A Study On The Correlation Between Non-English Major Undergraduates' Use Of Metacognitive Strategy And Their Academic English Reading Proficiency

In recent years, the teaching of ESP course(English for Specific Purposes course) has become a trend in our society. The teaching of ESP course is a content-based instruction, the theoretical core of which is to combine the learning content with the learning itself. When the learning is used to acquire information rather than to learn the language itself, learning efficiency would be greatly enhanced. It is understood that the biggest difference between academic English reading and the general English reading lies in the purpose of learning. Compared with the general English reading,academic English reading emphasizes on cultivating the students' critical thinking and independent thinking ability. It is widely acknowledged that there is a close relation between critical thinking and metacognitive strategy. Many studies conducted domestically and abroad indicate that there is a positive correlation between the use of metacognitive strategy and English reading proficiency, in other words, the more frequently the metacognitive strategy used, the more proficient the reader is.However, studies on the relationship between the use of metacognitive strategy and academic English reading proficiency are rarely seen. And therefore, the present study aims to explore the correlation between the use of metacognitive strategy and academic reading proficiency and emphasizing on explaining the reason why the use of metacognitive strategy would exert positive influence on the academic English reading proficiency.Both qualitative and quantitative methods are adopted to investigate the relationship between the metacognitive strategy use and academic English reading proficiency. Three questions to be solved in the research are as follows: 1)What is the overall situation of the use of metacognitive strategy and academic English reading proficiency of the subjects? 2) Are there any internal differences between three groups in using metacognitive strategy? If there are, what are they? 3) Is there any correlation between the metacognitive strategy use and academic English reading proficiency?In the present study, 100 students of non-English major undergraduates are selected from a comprehensive university in China. In the first place, metacognitive strategy questionnaire(Zhang Lian's version) is used to find out the overall situation of the frequency use of the metacognitive strategy of the subjects. Then an academic English reading test is administered to gauge thesubjects' academic English reading ability. In the end, a semi-structured interview is conducted to further explore the relationship between the metacognitive strategy use and academic English reading proficiency.The findings of the present study are listed as follows: 1) The subjects' overall use of the metacognitive strategy is at a medium level. Similarly, a medium level of academic English reading proficiency is also demonstrated among the subjects. Among the three categories of metacognitive strategy, the planning strategy is most frequently used by the subjects. Since the three categories can be divided into nine sub-categories, the selective attention strategy and advance organizer strategy are the two most frequently strategies employed by subjects. 2) Generally speaking, there is significant difference between the high-score subjects and the low-score subjects in using metacognitive strategy, while there exists no significant difference between the medium-score subjects and high-score subjects. When it comes to the use of nine sub-categories of subjects,significant differences are demonstrated among the three groups of subjects in using the selective attention strategy and the organizational planning strategy. By contrast, there exists no significant differences between the use of comprehension monitoring and the production monitoring strategies.As for the rest sub-categories of the three strategies, the results are in line with the use of the three main categories of strategies, that is there is significant difference between the high-score subjects and the low-score subjects, while there is no significant difference in between the medium-score subjects and the high-score subjects. 3) Statistics has proved that there exists positive correlation between the use of metacognitive strategy and academic English reading proficiency, that is to say,the use of metacognitive strategy plays a crucial role in improving academic English reading proficiency. Hence, it is of great importance for the teacher to cultivate the awareness of using metacognitive strategies in academic English reading and improve the proficiency of using metacognitive strategy among the students.