How To Teach Senior High Students To Apply Metacognitive Strategies To English Writing: A Case Study

As an important part in English teaching and learning,writing reflects students' comprehensible application of language.However,it is uaually ignored by most teachers and learners.In English teaching and learning,writing is always put at the end of language skills which include listening,speaking,reading and writing.As a result,teachers spend much more time on the training of reading and listening.Thus,students' English writing level is comparatively lower and they cannot make very big progress in English writing.Thus,it is needed to teach students some writing knowledge,help them use writing strategies properly and shape good writing habits.By doing that,students will enhance their writing ability and be changed into masters of writing.In order to help the students write English essays more effectively and master the writing skills,the writer tried to find the current situation of students' use of metacognitive strategies in English writing and find a better way to increase studens' using level of metacognitive strategies in English writing as well as their writing level.The subjects involved in the research were 65 students in class 2,grade 2 in Mianzhu Middle School.The research methods are investigation and case study.The writer tried to answer the following three questions in the research:(1)What is the current situation of senior students' use of metacognitive strategies?(2)How to design and carry out the teaching of metacognitive strategies in English writing?(3)What is the effect of metacognitive strategies teaching in English writing?The designing of this research can be concluded as finding froblems,solving problems and effect inspecting.The writer firstly got to learn about the current situation of students' use of metacognitive strategies in English writing and existing issues through the questionnaire survey and the test.According to the data,it was found that the using level of metacognitive strategies in English writing was not high,and students used “planning” and “evaluation” which contain making plan for writing and evaluating the construct of the essay at the least level.After the current situation research,the writer designed the teaching process from four parts: planning,selective attention,monitoring and evaluation.And the teaching content mainly included helping the students to make writing plan,understand the readers' needs,control writing's time,and evaluate writing esseys.At the end of the research,the writer investigated the effect of metacognitive strategies teaching through the questionnaire survey and test again.Based on the analysis of data,the writer found that through metacognitive teaching,students' use of metacognitive strategies were enhanced and their English writing level was also increased.So it can be said that the metacognitive strategies teaching in English writing is meaningful in both theory and practice,and it can provide reference for the future teaching in English writing.