A Study On Meta-cognitive Strategies Used By Senior High Students In English Vocabulary Learning

Nowadays,the quality-oriented education in English teaching emphasizes the overall development of students’ language competence including the development of language learning strategies.Especially,the cultivation of meta-cognitive strategies,which will help improve students’ autonomous learning and management ability,is important.Meanwhile,vocabulary,as the most basic part of language knowledge,is a key to learn English well.However,there exist many problems in senior high students’ English vocabulary learning,like the high forgetting rate of vocabulary,no self-reflection for the mistakes,and poor self-learning abilities.So it is necessary for teachers to help students make use of meta-cognitive strategies to solve the existing problems in vocabulary learning and provide individualized instructions to promote each student’s development.Actually,there are less related studies focusing on high school students.So it is necessary to explore the general situation of senior high students’ use of meta-cognitive strategies in English vocabulary learning.Meanwhile,the study will make a specific analysis of students’ meta-cognitive strategy use in terms of genders and vocabulary proficiency.Next,the study focuses on senior one students in Yan Dao Jie Middle School of Chengdu,Sichuan.Ninety-six students in total from two classes of the same English teacher are chosen.The study collects quantitative and qualitative data through the questionnaire,interviews and the observation.Questionnaire is for eachstudent,interview is for 12 students with different vocabulary proficiency and 3 English teachers in senior one including the English teacher of the two classes,and observation is for students’ and the teacher’s performances during the whole research process.According to the collected data,the study presents the following findings.Firstly,most of students show little use of meta-cognitive strategies in vocabulary learning,especially the use of planning strategies.To be specific,there are few differences between boys and girls in the meta-cognitive strategy use but great differences among different vocabulary levels.Then,the study will pay much more attention to analyze whether there is any correlation between students’ use of meta-cognitive strategies and vocabulary proficiency in later parts.Secondly,there exists a positively significant correlation between learners’ use of meta-cognitive strategies and vocabulary proficiency.Specifically,selective attention and monitoring strategies have stronger correlation with vocabulary proficiency.However,according to the reality of students’ meta-cognitive strategy use,planning strategies and monitoring strategies need to be strengthened in senior high students’ vocabulary learning.Finally,there are some pedagogical implications for future vocabulary learning.Firstly,teachers should cultivate students’ awareness of the meta-cognitive strategy use.Secondly,there should be stratified requirements for students in different vocabulary levels.The procedures of the stratified teaching are as follows: a.Group the students into three levels implicitly according to their vocabulary proficiency;b.Help students in different groups establish the suitable goals of meta-cognitive strategy use and make plans;c.Provide individualized instructions for students in different vocabulary levels;d.Help students make stratified assessments of their meta-cognitive strategy use.In a word,meta-cognitive strategy training should be interrelated with stratified teaching to improve the vocabulary teaching efficiency and students’ self-learning ability.