A Study of Applying Metacognitive Strategies to Develop English Writing Competence for Non-English Majors

The author conducted a study on the effects of metacognitive strategy instruction on writing performance. Ninety-eight students from Changchun Normal University were chosen as the subjects to participate in the study. The following results have been explored: (1) Non-English majors increased the frequency of metacognitive strategy use through metacognitive strategy training. (2) There's no significant difference between the two groups after training in writing and the non-English major's overall writing proficiency wasn't significantly improved through metacognitive strategy training. (3) Metacognitive strategy training wasn't equally effective to the non-English majors at different levels. The results of the present study showed that whether the metacognitive strategy training had positive role in writing remains to be determined in the future study. More research studies could be done by second language learners to see how and when they employ metacognitive strategies.