process. Metacognitive training is necessary for students to have a betterunderstanding of their own study. In recent decades, scholars at home and abroadconducted many experiments focused on the metacognitive strategy training. Scholarspublished a series of books to illustrate the practicability of strategy training. Thesestudies make a great contribution for teachers in their English listening teaching fornon-English majors. However, it is still a hot issue which needs to be discussed thathow to put metacognitive strategy training into college English teaching in listeningclass? And how to help students listen effectively and scientifically by using thesestrategies so that they can develop the habit of autonomous learning?The creativity of this article is that putting metacognitive strategy training intoEnglish listening class for non-English majors. Thus, students can obtain the usingskills of metacognitive strategy in their listening, and in the long run, they can formthe listening autonomous learning habit in future study.The author began with the definition and classification of metacognitive theoryand other learning strategies. Then metacognitive strategies training at home andabroad were reviewed. Finally, the author conducted the investigation among80freshmen in a certain university in Xi’an. In order to collect the data, questionnaireswere delivered to the students followed with the first listening capacity test.80students were divided into control group and experiment group. The author carried out metacognitive strategies training in the experiment group. After one semester, the twogroups were given the same questionnaires and the second capacity test, then theauthor compared the data of the control group with that of the experiment group. Thearticle aims on discussing whether metacognitive training is helpful to students in theirlistening and in their getting the habit of learning automatically through comparativestudy.