Meta-cognitive Strategies And Learner Autonomy Of Chinese EFL Students From Junior High School, And Their Academic Achievement

Rogers pointed out:“the only man who is educated is the man who has learnedhow to learn; the man who has learned how to adapt and change.” In the modern eraof knowledge economy, lifelong learning and autonomous learning have become aninevitable trend, and cultivating learners’ autonomous leaning ability has been one ofmajor goals of school education, which can help students to foster better learningconcepts, gradually form good learning habits and become independent learners.Much research on autonomous learning has been conducted from differentperspectives and it is found that learners with good learning strategies are moreindependent in language learning. Wenden（1998）contends that meta-cognitivestrategies are the key factors in fostering autonomous learning ability. The presentstudy tries to integrate meta-cognitive strategy training into English teaching to juniorhigh school EFL learners and explores the effects of meta-cognitive strategies onstudents’ autonomous learning and language achievement.Based on related literature, a teaching program was carried out in2classes fromGrade7in a middle school in Jinshui County，Henan Province. Questionaires,language tests and interview were completed and the results were processed bySPSS17.0. It was found that meta-cognitive strategy training had a positive impact onpromoting students’ meta-cognitive strategy use and autonomous learning ability,which helped students a lot to form good learning habits. Moreover, students madeprogress effectively in English learning. Finally, this thesis summarized the mainfindings and analyzed the limitations.