The Effect Of Meta-cognitive Strategies On Senior High School Students' English Reading Achievement

Flavell(1970)is the first person who focuses his researches on meta-cognitive strategy.It is a typical learning strategy which means learners could efficiently monitor and control the process and result of their cognitive activities.Recently,more and more researchers begin to introduce meta-cognitive strategy into English reading teaching.This study is conducted to find the effect of meta-cognitive strategies on students' English reading in senior high school.On the basis of some relevant theories about meta-cognitive strategies,the paper start the research with the investigation of 225 Senior One students from Mudanjiang No.2 Senior High School in Heilongjiang Province and tries to explore the overall situation of students' meta-cognitive strategy use in senior high school.The meta-cognitive strategies questionnaire in this paper is adapted from Liu Huijun to reflect students' frequency of meta-cognitive strategies and the test paper is selected from the Mudanjiang No.2 Senior High School's mid-term examination to measure students' English reading competence.With the help of SPSS22.0,combining the results of interviews with 5 teachers,the paper will conclude the effect of meta-cognitive strategies on reading achievement in senior high school.We have concluded the following results by analyzing descriptive statistics:through a comparison with the Meta-cognitive Strategies Frequency Scales of Oxford,the students' use of meta-cognitive strategies is found to be at medium level.In addition,among the four meta-cognitive strategies,selective attention strategy is found to be the most commonly used strategy(mean=3.172),and the least is planning strategy(mean=2.566).Through the Pearson Correlation Analysis between each student's frequency of meta-cognitive strategies and English reading achievement,combined with teachers' experience of meta-cognitive strategies' effect on reading competence,it is found that there is a significant higher positive effect of the meta-cognitive strategies' use on English reading in senior high school(r=0.787,p?0.01).Students in senior high school can take advantage of this positive effect to cultivate individual's reading competence.Among four categories of meta-cognitivestrategies,selective attention strategies have significant impact on reading achievement,while planning strategies,self-monitoring strategies and self-evaluating strategies are ranked “moderate”.Therefore,English teachers could have awareness to cultivate students' to use meta-cognitive strategies in the reading process.At the end of the paper,the author puts forward some advice for senior high school's English reading teaching.