Section 3 describes the methodology of the research, which contains the research questions, the subjects and the research procedure. The instruments of this research include a metacognitive strategy questionnaire, two tests and Microsoft Office Excel 2010.
Section 4 analyzes the data of the questionnaire survey and two tests. The result of questionnaire survey offers a general view of students’ use of metacognitive strategy in Grade 8. Students’ reading performance improved. The result of two tests shows the impact of metacognitive strategy training on students in Grade 8.
In section 5, researcher summarizes the main finds of the research, reflects the limitation of the study and closes with suggestions for reading teaching.
2. Literature Review
This part reviews related literature of the present study. It consists of four parts. Chapter 1 discusses metacognition regarding metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategies. Chapter 2 focuses on the metacognitive strategies and reading comprehension and the related studies. Chapter 3 introduces some studies on metacognitive reading strategy and strategy training models. And Chapter 4 is the summary of the literature review.
2.1 Metacognition
The concept of metacognition was first given by American developmental psychologist John H. Flavell. He believes metacognition is “one’s knowledge concerning one’s own cognitive processes and products or anything related to them, for example the learning relevant properties of information and data”(1976：232). In his opinion, metacognition contains metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive experience. As metacognition is higher level of cognition, Brown (1983) has similar understanding of metacognition. He pides it into knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition. Some scholars (Xiao Wuyun, 2011; Zhang Yaming, 2012) state that metacognition consists of three components, metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive experience and metacognitive monitoring. While the researcher thinks metacognitive experience is also a kind of metacognitive knowledge as it is static cognition or feeling that is produced from one’s own cognitive process. Due to it, it is found that metacognition has static metacognitive knowledge and dynamic metacognitive monitoring.
2.1.1 Metacognitive knowledge
In the broad sense, metacognitive knowledge includes old knowledge “stored world knowledge that has to do with people as cognitive creatures and with their perse cognitive tasks, goals, actions, and experiences” from Flavell (1979: 906) and new knowledge produced from one’s cognitive processes. The former one as the narrow sense of metacognitive knowledge is discussed in this part.
Flavell (1979) pides metacognitive knowledge into knowledge of three variables, namely person, task and strategy.
Xiao Wuyun (2011) has a detailed account of these three variables. The namely person variable refers to the knowledge of person as a learner. The knowledge of cognition about oneself is realizing your interest, hobbies, abilities and weakness correctly. The knowledge of cognition about inpiduals’ differences is to realize the differences in cognition from others. And the knowledge of cognition about affective factors in cognitive processes is realizing the importance of consciousness in cognitive processes and the alterable cognitive ability.
Task variable refers to the knowledge of the learning task. For instance, regarding learning materials, the inpidual should know that cognitive processes. And results would be affected by many factors such as the property of materials. The inpidual should identify tasks and purposes of different cognition processes.
Strategy variable refers to the knowledge of learning strategies. It contains not only the contents of strategies but also the merits and faults and application conditions of learning strategies. 元认知策略在初中英语阅读教学中的应用研究(4):http://www.chuibin.com/yingyu/lunwen_205884.html