| Writing,as a major form of output,plays a crucial role in language learning success,and as a language skill,writing constitutes an important aspect of language proficiency.English writing is a complex cognitive activity affected by affective factors.Anxiety,as an important variable in affective factors,has great impact on the quality and quantity of writing.Learners with high-anxiety levels usually take negative attitudes towards English writing,resulting in a decrease in their writing scores.A great number of foreign and domestic research has demonstrated that metacognition has a positive influence on students' English writing.Learners can use metacognitive strategies to plan,manage,monitor and evaluate their own learning activities.However,there are fewer empirical studies conducted aiming at reducing learners' writing anxiety through a metacognitive strategy training.Therefore,the present study incorporates the metacognitive training into non-English majors' writing classes with an aim to explore the correlation between metacognitive strategies and writing anxiety of non-English majors and to examine whether the metacognitive training can truly enhance the students' awareness of the use of the metacognitive strategies and relieve their writing anxiety.The specific research questions addressed in the study are as follows:(1)What is the overall level of the non-English majors' employment of metacognitive strategies in English writing?(2)What is the general situation of the non-English majors' English writing anxiety?(3)What is the relationship between the use of metacognitive strategies and non-English majors' English writing anxiety?(4)What impact does metacognitive strategy training have on improving the non-English majors' use of metacognitive strategies and reducing their English writing anxiety?This study took the two intact classes of sophomores of Marketing major in one certain university as the subjects,and the experimental class were chosen to receive one semester's metacognitive strategy training.Based on the Metacognitive Strategy Questionnaire and Second Language Writing Anxiety Scale adapted by Lu Wenjun and Guo yan respectively,and in combination with the English writing tests,the studyhas investigated the frequency of students' use of metacognitive strategies and their writing anxiety level.In addition,this study adopted SPSS 19.0 software to compare and analyze the change of relevant variables' between the pre-test and post-test.Detailed analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data yielded the following findings:(1)More than half of the students just occasionally use metacognitives strategies in writing,which indicates that the overall level of the non-English majors' employment of metacognitives strategies is of medium level.It is also found that selective attention and monitoring strategy are more frequently used than evaluation and planning strategies.(2)More than half of the students has medium writing anxiety and only a few students has lower writing anxiety,which reveals that the students' English writing anxiety is of medium level.Of all the writing anxiety items,students' writing anxiety level of avoidance behavior was the highest,followed by the confidence anxiety,conception anxiety,and teaching-oriented anxiety respectively.(3)There is a negative correlation between students' use of metacognitive strategies and English writing anxiety.The more frequent use of the metacognitive strategies by the students,the less English writing anxiety they have,which demonstrates that the writing anxiety can be greatly reduced by the frequent use of metacognitive strategies.(4)Differences in the use of metacognitive strategies and in the English writing anxiety level between EG and CG in the post-tests and within EG in the pre-test and post-test are found to be statistically significant.Besides,it is found that there exists statistically significant difference in post-test writing scores between CG and EG and within EG between pre-test and post-test.All these indicate that the metacognitive strategy training has greatly enhanced the frequency of the use of metacognitive strategies by students in EG,reduced their writing anxiety level and improved their writing performance.The study reported here proves that metacognitive training can reduce the writing anxiety to some extent,which provides the college English teachers withsome pedagogic implications.Teachers should change their roles in teaching to help students manage their study,enabling students to be gradually equipped with the autonomic learning ability.Students can overcome their writing anxiety by frequently employing more metacognitive strategies,thereby enhancing their writing proficiency. |
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