A Study On The Application Of Metacognitive Strategy To The Vocabulary Learning Of Junior High School

Vocabulary has the basic and overall status in the process of language learning,which means that it is an important guarantee of learning language knowledge and improving language skills.The Ministry of Education promulgated the Standards of English Curriculum of Compulsory Education in 2011,which proposed a clear grading system of English vocabulary knowledge for junior high school students.Besides,teachers were asked to cultivate students' awareness of using learning strategies in English class.However,the actual situation of English teaching is not optimistic.Some teachers tend to focus on teaching knowledge but ignore to teach learning strategies,which leads to students' unreasonable vocabulary learning belief,lack of consciousness of self-regulation,low vocabulary test scores,etc.Therefore,how to cultivate students' awareness of using learning strategies in English vocabulary teaching and how to guide students to learn vocabulary are worthy being explored.The major method used in this research is experimental method while the minor methods are literature analysis method,questionnaire method,educational measurement method and interview method.All these methods are used together to investigate the impact of metacognitive strategy trainingon junior high school students' vocabulary learning.The research aims at investigating two questions: How does metacognitive strategy training affect participants' level of metacognitive strategies? How does metacognitive strategy training affect participants' vocabulary test scores? 85 students are selected from a middle school in T city,Xinjiang as subjects.The experimental model is a two-group test before and after the experiment.In the experimental class,the metacognitive strategy is used to guide students' vocabulary learning.In the control class,the conventional method is used to guide students' vocabulary learning.Through the analysis of the questionnaire,vocabulary test score and interview,the following conclusions are drawn: 1.Metacognitive strategy training improves the participants' level of metacognitive strategy,which means that students' level changes from “sometimes use” to “usually use” and rises from “intermediate” to “superior”.However,the improvement of each sub-strategy is totally different.The results from high to low are self-monitoring strategy,self-evaluation strategy,selective attention strategy,planning strategy.2.Metacognitive strategy training enhances participants' performance of vocabulary test.The experimental class' mean score of vocabulary test rises from 69.27 to 77.88.In addition,In the post-test,the number of students in the middle-level group and low-level group decreases while the number of students in high-level group increases.The research result also shows that metacognitive strategy training can change participants' unreasonablevocabulary learning belief.The effect of metacognitive strategy training,combined with cognitive strategies training is the best.Participants' level of cognitive strategies are higher than before,too.