The Application Of Metacognitive Strategy Training In English Listening Teaching In Senior High Schools

Of the four skills in English learning--listening, speaking, reading and writing, listening is an important way of language input and the foundation of developing all the other language skills. However, at present especially for the English teaching in senior high schools, because the listening scores are only20points in the college entrance examination, compared with the reading and writing, teachers often ignore the effect of listening teaching. And there are a lot of English teachers still following the traditional teaching methods, namely, playing the tape and then checking the answers to the listening questions. If the students have some doubts, the teacher will play it again or directly translate the listening material into Chinese, which leads to the result of the students’ lack of listening skills and listening strategies.Of all the learning strategies, metacognitive strategies are higher-order executive strategies. Once the learners have good metacognitive awareness, they can plan, arrange, monitor, regulate and evaluate the learning tasks independently. Many researches have been done which show metacognitive strategy training can improve students’ ability in listening comprehension. However, in listening teaching, fewer researches have been conducted on the metacognitive strategy training for senior high school students.Therefore, this paper discusses metacognitive strategy training in listening teaching in senior high schools. Based on the analysis of definitions and features of listening comprehension, metacognition and metacognitive strategies, the author puts forward the following hypotheses:(1) The metacognitive strategy training can raise senior high school students’ metacognitive awareness.(2) The application of metacognitive strategies in listening comprehension can improve the students’ listening proficiency in senior high schools.(3) The metacognitive strategy training has a positive effect on the senior high school students’ attitudes towards listening.In order to validate these hypotheses, the author designed the experiment, lasting16weeks, from September,2012to January,2013. The subjects are two classes in Senior One from Tianjin No.55Middle School. One is the experimental class (EC), and the other is the control class (CC). The training is carried out in EC. And according to the Three-Stage Model of Underwood, the author demonstrates and trains students to use different metacognitive strategies in pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening to achieve different listening goals. Meanwhile, traditional listening teaching is adopted in CC. The students are tested before and after the experiment and a questionnaire is made use of twice in EC.The experimental results show that compared with the students in CC, the students in EC have improved faster in listening comprehension. Besides, according to the questionnaires, the students’ awareness of metacognitive strategies in EC has been raised. What’s more, in terms of the attitudes towards listening, the students in EC are more active and have more confidence and interest in listening learning.