An Empirical Study of the Cultivation of Autonomy Through Metacognitive Strategy Training

Many researchers have found that there is an inseparable relationship between learner autonomy and meta-cognitive strategy training, this thesis intends to explore the effectiveness of meta-cognitive strategy training in fostering learner autonomy and English performance in college non-majors learning under the web-based learning environment. The learners involved in the study are classified into two groups, one group accepted the meta-cognitive strategy training. The research adopted questionnaires and final examination achievements to give a quantitative description of the relationship between autonomy and meta-cognitive strategy training and adopted the journals and interviews to give a qualitative description. By using SPSS 13.0 to analyze the data of descriptive statistics, independent samples T-test and qualitative study, the study comes to the conclusions: 1. the meta-cognitive strategy training has a higher effectiveness in promoting the experimental group’s learning performance. 2. on the whole, it’s effective in promotion of the students’ learner autonomy, but not very obvious. The results in five aspects of learner autonomy are different: the training has a distinct effect in promoting the learners’ goal-setting, planning and self-monitoring, and has a unobvious effect on the ability of application of learning strategies, extracurricular studying and self-evaluation. The researcher also argues that through the meta-cognitive strategy training to foster the students’ autonomous learning ability is helpful but not the only means. Under the web-based college English teaching environment, we should explore more different methods to improve the learners’ autonomous learning ability.