A Study On The Application Of Meta-cognitive Strategy In English Reading Teaching In Junior High School

Reading is one of the important four basic skills(listening, speaking, reading and writing) of English learning, and it occupies a major position in English learning. Learners can absorb knowledge and information by the sufficient means of reading as well as get the culture and custom of Britain and America countries. Only when one’s reading capability reaches a certain standard can he fully understand the content of English materials and grasp the essence of the material. Therefore, how to improve learners’ English reading proficiency has long been one of the emphasized training items of English researchers and teachers. Since the 1970 s, the emphasis of the study of foreign language teaching has shifted from “how to teach” to “how to learn”. This trend has lead to an explosion of research on investigating the learners’ characteristics and soon language learning strategies became an important part in the study of language teaching.Since the term of “meta-cognition” was first proposed by John Flavell in his study in the1970 s, it has captured high attention of language learning researchers. According to Flavell(1979,1987), meta-cognition is the knowledge about individual’s own cognition,it is not only a matter of teaching but a matter of self-learning. It aims at the procedure and result of cognition, monitors and adjusts the cognitive activity. According to the prominent researchers O’Malley, Chamot and Oxford who categorized and expounded meta-cognitive strategies from different aspects, meta-cognitive strategy includes four items: planning strategy, selective strategy, monitoring strategy and evaluation strategy,and meta-cognitive strategies are regarded as more significant than other strategies such as affective,cognitive, social strategies and so on. Therefore, to manage the meta-cognitive strategies is a great promoting function in English learning process.In light of the research on learning strategies at home and abroad, accounting O’Malley & Chamot’ meta-cognitive strategies training as theoretical basis, this thesis combined the meta-cognitive strategies training with reading comprehension in junior high school. It aims to investigate the overall situation students’ meta-cognitive strategies use in their English reading comprehension and the two research questions as follows: Firstly, can the applications of meta-cognitive strategy improve students’ autonomous learning ability in English reading? Secondly, can the training of meta-cognitive strategies improve the students’ English reading proficiency?For the sake of testing the effects of meta-cognitive strategies on English reading comprehension, the author carried out a 12-week teaching program. The participants 118 students in this research are selected from two parallel classes in the 8th grade in No.4 Middle School in Jinzhou, who are randomly divided into two groups, a control class and an experimental class. Some research methods such as questionnaire,tests and interview were conducted by the author. Before this program, in order to assess the students’ current situation of meta-cognitive strategies use, a questionnaire was used, which is based on Oxford’s strategy inventory for language learning. During the program, meta-cognitive strategy training was instructed into experimental class while the control class was adopted traditional reading teaching method.The collected data of questionnaires and tests were analyzed by SPSS11.5 and undertook descriptive statistics, independent sample T-test. The result of these analysis showed:firstly, using meta-cognitive strategies improve students’ autonomous learning ability. Secondly, it is easy to find the students trained by meta-cognitive strategies made greater progress in English reading. The research results suggest that meta-cognitive strategies can help students gradually master how to plan, select, monitor and evaluate their reading effectively. Taking this training makes it possible to enhance student’s reading proficiency, obtain higher autonomous learning ability, and benefit their whole life.