Effects Of Metacognitive Strategies Training On Reducing Rural Senior Middle School Students' Reading Anxiety

With the development of cognitive psychology,the focus of second language acquisition is gradually shifted from teaching to studying.More and more researchers have come to realize that it is the learners who should be responsible for their own learning and the success of learning depends on themselves.Learners' affective factors and learning strategies are two influential research fields.Previous researches have shown that anxiety,one of the affective factors,has a negative effect on learner's performance,and that reducing learner's anxiety may help improve his study.In her teaching,the present author has noticed that senior middle school students in the rural area generally exhibit anxiety in their English study,owing to such factors as inadequate educational conditions and their relatively low English proficiency.Metacognitive strategies have been regarded as a key factor that distinguishes successful learners from unsuccessful ones.Therefore,the present author hypothesizes that the training of rural senior middle school students in metacognitive strategies can help reduce their anxiety in English study.The present author is to conduct a teaching experiment in the teaching of English reading to verify her hypothesis.128 rural senior high school students from Gedian Senior Middle School were chosen for the research,and they were randomly divided into the experiment class(64)and the control class(64).Horwitz's FLRAS was used to measure the degree of students English reading anxiety before and after the training.The training of metacognitive strategies lasted 16 weeks.Before the training,both the experiment class and the control class exhibited English reading anxiety,and there was no significant difference between the two classes.Their anxiety is mainly embodied in low level of self-concept,negative attitude towards reading,low tolerance of ambiguity in reading,and long linguistic distance.After the training,the experiment class' anxiety was reduced while the control class remained unchanged.There existed great differences between the two classes after the training.It can be concluded from the research that the training of reading metacognitive strategies has a positive influence on reducing rural senior middle school students'English reading anxiety.The research also reveals that the teacher plays a key role in helping students learn to use metacognitive strategies.It is hoped that this research can be of any value to English teachers in rural senior middle schools.