A Study Of Metacognitive Strategies In English Writing Among Junior School Students

The term "metacognition" was put forward by J.H. Flavell in the 1970s. Metacognition refers to one’s knowledge concerning one’s own cognitive process and products or anything related to them (Flavell,1997). According to his model, metacognition is made up of metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive experiences or regulation. Metacognitive knowledge is further classified into three major categories of variables, namely, person variable, task variable and strategy variable. Metacognitive strategies are the focuses of this study. According to o’Malley & Chamot(1990), Among all the learning strategies, metacognitive strategies are considered as higher-order executive skills which involve planning, monitoring, and evaluating strategies can promote successful language learning to a great extent. Students who have a good command of metacognitive strategies tend to learn autonomously.English writing ability, one of the four basic language skills used on various communicative occasions, has been highlighted as a core skill in the foreign language learning and teaching, it also serves as an important indicator of students’ English proficiency and their application ability. However, the teaching and learning of English writing is the most difficult part. One of the reasons is that English teaching is lack of systematic training on English writing. Teachers give the most priority to other basic skills such as listening, speaking and reading rather than writing, for another, many students think that the final goal of English learning is to pass the exams, so they give more attention to the study of vocabulary, grammar and sentence patterns compared with that of English writing. Therefore, improving middle school students’ writing competence is an urgent task of English teaching. However, the systematic and embedded training of Metacognitive strategies in English writing is quite deficient. So this paper is intend to integrate Metacognitive strategies to middle school English writing to implore whether the training can improve students’ writing ability,This is an empirical study of the application of Metacognitive strategies to middle school English Writing. The subjects of the empirical study are 41 junior middle school students of grade from rural area; the subjects will receive Metacognitive Strategy Instruction in English writing besides the routine English instruction. The instruments are metacognitive strategy questionnaire, writing test and written reflections on opinions about the training instead of interview in this research. Three major questions will be answered in this study:Firstly, what is the general state of rural middle school students of grade nine application of Metacognitive strategies to English writing? Secondly, what is the relationship between metacognitive strategy preferences and English writing proficiency? Thirdly, can Metacognitive Strategy Instruction in English writing effectively improve middle school students’ English writing proficiency?The results indicate that there is positive correlation between the metacognitive strategy use and English writing proficiency through correlation analysis. Junior middle school students employ metacognitive strategy in their English writing though their application level is low and unsystematic. That is to say, junior middle school students’overall level of metacognitive strategy use in English writing is low, which means that metacognitive strategies in English writing is not integrated into English learning. Students has little related knowledge of metacognitive strategies, therefore they aren’t able to use metacognitive strategies to instruct their English writing and learning. Trough systematic training of one term, their Metacognitive awareness and writing has significant progress, Metacognitive Strategy Instruction in English writing improve students English writing proficiency.To help students improve their learning ability and enhance their writing performance, it is urgent and significant to integrate strategies training especially metcognitive strategies training with English teaching. This paper suggest that Metacognitive strategies instruction, can integrate with other strategies and listening, reading and speaking to improve their English writing proficiency and English ability.