On The Application Of Meta-cognitive Strategies To Senior English Listening Teaching

Among the learning strategies, meta-cognitive strategy is a higher-level executive one, which includes planning for learning, self-monitoring during learning and self-evaluation after finishing the language tasks. High awareness of meta-cognitive makes a great difference to the use of meta-cognitive strategies. Students with good meta-cognitive knowledge are able to plan, to predict, to select appropriate strategy, to monitor or evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy use and to revise the plan when necessary. With the further study of learning strategy, meta-cognitive strategy is being attached greater importance. However, little attention has been paid to high school’s meta-cognitive strategy teaching, especially to listening. Therefore, the author chooses application of meta-cognitive strategies to senior English listening teaching as the research focus.In the study, the author applies meta-cognitive strategies training to high school listening instruction. This study develops a three months meta-cognitive strategies based listening instruction program for 96 students from Handan No.10 Middle School who are involved. The author selects two parallel classes as target class, and the one selected as experimental class and the other as control class. In the experimental class, students train to apply planning strategy, self-monitoring strategy and self-evaluating strategy to their listening process. In the controlled class, no meta-cognitive strategy training is taught to the students. This study deals with three questions about the topic. The first is whether meta-cognitive strategy training can strengthen students’ meta-cognitive consciousness. The second involves whether meta-cognitive training has positive correlation to students’ listening achievement. The third refers to if there is any difference between high achievers, middle achievers and low achievers after listening training of meta-cognitive strategy. This training adopts an embedded meta-cognitive strategy model, which incorporates four aspects: improving students’ meta-cognitive awareness, planning behaviors, monitoring listening process and evaluating listening results. The study supports the principles of student-centered and task-based and follows the steps for carrying out the training: pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening.Data analysis shows that through improving student’s meta-cognitive awareness, the frequency use of meta-cognitive strategy is enhanced, thus the students’ English proficiency are improved and the different level students improved differed to the employment of meta-cognitive strategies. Compared with the students in the control class, students in the experiment class are prior in making plans independently, monitoring their own listening process consciously and evaluating the results of their listening effectively. The results of the study provide some practical implications for English listening instruction and English teachers of high school. The author holds that integrating meta-cognitive strategy to classroom listening teaching is of great importance to improve students’ listening ability.