An Investigation On Chinese Non-English Majors' Metacognitive Strategy Use And Reading Comprehension

Reading is an important tool to acquire knowledge, since efficient reading seems to remain a problem for many learners, it is of practical importance to conduct research on L2 reading to improve reading proficiency. Metacognitive strategies are considered as particularly important in English learning, many researches indicate that instructions on metacognitive strategies improve reading comprehension, and that the differences exist in application of metacognitive strategies between successful learners and unsuccessful learners. However, most previous studies maily focus on the description of metacognitive strategies application to specific task or skill areas. What's more, even less empirical studies especially on Chinese non-English major's metacognitive strategies use and their reading comprehension effects, what is the status quo of Chinese college non-English majors'metacognitive strategy use in reading? What are the differences between high and low proficiency readers in their use of metacognitive strategies? What is the relationship between metacognitive strategy use and reading achievements? This study intends to answer these questions by means of quantitative method.The subjecs in the study are 102 non-English majors of second year in NUC (North University of China). Two research instruments are employed, one is metacognitive strategies inventory, and the other is English reading test. The questionnaire is based on the classification framework of O'Malley and Chamo's (2001) and referenced to Chinese scholar Liu Huijun (2004)'s metacognitive strategies inventory design, the subjects'reading proficiency is measured by their scores in reading test, SPSS 13.0 is employed to compute and analyze the collected data by means of descriptive statistics, independent samples T-test, Pearson correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis. The results of the study indicate:The students'general metacognitive strategy use is at medium level, among the four categories, selective attention strategies are used most frequently, followed by monitoring strategies, evaluation strategies and planning strategies. High and low proficiency groups are significantly different in their application of metacognitive strategies, significant differences are found in the use of all categories and the overall metacognitive strategies, high proficiency groups use metacognitive strategies more frequently than low proficiency groups. Reading achievements are positively correlated to metacognitive strategies use, selective attention strategies have the strongest correlation with the students'reading achievements.Based on these findings, the author suggests that teachers should integrate metacognitive strategies into English reading instruction, to help the students to cultivate and raise the awareness of using metacognitive strategies in reading process and appropriately use them so as to improve their reading achievements.