Metacognitive Experiments In Reducing English Underachievers’ Foreign Language Anxiety In HighSchools

Anxiety, as an affective factor, poses several potential problems to the students of a foreign language. A high level of anxiety has negative effects on the language learners’foreign language proficiency. Metacognitive strategies have been seen as effective learning strategies in helping the users to plan, monitor and evaluate the whole learning process. Therefore, they have positive effects on foreign language learning.This study combines qualitative analysis with quantitative analysis, carries out a ten-week empirical teaching program on two classes of Grade Two in a high school in Hangzhou. By using the instruments like questionnaire survey, interview, and English testing, it attempts to explore how to reduce English underachievers’Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) with metacognitive strategy training and from what aspects to reduce English underachievers’FLA.In order to ensure the reliability and validity of this study, firstly, a pre-test is used, parallel with an English teacher’s evaluation to choose the underachievers from the two classes. One group is randomly chosen as the Experimental Group (EG) and the other as the Control Group (CG). Secondly, two questionnaires and an interview are carried out to the two groups to get some basic information of the underachievers’ FLA and their metacognitive strategy employments before the training. Then metacognitive strategy training is applied in English teaching for the EG. At last, the same two questionnaires as well as another interview are taken to the EG, aiming at checking the subjects’FLA and their metacognitive strategy using after the training. The data obtained during the experiment are analyzed by SPSS 16.0, the study concludes as follows:1) Before the training, underachievers suffer a high level of FLA. On the contrary, the overall level of their metacognitive strategy employment is relatively low. Besides, the correlation between FLA and metacognitive strategy is proved to be significantly negative2) Statistical analyses show a significant improvement in the metacognitive strategy using and anxiety reducing in the EG. To be specific, students in the EG feel less anxious about speaking English in class, they hold a more positive attitude toward exams and outperform students in the CG in the post-test.In conclusion, metacognitive strategy training contributes to reducing English underachievers’FLA in high school. The implication for teachers is that they should acknowledge the existence of foreign language anxiety and pay particular attention to English underachievers’learning situation. It is adviced to integrate metacognitive strategy training into English teaching to reduce English underachievers’ FLA and improve their English competence.