An Experimental Study Of Metacognitive Strategy Training To Cultivate Learner Autonomy Of Senior-One Students In Learning English

Having been teaching in senior high school for entire three years, the author discovered that many students are far from being efficient in their study, resulting from a lack of autonomous learning. What’s more, under the influence of the new Curriculum Reform, teaching with a guided learning plan and the student-centered principle, students in senior high schools are expected to do more in autonomous learning. Metacognitive strategies, which are also called self-monitor learning strategies can help students make plans for their study, monitor and manage the study process and evaluate the effectiveness. Metacognitive strategies training are paid more attention to in the field of education with it being included in the new English curriculum standard as an important part of learning strategies. However, the focus is mostly on descriptive research while studies on strategies based on instruction is rare. And here my focus in on how to cultivate students’ learning autonomy through training of metacognitive strategies.The program carries out an experiment, aiming to discover if senior high school students can enhance their learner autonomy in English study after receiving metacognitive strategy training and thus improve their English learning proficiency. In other words, it aims to help them gain the ability to plan reasonably and do better monitor work and assessment. Document investigation, questionnaire, language tests, interviews, class observation and other methods of research are used in the paper. Cognitivism and previous studies in this field of scholars home and abroad provides theoretical base for the paper. By conducting the research, it is concluded that the metacognitive strategies training are useful in helping senior-one students plan, manage and evaluate their study and effectively contribute to the improvement on English learning autonomy. The result also indicates that the training can help develop students’ English learning efficiency.