On The Discrepancy Of College Students' Application Of Meta-cognitive Strategies And Its Effects On Second Language Acquisition

In recent years, the focus of language teaching and learning in class has shifted from"teaching"to"learning", and a"student-centered"theory has been introduced, which brings innovative changes to traditional language teaching in universities. Language learning strategies, therefore, attract much attention and are studied by researchers all over the world. O'Malley and Chamot explained the nature of learning strategy and divided it into three groups: cognitive strategy, meta-cognitive strategy and social/affective strategy. Meta-cognitive strategy, as one of the components, is believed to be the core strategy over the other two types of strategies. They help regulate and oversee learning, and have a direct influence on language learning process.This paper set out to conduct a survey in a college in Jilin province, aiming at finding out the differences in application of meta-cognitive strategies between freshmen and sophomores, discussing gender difference in it, and finding out the correlation between application of meta-cognitive strategies and students'performance in tests. This study is carried out in hope of making a little bit contribution to strategy-training in foreign language teaching and giving advice on students'autonomous learning. SPSS13.0 is used to analyze the data available, and conclusions are drawn according to the statistics got from data analysis. In foreign language learning process, most freshmen often use meta-cognitive strategies, and they use meta-cognitive experience better than the other two types. There is a correlation between application of meta-cognitive strategy and score in English tests. Sophomores are weaker than freshmen in application of meta-cognitive strategies, especially of meta-cognitive experience. There exists a gender difference in application of meta-cognitive strategies. Male and female students show no difference in application of meta-cognitive knowledge. However, male students do a better job in meta-cognitive controlling, while female students use meta-cognitive experience better than their male counterparts.Although the research has some limitations, it offers some hints both for teachers'language teaching and students'language learning. To sum up, with the support of theories and experimental statistics, it can be concluded that there is a lack of meta-cognitive strategy application among most college students. And strategy training should be introduced in college English teaching to promote efficiency in both teaching and learning. Besides, specific schemes should be made with regard to gender, age, grade and other factors that may have an influence on students'application of the strategies. This calls for a joint effort of educational institutions and learners themselves.