On Metacognitive Strategies Of Information Processing In Chinese Adults’ English Writing

For Chinese adult English learners, English writing is a very complex psychologicalprocess, and it is the product formed by the interaction between Chinese and English bilinguallanguage and thinking. However, the learners’ failure to find suitable writing learningstrategies results in their unsuccessful access in the English-Chinese bilingual transformationand unsmooth output in English composition. And all these have made writing be a bottleneckfor Chinese adults’ English learning.In the1970s, the American psychologist Flavell, put forward the theory of metacognition.Metacognition is defined as the knowledge and ability of the cognition main focus and controlthe cognitive activity, which is a high-level control strategy of all the learning strategies. Itnot only analyzes the dynamic English writing process, but also interprets the relationshipbetween language and thinking, and the monitoring and use of relevant strategies from a staticperspective in the writing.In order to interpret how language and thinking of the mother language influence theforeign language and thinking in English learning, Professor Yin Demo, from School ofForeign Languages and Cultures in Xihua University, first proposed the “mother tongue andforeign language knowledge-cognition Bilingual Double Structure” theory (“BilingualDouble Structure” theory for short) on November5,2005, in the3rdAsia TEFL InternationalConference in Beijing. This thesis makes an attempt to integrate the metacognitive theorywith the “Bilingual Double Structure” theory to probe into the characteristics ofEnglish-Chinese bilingual language and thinking activity in the writing informationprocessing and to provide a theoretical basis on how to improve the Chinese adults’ Englishwriting level. The thesis is conducted around the following four aspects:a. What’s the general status of Chinese adult learners’ English writing informationprocessing?b. Whether the metacognitive strategies can improve English writing abilities?c. Is there any difference between male and female Chinese adult learners in Englishwriting under the guidance of metacognitive strategies?d. Is there any difference in metacognitive strategies employed in English writing forChinese adult learners with different language proficiency?In this thesis, both quantitative research and qualitative analysis are used to probe intothe effect and role of metacognitive strategies in writing information processing for Chineseadult English learners.200questionnaires are delivered to investigate the status quo ofEnglish writing and the awareness of metacognitive strategies for English learners withdifferent ages, genders and English proficiency. In addition,86students from two classes in vehicle engineering major of Xihua University are selected to participate in the study. After aterm’s training on metacognitive stretagies, the writing scores of students from the two classeshave been compared. Then three students from the experimental group are interviewed, theyrepresent student with high language proficiency, intermediate language proficiency and thelow language proficiency respectively, in light of their writing scores. This is mainly used tolearn about their feedback after the metacognitive strategies training. Finally, threeconclusions are drawn as follows:(1) The learning strategies under the guidance of the metacognitive theory areconducive to improve Chinese adults’ English writing level. Metacognitive strategies can helpEnglish learners learn the advantage and disadvantage of themselves so as to understand thewriting assignment, assign time rationally, adjust the psychological mechanism in writing andenhance the direct participation of English thinking in writing information processing;(2) Metacognitive learning strategies play a positive role in guiding both the male andfemale adult English learners in English writing information processing. After a semester ofcomparison and observation, the writing scores of both male and female English learnersadopting metacognitive strategy training have improved significantly, while the scores ofstudents without adopting metacognitive strategy training have no significant improvement;(3) English learners with high language proficiency, intermediate language proficiencyand low language proficiency are all beneficial from the metacognitive learning strategies inwriting. The learners with different language proficiency all have been improved significantlyafter adopting the metacognitive strategies, and their confidence in writing a bettercomposition has been enhanced. Reasonably using the positive role of mother tongue, andavoid the negative influence of mother tongue thinking. The access and extraction ofEnglish-Chinese bilingual mental lexicon becomes smoother, the output of writing becomesmore fluent.