Metacognitive Strategy And English Reading Proficiency

Metacognitive theory was put forward by American psychologist Flavell in the 1970s. Recently more and more attention has been focused on metacognition, which is a heated topic in the fields of psychology, pedagogics and linguistics. Reading is a very important skill in foreign language learning. A Reader accomplishes the reading task by combining his or her knowledge with the textual information in the process of planning, self-monitoring, adjusting, evaluating and summarizing, which are all metacognitive strategies. Therefore, metacognition plays a crucial role in reading comprehension.The author finds out that the students majoring in art in Shaanxi University of Science and Technology (SUST) are less successful readers. They do not have plans for reading, and they do not know how to read effectively. There are many factors contributing to this, and one of the factors is the lack of metacognitive awareness. This paper carries out a case study of a class of students majoring in animation in SUST. The author tries to research on the following questions:1. Is there a relationship between metacognitive awareness and reading ability? 2. Can metacognitive strategies positively affect undergraduate Art Students'English reading proficiency when metacognitive strategy training is conducted? 3. How can metacognitive strategy training be carried out in and out of classroom? And what is the effect of the training program? There is only one group of subjects in the current study because the author intends that all the subjects receive the metacognitive strategy training under the same teaching environment, in the same time, with the same training materials, and by the same instructor. The purpose of this is to exclude the interference factors.Sixty-six full-time, second-year university students majoring in animation participated in the study. The students completed a questionnaire (the SORS-Survey of Reading Strategies) twice (before and after the experiment) and two reading comprehension tests (Pre-test and post-test). The questionnaire included three categories of reading strategies:global, support and problem solving strategies. The results showed that metacognitive awareness and knowledge is very important in reading. Comparing the results of the two questionnaires, the author found that the metacognitive awareness of most students (78.79%) improved greatly. According to this result, the subjects were divided into three groups:students in group one were familiar with metacognitive strategies before the training program, but they did not make progress in using metacognitive strategies after the training; students in group two were unaware of metacognitive strategies before the training, but they were more aware of using metacognitive strategies after the training; students in group three were unaware of metacognitive strategies both before and after the training. The data of each group being analyzed by SPSS 13.0, the results indicated that the reading proficiency of Group two was greatly improved after being trained metacognitive strategies, while the results of reading comprehension of the other two groups did not show significant difference. Hence the improvement of metacognitive strategy use awareness can enhance students'reading abilities.In the light of the research, metacognitive strategy training should be integrated into English reading classes. Teachers should teach the metacognitive reading strategies directly and explicitly to unskilled readers in class and guide them to practice using the strategies out of class. At the end of the paper, limitations and suggestions are given for further study.