A Study On The Application Of Meta-cognitive Strategies To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

The basic task of English learning is that learners should not only master the four basic skills of listening,speaking,reading and writing proficiently,but also obtain the ability to learn English automatically.Writing as the comprehensive English skill plays an important part in English learning.In traditional writing teaching class,senior high school English teachers rarely applied strategy-based teaching methods,therefore,the training of writing strategies and students' autonomous learning ability were ignored.It is imperative for teachers to explore strategies to create an efficient English writing teaching method and train up students to be comprehensive English learners.On the basis of meta-cognitive strategies theory,this paper aims to explore the effect of meta-cognitive strategies on senior high school students.The study seeks to address the following questions:1.Can meta-cognitive strategies improve students' writing ability?2.Can meta-cognitive strategies enhance students' consciousness of autonomous learning?In order to solve the two question posed above,a 16-week research was carried out in Fengning First Senior High School,Chengde,Hebei province.Two classes,Class seven and Class eight(in total 108 students with no significant differences in English writing)were selected from Grade Two on the basis of the English scores at the end of first term.Class seven was as the experimental class(EC)and adopted the instruction of meta-cognitive strategies in writing teaching.Whereas Class eight was as the control class(CC),applied the routine teaching method in English writing.At the same time,all the data were analyzed by utilizing both qualitative and quantitative method.The SPSS 19.0 was employed to analyze the data from some tests,questionnaires.The results showed that the students in EC did better in post-test and manifested stronger consciousness of autonomous learning than those in CC,which proved that the instruction of meta-cognitive strategies in this research was more effective than the traditional approach.A conclusion is that the instruction of meta-cognitive strategies is feasible and effective,senior high school students benefited reasonably well from the instruction of the meta-cognitive strategies.Meta-cognitive strategies can not only improve students writing ability,but also enhance their consciousness of autonomous learning.