The Effect Of Metacognition Combined With Working Memory Training On Junior High School English Reading Comprehension

Reading plays an important role in English examination.But in the actual teaching practice,the reading teaching strategies from linguistics and teaching methods do little help to improve students' reading level.Therefore,as students learn more and more knowledge and pay more attention to learning efficiency,the needs of teachers and students for reading methods and reading strategies are extremely urgent.In recent years,a large number of relevant studies have emerged in the field of psychology,mainly focusing on the influence of metacognitive strategies on English reading or the influence of working memory training on reading comprehension.Research shows that metacognitive knowledge is directly or indirectly related to reading.Meanwhile,research on working memory suggests that it can be improved by training.Through working memory training,the individual's reading ability and intelligence level are improved.Metacognition and working memory have been shown to be significantly associated with effective reading comprehension.However,in these studies,there is no study on the comprehensive impact of the combination of the two on English reading comprehension.As educators,it is necessary to help students find practical and effective reading strategies.Therefore,this study aims to explore whether the combination of metacognition and working memory training can significantly improve students' English reading comprehension.In this experiment,150 students were selected from three parallel classes of grade 9 in a middle school in Baishan City,Jilin Province.Two classes were randomly selected as the experimental group and the other class as the control group.The metacognitive awareness scale of reading strategies(Mokhtari&Richard,2002)and the metacognitive awareness questionnaire of junior middle school students in English reading(Yin Lena,2006)were used to understand the metacognitive awareness level of junior middle school students in English reading.The questionnaire set up three dimensions of metacognitive strategies--metacognitive knowledge,metacognitive experience and metacognitive monitoring,and three types of Reading strategies--Global Reading Strategy,problem-solving Strategy and Support Reading Strategy.The result of the questionnaire shows that the students' awareness of reading metacognitive strategy is in the middle level.In a subsequent experiment,the researchers pretested both the experimental group and the control group(English reading ability test 1).Pretest results showed that the experimental group and the control group had similar levels of English reading ability,and both were very low.Therefore,this study designed a 14-week training for the experimental group.The metacognitive training class conducted metacognitive strategy training for English reading,and the metacognitive training class conducted metacognitive training combined with working memory.Fourteen weeks later,both the experimental group and the control group were given a posttest(reading comprehension test 2),and the experimental group was again given two sets of questionnaires.The experimental results are as follows:1.Metacognitive strategy level is positively correlated with English reading comprehension.2.Compared with the control group,metacognitive training can significantly improve the level of metacognitive strategies and English reading comprehension of junior middle school students.3.The improvement effect of metacognition combined with working memory training class on English reading comprehension was better than that of the single metacognition training class.Based on the above research conclusion,the researchers for teachers in the process of teaching how to better improve the English reading comprehension results put forward the following Suggestions:one is the teacher,first of all,we should strengthen the study of metacognitive theory and the training of metacognitive strategy,help students metacognitive strategy use in the classroom,at the same time,according to characteristics of students' learning,help students to choose to use effective metacognitive reading strategies,let the student fully experience and the use of reading strategies,will realize the effectiveness of metacognitive.Second,as teachers,we should actively guide and encourage students to guide students to make full use of reading strategies,carry out more reading training,improve their English autonomous learning ability,and lay a foundation for future work and lifelong learning.It is necessary to further change the English model of junior middle school and turn English reading into students' internal needs.When students read,it is because of their own learning motivation.Third,learning to use working memory training to help students strengthen working memory,increase the capacity of working memory.