A Correlation Study On Metacognitive Strategies Competence, Autonomous Learning Ability And English Academic Achievements Of Art Majors

In recent years, an increasing number of art majors are admitted to colleges and universities with the nationwide expansion of enrollment. However, it is a grim fact that the overall level of English academic achievements of arts majors is commonly low. It is found that that there are two reasons for this phenomenon. On the one hand, the art majors commonly had a weak base for English learning in high school; on the other hand, after entering the university, they are generally lack of autonomous learning ability. Meanwhile, autonomous learning ability is referred as one of the striving objectives in the current College English Teaching Reform. According to research at home and abroad, among the psychological factors affecting autonomous learning ability, the metacognitive competence has the closest relationship with autonomous learning ability. Metacognitive competence consists of three parts: metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive monitoring, and metacognitive experiences. As the core of the metacognitive competence, metacognitive knowledge is comprised by3parts:knowledge about the learners themselves; knowledge about the learning tasks, knowledge about learning strategies. For adult college students who already have mature psychology and self-awareness, it is within the sphere of their competence to cognize themselves and learning tasks. What they usually lack is the knowledge about learning strategies. Hence, this present research focuses on the study of metacognitive strategies and strives to analyze its impact on art majors’ autonomous learning ability and their English academic achievements through combining theoretical reasoning and empirical research.The dissertation explores the theoretical connection between metacognitive strategies and autonomous learning ability based on literature reviews and it is found that the metacognitive strategies training is a possible way to enhance the autonomous ability of language learners. This hypothesis lays theoretical foundation for the empirical research in which a certain number of arts majors were selected as study objects and divided into control and experimental groups and tests, questionnaires, interviews were used as research instruments. All the data from the research are collected and analyzed in the form of descriptive analysis, independent sample T test, and correlation analysis by means of specific models and SPSS16.0. The findings of this research show that art majors’ English academic achievements level, the autonomous learning ability and metacognitive strategies competence was in low level in general. Metacognitive strategies competence, English autonomous learning ability and English academic achievements have positive correlation with each other.Based on these findings, a conclusion can be reached that a scientifically-organized metacognitive strategies training will help to improve art majors’ autonomous learning ability and English academic achievements. At the same time, these findings also give rise to implications for the college English teaching of art majors.