A Study Of High School Students' Metacognition And English Speaking Skill Development By Keeping Voice Diary Based On Wechat Platform

In senior high school oral English teaching,it remains an unsolved problem that students dare not speak English and cannot speak English well.Wechat,as a widely used social media with an increasing influence on people life and learning has become available and popular among the youngsters.Its powerful features and functions provide affordances of creating mobile learning favorable environment for oral English learning and teaching.Based on the research of relevant literature,it can be found that there are many researches on the application of WeChat in the college language teaching,but its application in middle school is still less.This thesis analyzes the advantages of applying wechat to high school oral English teaching,designs a Wechat platform“my voice diary”based on metacognition theory and to explore if it is an effective way to extend speaking practice beyond the classroom walls.This research aims to explore the following questions:1)Is keeping voice diary an effective way to enhance high school students'metacognition level of speaking English?2)Can the voice diary based on Wechat platform facilitate high school stidents'English speaking ability?Following a six-week treatment,12 volunteer students from Qin'An second high school of 10^th grade recorded English voice diaries by Wechat platform“my voice diary”outside of the school,and subsequent data was collected through tests,questionnaires and weekly audio performance.The weekly audio performances and the tests indicated that students were able to increase the number of words they spoke in one monologue.They made progress in speaking fluency and intonation as well according to the scores in pre and post test.Besides,in this progress oral practice became more flexible and it can effectively motivate students'autonomy,enhancing their active metacognitive experience,developing their metacognitive awareness as well as improve their metacognition level and English speaking skill.In addition,keeping voice diaries on an individual basis can somehow help high school students overcome the limited conditions they face during their struggle to practice and improve oral English.