| In 1960 s,the teaching research shifted from “how to teach” to “how to learn”.How to help students “learning to learn” and become the dominator of learning has been a hot issues for educators.Meta-cognitive strategies are important part of learning strategies and also play crucial role in guiding students read effectively.It mainly reflects in making learning plans,monitoring learning process,and evaluating learning results.Comparing with cognitive strategies and affective strategies,meta-cognitive strategies belong to a higher level of executive skills.In recent years,researches on meta-cognitive strategies abroad and at home have shown that reading comprehension is not only influenced by lexical,sentence and discourse structure,but also related to reader's original knowledge,language proficiency and meta-cognitive strategies.Therefore,it has great practical significance to study the employment of meta-cognitive strategies in English reading,which may improve students' English reading efficiency.This study takes Sternberg's triarchic intelligence theory(1985),Piaget's(1996)and Bruner's(1960)constructivism theory as theoretical basis of meta-cognitive strategies.The questionnaire was designed in terms of O' Malley and Chamot's(2001:137-138)classification and referred the questionnaire designed by Liu Hujun(2004: 24-26).The author adopted quantitative and qualitative as methods,took students of grade two in senior high school as subjects,who are from Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County in Yining Xinjiang.100 students(50 Han students and 50 Xibe students)were selected randomly as samples to participate in the questionnaire,for the purpose of investigating the meta-cognitive strategies that students used in English reading,among them 6 students were interviewed.The research questions are as follows:(1)What meta-cognitive strategies do Han students employ in their English reading?(2)What meta-cognitive strategies do Xibe students employ in their English reading?(3)What are the similarities and differences in employing meta-cognitive strategies between Xibe and Han students?The SPSS 17.0 analyzed the data of the questionnaire and draw the following results:(1)The general situation of meta-cognitive strategies used by Han students are at medium level,the frequency is 2.62.The rank of meta-cognitive strategies used by Han students are as follows: selective attention strategies,monitoring strategies,evaluation strategies,and planning strategies.(2)The general situation of meta-cognitive strategies used by Xibe students are at medium level,the frequency is 2.61.Meanwhile,the rank of meta-cognitive strategies used by Xibe students are as follows: selective attention strategies,monitoring strategies,evaluation strategies,and planning strategies.(3)Both Xibe and Han students are at the medium level in using meta-cognitive strategies and the frequency of Xibe(M=2.61)and Han(M=2.62)students are almost equal.The selective attention strategy category was the most frequently used by Xibe and Han students,while the planning strategy category was the least used by them.The following interview results reveal one of the reasons why there is no significant difference in using meta-cognitive strategies in English reading between Xibe and Han students is that English teachers often emphasize these meta-cognitive strategies in daily teaching,so students will use them consciously in reading,which indicates Xibe students' English learning experience is same as the Han students' : English is taught as a foreign language.There is no natural environment for them to learn English,they learn English and receive the same training in English class. |
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