Effects of Metacognitive Strategy Instruction on Oral Language Task Performance and Strategy Use

Lam, Y. K. (2009). Examining the effects of metacognitive strategy instruction on ESL group discussions: A synthesis of approaches. Language Teaching Research, 13(2), 129 – 150.

Background

The author believes that, despite the importance of metacognitive strategies to language learning and language use, the number of studies on metacognitive strategy instruction in the English as a second language (ESL) context remains small.

Aims

The author argued that seven metacognitive strategies (identifying the problem, planning content, planning language, evaluating, asking for help, giving help and using positive self-talk) may help ESL speakers to develop their knowledge and ability to plan, manage and perform an oral language task.

Sample

The study involved two intact English oral classrooms with a total of 40 Secondary 2 students in a school in Hong Kong. The two classes, with 20 students each, were randomly assigned as the comparison class and the treatment class.

Method

The study involved eight 80-minute oral lessons spread over 20 weeks for each of the two classes. The treatment class received additional explicit instruction in the use of the seven target metacognitive strategies. A multi-method approach to assessing the effectiveness of metacognitive strategy instruction was adopted, using the students’ performance in group work discussions, self-report questionnaires, observations of the students’ strategy use, and stimulated recall interviews. Data were collected at the start, mid and end points of the 20-week study.

Findings

The results indicated that the treatment class generally outperformed the comparison class in the group discussion task. Corroborating evidence from the multi-method approach showed that the students tended to deploy ‘problem identification’ as a global planning strategy to cope with an upcoming group discussion task. However, while metacognitive strategy instruction might have brought about the students’ explicit, declarative knowledge of strategy use, it did not have a strong effect on their procedural knowledge of how to implement strategy use.

Implications

The study suggests that it may be worth providing metacognitive strategy instruction to help ESL students improve in their oral language use and to facilitate task completion. It may also be worth incorporating planning time and space into strategy instruction, to promote effective use of metacognitive strategies in the language classroom. Further research is needed on facilitating students’ procedural use of metacognitive strategies over time, and to investigate the influence of individual and cultural differences in students’ uptake of strategy use.

Original article retrieved from Proquest (NLB).