Experimental Study On The Effect Of Meta-cognitive Strategies Training On Rural Junior High School Left-behind Children's English Listening Comprehension

In the information age,English is the most widely used language in the word,and it is a compulsory subject for students to learn English in the compulsory education period in China.In foreign language learning,listening is on the top list in the four basic skills listening,speaking,reading and writing.However,most teachers only pay attention to writing in the teaching period,they focus on students' writing practice and their exam grades.Both teachers and students neglect listening practice.In that case,the grades of listening comprehension in rural junior high school are generally low,and students gradually lose interest in English.So how to improve the ability of English listening comprehension of rural left-behind children worth studying.In recent years,the research on learning strategies has increased.From the research,more and more people realize the importance of the potential of meta-cognitive strategy,and that meta-cognitive strategy has played an increasingly influential role in the listening comprehension.But in China,the research in this field is lacking,only a few correlative study on junior high school students listening level and meta-cognitive strategy research,especially the research on rural left-behind children is rare.During my five-year teaching career in the rural junior high school teaching,I find that the teachers in rural junior high school don't attach great importance to listening strategies in listening teaching,and they also ignore the effectiveness of listening strategies,for example,help students understand the listening material,process information and activate prior knowledge.On the other hand,although some junior high school students recognize the listening strategies can help them improve their listening abilities,they don't know how to get the listening strategies,and they have no sharp consciousness to use the listening strategies.As a result,it's necessary to demonstrate the effect of meta-cognitive strategies training on rural junior high school students' listening comprehension training by experimental study,and there is also a need to explore a new approach to improve their listening comprehension level.Thus,this thesis adopts different kinds of research methods,such as questionnaire and experimental method to do an experimental study on the effect of meta-cognitive strategies training on rural junior high school left-behind children's English listening comprehension.In order to conduct meta-cognitive strategies training in listening class,115 students in grade 9 of Ganxian Nan Tang Middle School were chosen to participate in this 12-week study.This research aims at answering the following three questions:1.What's the main reason that restricts the development of listening comprehension ability of left-behind children in rural junior high school?2.What impact do meta-cognitive strategies have on listening comprehension of left-behind children in rural junior high school?3.What measures can be taken to carry out meta-cognitive strategies training on left-behind children's English listening comprehension in rural junior high school?The two parallel classes of grade 9 were chosen in this experimental study.One is regarded as the experimental class and the other is designed as the control class.Before the research,a questionnaire was conducted in two classes for the purpose of discovering if they master some meta-cognitive strategies.The results show that both the two classes lack of the knowledge on meta-cognitive strategies.After the research,the questionnaire was conducted again among students only in the experimental class to investigate if there is an improvement in students' meta-cognitive strategies awareness.Before the training,a listening comprehension pretest was conducted in two parallel classes.The result shows that there are no significant difference in their listening proficiency.During the training,only experimental class received meta-cognitive strategies training which consists of planning,monitoring and evaluating strategies.Meanwhile,the control class received conventional listening instruction without any meta-cognitive strategies training.After the training,a post-test of listening comprehension was given to two classes at the same time.The results show that the scores of the experimental class have greatly surpassed the control class in listening proficiency.Thus,we can see that meta-cognitive strategies training in listening comprehension helps improve rural junior high school left-behind children's English listening level.The research proves that in the rural junior high school listening teaching,the left-behind children have great potential in improving listening ability.What's more,meta-cognitive strategy training not only helps to arouse the enthusiasm of the students' listening learning,but also helps students effectively plan,monitor and evaluate their listening study.Therefore,we can consider integrating meta-cognitive strategies awareness and training into the daily listening teaching,and even extending the meta-cognitive strategies to every aspect of foreign language learning,such as listening,speaking,reading and writing.