A Survey On The Use Of Metacognitive Strategies In English Writing By Senior High School Students In The Background Of Key Competencies

The English Curriculum Standards for General High Schools(2017 Edition,2020 Revision:40-41)puts forward clear requirements for English learning strategies of high schools and the specific use of metacognitive strategies,suggesting that the development of metacognitive strategies should be integrated into English teaching and enhance students’ autonomous abilities.Metacognitive strategies,as the highest level of language learning strategies,knowing how to use them cannot be overstated.Meanwhile,language ability,as one of the elements that constitute the English key competencies,includes writing skills,which are highly comprehensive productive skills.Output is an important way to test whether students have acquired the target language,reflecting students’ overall quality.The level of writing affects the overall performance in English.Combining the two can help high school students to improve their English writing performance to a certain extent.By referring the literature review,it can be found that there are more and more fruitful achievements in guiding English teaching based on metacognitive strategies theory,but there are still some deficiencies in research types,research subjects and correlation research.Therefore,based on previous studies as well as metacognitive and constructivist theories,this study investigated the level of 270 Senior Two Students in Xiangyin County No.1 Middle School with questionnaires and interviews.The author randomly chose 10 students(5 from the high level and 5 from the low level)to conduct interviews with them,and then collected the mid-term and final-term English test papers of the 270 students and took their average scores as the final average scores.Finally,the author analyzed the data by using SPSS23.0,which included descriptive statistical analysis and correlation analysis.This study intends to survey the following three research questions:(1)What is the level of metacognitive strategies used by senior high school students in English writing?(2)Are there any differences in the use of metacognitive strategies between high score students and low score students? If so,what are the differences?(3)What is the correlation between the use of metacognitive strategies and the English writing performance? If there is a correlation,what factors affect it? The author draws the following major findings:(1)The overall level of high school students using metacognitive strategies in English writing belongs to the lower-middle level.Among them,the two with relatively high frequency are the selective attention strategies and the monitoring strategies,and the least frequently used are the self-evaluation strategies.(2)In the process of English writing,there are differences in the use of metacognitive strategies between the two different levels.The high score students use metacognitive strategies more frequently than the low score students.The high groups belong to a high level in selective attention strategies and monitoring strategies and belong to a medium level in pre-planning strategies and self-evaluation strategies.While the low groups belong to a medium level in selective attention strategies and monitoring strategies and belong to a low level in pre-planning strategies and self-evaluation strategies.It finds that whether the high score students or the low score students,the frequency of using selective attention strategies and monitoring strategies is higher than that of pre-planning strategies and self-evaluation strategies.(3)The Pearson correlation analysis reveals that there is a positive relevance between the English writing performance and metacognitive strategies.Among them,the pre-planning strategies are most related to the English writing performance,the monitoring strategies are least related to the English writing performance.The author then gives targeted suggestions for the three research questions based on the findings.It is hoped that they will be helpful to teachers’ English writing teaching and students’ English writing learning in the future.