An Empirical Study Of Mst-based Intensive Reading Course Teaching For English Majors At Hvc

To teach learners how to learn is one of the critical objectives in language teaching. For the recent decades, the researches on language learning strategies pave the way to the objective and become one of the hot topics both abroad and at home. The researchers have discussed the definition, taxonomy and training model of learning strategies on the basis of all kinds of theoretical foundation. Although they argue various framework of taxonomy in learning strategies, they all take metacognitive strategy as a necessary subset in a full agreement. Since the metacognitive strategy is a higher executive strategy than any other strategies with a strong ability in monitoring the others, more and more researchers in TEFL and SLA try to achieve the objective through the implementation of metacognitive strategy training (MST). On cultivating the self-directed learners, metacognitive strategy training is always precursor of self-directed learning.Oxford, Cohen and O'Malley & Chamot suggested some effective learning strategies training models respectively. The CALLA model proposed by O'Malley & Chamot is distinctive from others since it emphasizes the integration of the strategy training with specific learning context and suggests a more executive and systematic five-procedure model. According to them, an explicit and integrated instruction will be more effective than the embedded and separate one. It is why the application of the model is often observed in many researches.For this present research, the author attempts to integrate the metacognitive strategy training into regular teaching and testifies the feasibility and validity of MST-based instruction and its effect on students'language proficiency with their metacognitive ability in the context of higher vocational college (HVC) in China. In this research, IRC will be the scenario of MST-based instruction and the subjects are the 2007 freshmen of business English majors at Zhengzhou College of Animal Husbandry Engineering (ZZCAHE). Among them, Class one (54 students) is the experimental group (EG) and Class two(53 students) is the control group (CG). All the students in both groups were assigned to take the pre and post questionnaires as well as the pre and post language test. After one year instruction, the author discusses the difference of metacognitive strategy application on the analysis of comparison of pre and post questionnaires and testifies the change of students'language proficiency on the analysis of comparison of pre and post language tests. Additionally, in order to examine the impact on the application of metacognitive strategies or even their language learning styles and self-directed ability, the author explores the data form retrospective interviews and classroom observation. By using SPSS11.5 to process all the collected data form above instruments, the author draws the following findings:1) students in EG outperform the students in CG, in both language proficiency and metacognitive ability;2) students in EG have higher level of application of self-monitoring, self-regulation, and self-evaluation strategies, than those who in CG;3) students in EG show their progressively improved self-directed and autonomous abilities in learning according to the data collected from the interviews and observations.On the above, this experimental research demonstrates that: 1) explicit and integrated MST has positive effect on students'language proficiency and metacognitive ability; 2) the CALLA is valid for MST and students'language proficiency and metacognitive ability; 3) the MST integrating into IRC motivates students in language learning and help them to become a relative self-directed learner; and 4) the MST-based instruction reflecting the student-oriented teaching concept encourages teachers to change their role by self–examination of teaching content, teaching technique and teaching objectives according to students'need. So the author asserts that MST-based instruction has unparalleled practical significance in improving the teaching and learning quality.