Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research background

Reading is a basic and important skill in English learning. Therefore, to improve thestudents’ English reading ability is one of the important goals in English teaching. But thefact placed in front of us is that, most of the students are relatively weak in English,especially reading comprehension is the most serious. From the current structure ofEnglish examination paper proposition and the proposition trend, the English exam paymore attention to study on the comprehensive ability of using language, one of theimportant means is to use reading comprehension to test students’ ability of using English.Therefore, to improve the students’ reading ability, are the biggest and the most difficultproblem facing by each English teacher.Under the specific condition of English learning in China, due to the high schoolstudents lacking the knowledge of English schema, the knowledge of text structure and theknowledge of cultural background in English reading, which makes the English reading’ scharacteristics and features is different from Chinese reading, so that the English reading’ sdifficulties are more than Chinese reading’ s. In the traditional teaching of English reading,teachers tend to think that reading an article is to understand the process of the languagethat is to master the vocabulary and grammar, so the only task for teachers is to helpstudents to clear the obstacle of the language, which is to give students the explanations ofthe vocabularies and grammar. The teachers teach the students to understand words andsentences from the letters---words---sentences---discourses which ordered from bottom toup just make clear the meaning of the reading materials.

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1.2 The significance and purpose of this study

With the popularization of the concept of lifelong learning, learning to learn andautonomous learning is recognized as the ideal goal of foreign language teaching. In 2003,China promulgated the Ordinary High School English Curriculum Standards; it said that“ the total goal of the senior high school English curriculum is to make the studentslearning English based on the compulsory education stage, and to further clarify thepurpose of English learning, to develop the ability of self-learning and cooperative learning.Teachers help students to effectively use learning strategies, not only help them to graspthe direction of learning and adopt the scientific way to improve the learning efficiency,but also help them to form the ability of independent study, to lay the foundation forlifelong learning.” (2003:5). Therefore, cultivating learner’ s autonomy is one of theimportant goals of English teaching and school education.During the recent thirty years, many researchers and educators pay attention tometacognition and metacognitive strategy. Metacognition is a kind of ability of learners tomake a plan and manage their own learning process automatically and effectively. Manyresearches at home and abroad have shown that, the development of students’ autonomouslearning ability is an important manifestation of the level of metacognitive regulation, thatis in the learning process, the students’ planning, selection, monitoring, evaluation, usingof learning strategies and self-adjustment for learning to improve learning efficiency (LiuDianzhi, 1997). If the students lack the awareness of metacognition and cannot effectivelymake use of metacognitive strategies, they cannot learn consciously and manage their ownlearning process effectively either, and it will also impact on students’ learning othersubjects. Therefore, metacognitive awareness and strategy is one of the key factors thataffect the autonomous learning ability of students.

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Chapter Two Literature review

2.1 Definition of metacognition

The concept of metacognition was proposed in 1976 by Flavell who is an Americancognitive psychologist; this concept was put forward in the study of metamemory by him.He pointed out: “ metacognition is the knowledge which the cognitive subject knows thecognitive processes, results and related activities, including the cognitive process of what ishappening and self cognitive ability as well as the interaction cognition, including activemonitoring and regulation of these processes. Specific to the learning activities, it refers toa clear awareness of learners in certain circumstances for achieving the goals of their ownlearning ability, mental state, activities and the strategies and methods adopted to achievethe goal. In a word, the research of metacognition is always related to the specificcognitive processes, such as memory, reading comprehension and others.” (Flavell, 1976:21).With the depth and expansion study of metacognitive, different researchers putforward many different views to define the concept of metacognition. Krashen (1982)thought that metacognition is the knowledge which the learner had about their ownlearning system and the actions which were taken according to the learners owncharacteristics of learning system. Chinese scholar Dong Qi (1989) defined thatmetacognition is for individuals on their self-awareness and self-adjustment of cognitive.

