A Study Of The Correlation Between Metacognitive Strategies Of Learning And The English Reading Achievements Of The Senior Three Students

Reading is one of the most basic means as well as purposes of learning English, which plays a very important role in English learning. Take Jiangsu College Entrance Examination for example, the test items focusing on English reading include Cloze(20scores), Reading Comprehension(30 scores) and Task-based Reading(10 scores),accounting for exactly 50 % of the total score. For this reason, reading has been stressed all the time in China. However, students’ English reading skill is not equally good. One of the reasons is that many students are not well aware of employing reading strategies and they lack knowledge about reading-strategies in reading. Most previous related studies focused on cognitive strategies of learning, while a limited number of related studies were about metacognitive strategies of learning. This study emphasizes the relation between metacognitive strategies of learning and students’ academic achievements in English reading. Metacognition refers to the cognition about cognition, in other words, it is about the knowledge of cognitive process and the ability in adjusting the process. Metacognitive strategies of learning are at a higher level than other strategies of learning.It is an ability of consciously using metacognitive knowledge to plan, arrange, monitor, regulate and evaluate the learning process. The appropriate use of metacognitive strategies of learning can help learners to become more effective readers, and improve their reading marks in tests.Based on the categorization of metacognitive strategy by O’Malley and Chamot, the study conducts a survey on the condition of applying metacognitive strategies of learning into the reading among the 113 senior three students from a high school in Suzhou, inwhich the author is working. By using quantitative research method, the study aims to figure out the relationship between metacognitive strategies of learning and reading achievements. The research questions are addressed as follows:(1) What are the metacognitive strategies of learning the students use in their English reading, and which metacognitive strategies are most commonly used by the students?(2) What is the correlation between the metacognitive strategies of learning and the students’ academic achievements in English reading?(3) What are the differences in using metacognitive strategies of learning between the higher achievers and the lower achievers?After a careful study, the major findings of the study are summarized as follows:Firstly, the students sometimes use metacognitive strategies of learning in reading, the frequency of their usage of metacognitive strategies of learning is found to be at medium level(mean=2.93), according to the Metacognitive Strategies Frequency Scales of Oxford.Among the three metacognitive strategies, monitoring strategy is the most frequently used strategy, and then comes the planning strategy, evaluating strategy is found to be the least frequently used strategy.Secondly, it is found that there is a significant moderate positive correlation between the metacognitive strategies of learning and the students’ academic achievements in English reading(r=0.615, p ﹤ 0.01), which means the application of metacognitive strategies in reading can improve students reading achievements.Thirdly, there are some similarities and differences in the use of metacognitive strategies of learning. The similarities are that the most frequently used strategy by the two groups is monitoring strategy, the least frequently used strategy by the two groups is evaluating strategy, and planning strategy is in the middle. The differences are that there are significant differences(p<.05)in using planning and monitoring strategy, however,there is no significant difference in using evaluating strategy(p>.05).The findings of the study have proved the positive effect of the metacognitive strategies of learning on English reading, and teachers are supposed to attach greatimportance to cultivating students’ awareness of metacognition and the use of metacognitive strategies of learning so as to improve students’ English reading achievements.