The Application Of Metacognitive Strategies In Junior English Listening Teaching

Listening plays a significant role in the process of the English language learning. Itis very important in the four basic language skills (listening, speaking, reading andwriting). It is generally known that listening comprehension is not a passive activity butan active and complex process. The improvement of the listening comprehensionprovides a positive effect on the enhancement of learners’ overall foreign languagelevel. Therefore, many scholars and language teachers both outside and inside Chinahave been working hard to find out ways or strategies to improve the learners’listening ability. So, English learning strategy becomes one of the hottest topics in theresearch field of language learning and teaching.Generally speaking, learning strategies are divided into three categories. They aremetacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, and social/affective strategies.Metacognitive strategies are at the higher level than the other two. It is an activitywhich can regulate and control the process of learning. It is also a higher order ofexecutive skill that may entail planning, managing, monitoring, regulating andevaluating the success of a learning activity. Metacognitive strategies can be furtherdivided into: planning strategy, monitoring strategy and evaluating strategy.This dissertation tends to study the application of metacognitive strategy to juniorEnglish class and attempts to provide answers to the following two questions:1. Willthe training of metacognitive strategies in junior English listening class improvejunior students’ listening proficiency?2. Will the training of metacognitive strategiesin junior English listening class promote junior students’ metacognitive awareness? Inorder to answer these two questions, the author carried out a three-month teachingexperiment on92Junior Three students from Dongguan Shipai Middle School basedon metacognitive strategy. And he carried out the experiment by training the studentsto use metacognitive strategies to plan, monitor and evaluate their listening learningprocess during pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening stages. The authordivides92students into two comparable groups: experimental group and controlledgroup. The teacher, the listening materials, the homework, the time they practice listening and so on are the same in the two groups. The only difference is that in theexperimental group, students are taught the knowledge of metacognitive strategiesand trained to apply planning strategy, monitoring strategy and evaluating strategy totheir listening learning process; while in the controlled group, the students are taughtin a traditional way, and no metacognitive strategy training was given to them.Through the investigation and data from the questionnaires of experimental group, thestudy finds that the experimental group’s metacognitive awareness has improved.Independent-samples T Test and Paired-Samples T Test (SPSS17.0) are applied tocalculate the data from the pre-and post-tests in the two groups. The study hasachieved encouraging results. The students’ achievements in experimental group inthe post-tests are higher than those in controlled group. But before the experiment, thetwo groups are at the same level. So the author finds that the application ofmetacognitive strategy to junior English listening class not only improve juniorstudents’ metacognitive awareness, but also promote their listening proficiency.