A Study On Cultivating Meta-Cognitive Strategies Of Less Successful Learners In Senior High School

How to help less successful English learners with their English proficiency and academic performance is a challenge many high school English teachers are confronted with. The author finds from many years’practices that most of the less successful English learners in high school lack the ability to make proper use of meta-cognitive strategies. In addition, researchers on foreign language learning strategies have found from the comparative research on the learning behaviors between successful learners and less successful learners that meta-cognitive strategies is closely related to the English learning ability.The author has surveyed sixty-eight less successful English learners from Tianjin TED A NO.1Middle School for their use of meta-cognitive strategies by means of questionnaires and interviews and found that learners indeed have some problems, especially in terms of recognition and application of planning strategies, monitoring strategies and evaluating strategies. In order to help less successful English learners with their English proficiency from the perspective of meta-cognitive strategy training, the author conducts an experimental study of the cultivation of the meta-cognitive strategies in classroom teaching and provides guidance for planning, monitoring and evaluating strategies. Through the comparison between the experimental class and the control class in the quantitative and qualitative results obtained from questionnaires, tests, interviews and observation, the author has found that the training of the meta-cognitive strategies can enhance the meta-cognitive strategy level and that students’higher meta-cognitive level can facilitate their academic progress. In addition, this paper gives some pedagogical suggestions on cultivating learners’meta-cognitive strategies.