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2.2 Classification of metacognition

Metacognitive knowledge refers to cognitive activity in cognitive activities as theobject of attention, perception, memory, thinking, etc.. The main purpose of the individualmetacognitive knowledge is to understand a cognitive activity, grasp a rule of a cognitiveactivity, in order to better accomplish such cognitive activities. In the process ofmetacognitive knowledge, individual needs knowledge in order to complete this processeffectively. This time the knowledge that required from the results of higher levelprocessing. Only can the accumulated knowledge of higher level processing adjust it. Thusit can be seen from here, knowledge can be divided into two categories according to theindividual, which is in the object level and in the meta level: the first category ofknowledge is the individual in object level activities, especially obtained in cognitiveactivities. It is about the knowledge which we operated the cognitive object, its maincontent is about the natural characteristics of the object, and does not include the cognitivecharacteristics of object. So it is more detailed description does not belong to the task ofpsychology. Second kinds of knowledge acquisition mainly occurs at the meta level, it isobtained by the individual in the cognitive activities which were recognition (object levelon cognitive activities of this object level may be the individual himself, may also beothers). The goal that the individual gets the knowledge of the second types, namely thefunction of this kind of knowledge is to adjust the cognitive activities in the object level. Itis the recognition of knowledge, which is believed as one of the metacognitive knowledgeof the structure of metacognition by most scholars. There are many detailed explanationsabout the content of metacognitive knowledge. Such as Baker and Brown (1984) thoughtthat cognitive knowledge is the individual’ s own cognitive resources and the compatibilityof knowledge between learners and learning environment, namely the knowledge whichthe cognitive ability and cognitive strategy of individuals and what kind of cognitivestrategies should use under different conditions.

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Chapter Three Research methodology .... 21

3.1 Subjects....... 21

3.2 Instruments ....... 21

3.3 Procedures ........ 23

3.4 Data analysis..... 30

Chapter Four Results and discussion ...... 31

4.1 Results and discussion from the tests ......... 31

4.2 Results and discussion from the questionnaire....... 34

4.3 Results and discussion from the interview ....... 36

Chapter Five Conclusion......... 44

5.1 Major findings ........ 44

5.2 Implications ...... 45

5.3 Limitations and suggestions for further study ........ 49

Chapter Four Results and discussion

4.1 Results and discussion from the tests

In order to obtain an overall picture about the effects of metacognitive strategy onstudents’ English reading, the experiment conducted a regular t-test which woulddetermine whether or not EC improved students’ reading scores compared with CC. Theresults of the two tests are shown in the following tables. From Table 4.1.1 we can see that, in the pre-test, the mean score of CC is 84.7647, themean score of EC is 84.8449, the two means are similar, and that is to say, the two classesare nearly at the same starting point. And in CC, the SD is 9.21006, in EC, the SD is7.86036, the two numbers are very close, it shows that the students in the two classes arenearly in the same distribution. And from Table 4.1.2, we can see that the Sig. (2-tailed) areboth 0.972, the number is higher than 0.05, which is to say, there has no significancedifference in the two class’ s scores. The pre-test indicates that, the CC and EC are underapproximately the same conditions in this research.

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Conclusion

After 12 weeks’ research in the senior high school classes in The Eighth Senior HighSchool in Hu Ludao, metacognitive strategies have proved to have many advantagesthrough the experiment by the questionnaire, tests and interview. The major findings can besummarized as follows: in the four metacognitive strategies, students usually used selective strategy(mean score =3.036) and monitoring strategy (mean score =2.848). So in our dailyteaching, teachers can teach the students more reading strategies belong to these twostrategy categories, such as, selective strategies: a) Finding out and noting key words, mainideas in the text. b) Underlining and marking main points for remembering. c) Payingattention to typographical features. d) Focusing on determining the meanings of unknownwords. e) Paying attention to the topic sentences. Monitoring strategies: a) Using text cuesto interpret unknown words or phrases. b) Rereading when faced with difficult content. c)Pausing and thinking about the reading. d) Revising the anticipated information based ontext content. e) Reading aloud when text becomes hard. Students can easily accept thesemetacognitive strategies, so they can use them in their English reading consciously. Thenthe students can improve their English reading.

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Reference (omitted)