A Study Of The Correlation Between Metacognition And The EFL Reading Comprehension Of Chinese High School Learners

In high school English classes,teachers always teach four language skills: listening,speaking,reading and writing.According to the new curriculum standard,English reading is the most important among the four skills for high school students.Although the English teachers used many methods to improve students' reading comprehension in high school,the results were not satisfying.No.2 Middle School is an ordinary Senior high school in Longnan,which is an underdeveloped area in Northwest China.So the English level of the students in No.2 Middle School is very low,bringing the difficulties to the ordinary English teaching.In fact,many researchers had made some investigations about metacognition and EFL reading comprehension abroad and at home.And the results showed that metacognition has positive impact on FL/SL reading comprehension.But there was little empirical research that has been done in this aspect at home,especially using the subjects of underdeveloped areas.So,the present research aimed to investigate the relation between metacognition and EFL reading comprehension of No.2 Middle School students by an empirical study.Three questions were raised in the present research: 1)What is the general situation of metacognition concerning metacognitive knowledge of the EFL students? 2)To what extent is students' metacognition related to their EFL reading comprehension? 3)What are the relationships among metacognition,EFL proficiency and English reading performance?To answer these questions,the researcher used three variables---metacognition,EFL proficiency and EFL reading comprehension.In order to collect the data,the research asked the subjects to have an English proficiency test first and get the data of metacognition;then the subjects got a reading comprehension test and the data of EFL reading comprehension;and at last a metacognitive knowledge questionnaire test was made to get the data of metacognition.In the present study,there were 117 subjects.After getting these data,descriptive statistics,Pearson correlation coefficient and linear regression model were employed to analyze the data.The results indicated that the metacognition status was tightly and positively related to EFL reading performance.And metacognition had impact on both EFL proficiency and EFL reading comprehension while EFL proficiency brought influence on EFL reading comprehension.Therefore,metacognition could affect EFL reading comprehension directly and indirectly via its effect on EFL proficiency.