Metacognitive Stratege: Its Development In And Application To ELT In Vocational Technical College

In the past few decades learning strategy has become one of the hottest topics in the field of language learning and teaching. While early studies on learning strategies were more exploratory in nature, later researches become more theory-based and more scientific. With the deep research in language learning strategies, the effect of metacognition in language studying is affirmed and the potential application the metacognition is known to people too. Among all the learning strategies, the metacognitive strategy is a higher-level. If learners have a good command of the metacognitive strategy, they are able to do many things, such as proper assessment, good plans, timely monitoring and effective evaluation when necessary. So, the role played by metacognitive strategy in ELT cannot be overlooked.In order to cultivate students' metacognitive ability better, the author of this dissertation attempts to make a study of how to cultivate the students' metacognitive strategy in ELT by focusing on listening at Wuhan Traffic Vocational and Technical College. The study on 66 non-English major freshmen is based on the experiement carried out for 3 months and the purpose of the experiment is to enhance the awareness of students autonomy and to encourage students to manage and control their own studies through this practise. The study, with a training package of metacognitive and listening cognitive strategies through an intensified practice of both guided and free listening, includes four aspects: l)In what general situation do students use metacognitive strategy at Professional and Technical college? 2)What are the effects of the training on actual listening performance? 3)What are the differences related to metacognitive strategies between students with different marks? 4)Can the training improve students in their automatic studies? This experiment on the application of the cultivation of the students' metacognitive strategy consists of four parts: developing students' metacognitive awareness; planning and arranging learning; monitoring learning behaviors; and evaluating listening performance. The experiment has demonstrated that by cultivating the students' metacognitive strategy they can understand better their learning task, know to make their plans and getting study condition. So as to keep their interesting and enthusiasm for study in such a way.To achieve a convincing result, this study uses Independent-Samples T Test and SPSS 10.0. to statistic data. With the help of the data from both quantitative and qualitative analyses, the training of students' metacognitive strategy and its combination with teaching can stimulate the students' motivation, improve their level of cognition and metacognition, promote their ability of monitoring themselves in study and enhance their students' achievements in learning. It has also shown that the successful integration of metacognitive strategy and Listening Teaching are also of great help to English Listening Teaching at Vocational and Technical College whose English Learning environment is lack and without enough time while there are a lot of teaching content .In addition, ELT at Vocational and Technical College should include the training of metacognitive strategy ,so as to help the students to better understand, properly use their learning strategies and know to how to learn effectively themselves. And during the process of using the metacognitive strategy difference between students in terms of their academic records and disposition should also be taken into account.