A Study On English Majors’ Use Of Metacognitive Strategies In Writing

As the most comprehensive skill of English learning, writing has always been a problem, which troubles both students and teachers. English writing, a productive skill, plays an important role in improving English learners’ comprehensive use of English, In order to help the students to find a successful writing method, the cultivation of writing strategy becomes obviously important. In recent years, the study of language writing strategy for learners has become a hot topic. Metacognitive strategy can inspire people’s thinking, so that it can improve the study effect. Latest study shows that metacognitive strategy takes an important role in college students’ English writing. This study, thereby, discusses the importance of metacognitive strategy in college students’ English writing, from the perspective of the student. It makes the students know how metacognitive strategy works via studying the relationship between this strategy and English writing by experiment, which also tells the readers how to cultivate English writing ability of college students under the framework of metacognition.Having reviewed the studies of English metacognitive strategy and learning strategy, the author conducted a study on whether students of English major can use the metacognitive strategy in English writing, based on the framework of Flavell’s metacognitive strategy, with reference to studies of other scholars. The study adopted the questionnaire survey, writing test and interview, to further discuss the following three questions in details:1. Do English major students have the awareness of metacognitive strategy during writing process?2. What is the correlation between English major students’ writing level and the metacognitive strategy?3. What are the differences between high-level writer and low level writer in using the metacognitive strategy?From the analysis of the collected data, the study concluded the following findings:1. Although there are some English major students with the consciousness of using metacognitive strategy, but they did not use it frequently;2. English writing ability of the student was positively correlated to his metacognitive strategy;3. High-level writer can apply the metacognitive strategy proficiently and comprehensively. Otherwise, low-level writers are on the contrary.In the end, based on analysis and discussion of the data, the author put forward some advice on writing teaching to English major students, such as:metacognitive strategy guidance shall be involved in the teaching activities effectively, and the learner shall manage his own study process, during which, more writing exercises are needed and he shall enhance the application of metacognitive strategy consciously; the teacher, in the premise of mobilizing students’ study enthusiasm, shall make the students use this strategy consciously while writing.