An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Meta-cognitive Strategies Training On Senior High School Students’ English Writing Proficiency

Meta-cognitive strategies refer to the strategies which used to consciously use meta-cognitive knowledge to plan,monitor and evaluate the learning process.As an important part of learning strategies,it plays a crucial role in English writing.This study investigates senior high school students’ current meta-cognitive strategies use in English writing,then through a period of 9 week’s experiment to examine the effects of meta-cognitive strategies training on senior high school students’ frequency of use of strategies and test if students’ writing proficiency will get improved after training.45 senior grade one students from a high school in Heyuan participated in the meta-cognitive strategies survey carried out in class.Students’ current meta-cognitive strategies use in English writing were surveyed with a meta-cognitive writing strategies questionnaire.Results show that: 1)senior high school students have a very limited knowledge of meta-cognitive strategies before the training;2)as for the state of students’ strategies use,it is low frequency,scattered and unsystematic;3)the planning strategy is employed more often than using monitoring and evaluating strategy.Based on the current situation of senior high school students’ meta-cognitive strategies use,the researcher then conducted a meta-cognitive strategies training on 45 senior grade one students,with the inspiration of O’Malley and Chamot’s learning strategies training model,the researcher construct the training mode of this study with a full consideration of students’ needs and English learning actuality.They were required to have an English writing test as the pretest,and then a checkout on their meta-cognitive strategies use with a meta-cognitive writing strategies self-checking table which was taken after each writing task.In addition,they are also required to keep a writing log,in which record students’ mental process of writing.At the end,their writing proficiency were reflected in the final term examination.Relevant data collected during this process were analyzed from quantitative and qualitative perspectives for an evaluation of the effects of strategies training on their strategies use and their English writing proficiency.The result of the meta-cognitive strategiestraining shows that the training was effective in improving senior high school students’ awareness of strategies use and English writing ability,especially the abilities of examining topic,determining main ideas,idea-gathering,information processing and modification of composition,which were reflected in the writing log and an increase of writing scores.Besides,students generally held a positive attitude towards the training through the interview with participants.Based on above findings,this study proposes that teacher should conduct meta-cognitive strategies training towards senior high school students in English writing so as to enhance writing proficiency.