Examining the effects of metacognitive strategy instruction on ESL group discussions: A synthesis of approaches

Abstract

This article presents the findings of an intervention study designed to examine the effects of metacognitive strategy instruction (MCSI) on learners' performance and on strategy use. Two classes in the secondary English oral classroom in Hong Kong participated in the study; one class received eight sessions of MCSI and the other served as a comparison group. In weeks 1, 10 and 20, data were collected from the learners' performance in group-work discussions, from the self-report questionnaires, from the observations of learners' strategy use, and from the stimulated recall interviews. The findings indicated that the treatment class generally outperformed the comparison class in the group discussion task. In addition, there was corroborating evidence from the multi-method approach to support the view that the learners tended to deploy `problem identification' as a global planning strategy to cope with an upcoming prioritization group discussion task. The findings are discussed with respect to awareness-raising value of the MCSI, the interaction effect between strategy instruction and research method, explicit and implicit learning, and a match of task type and strategy choice. Finally, the distinct advantages of using a multi-method approach to gauging the effects of MCSI are appraised.

Metacognition and Second/Foreign Language Learning

“…Although observational method, interviews and think aloud protocol have some priorities over the other methods such as self-report instruments, these tools for assessing metacognition have rarely been used by researchers. Indeed, only Lam (2009) has used observation (a synchronic measurement). Furthermore, only a few studies (e.g., Zhenton, 2012;Yau, 2009) have used both qualitative and quantitative tools to measure learners' metacognition in L2 learning.…”

“…This group of studies was composed of 8 experimental studies: 6 quasi experimental studies (Graham & Macaro, 2008;Lam, 2009;Nakatani, 2005;Nguyen & Gu, 2013;Vandergrift & Tafaghodtari, 2010;Zenotz, 2012) and 2 pre-experimental studies in which the interventions were carried out without control group (Cross, 2011;Guh & Taib, 2006). All of the studies reported that metacognitive treatment has significantly improved language performance.…”

“…Furthermore, exceptfor the study carried out by Graham and Macaro (2008), all of the other studies only investigated the short-effects of intervention and they did not examine the effectiveness of strategy instruction over the following semester or year. Additionally, as shown in table 3, several studies (Cross, 2011;Guh & Taib, 2006;Lam, 2009) used only a small sample size which may have threatened the external validity of these studies (generalization of the findings). Table 3 provides the characteristics of 9 studies that have investigated the impact of metacognitive training on metacognitive awareness or strategy use.…”

“…Other studies (Lam, 2009;Nakatani, 2005;Nguyen & Gu, 2013;Thompson, 2012;Vandergrift & Tafaghodtari, 2010;Zenotz, 2012) adopted quasi-experimental research in which researchers investigated the differences in metacognitive awareness or strategy usage between control and treatment groups. Among these studies, only Nguyen & Gu's (2013) study demonstrated that students who received intervention showed a significantly higher level of metacognitive strategy usage than those in the control group.…”

“…Among these studies, only Nguyen & Gu's (2013) study demonstrated that students who received intervention showed a significantly higher level of metacognitive strategy usage than those in the control group. Although results from these studies (Lam, 2009;Nakatani, 2005;Nguyen & Gu, 2013;Thompson, 2012;Vandergrift & Tafaghodtari, 2010;Zenotz, 2012) showed that the treatment group slightly outperformed the control group, the researchers acknowledged the limitations of their research mentioning research instrument, sample size, the use of intact groups and time constrains which may have affected the results.…”