Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Purpose of the Thesis
For teachers, how to equip students with meta-cognitive strategy is not a newsubject. Many domestic and foreign language teachers have presented their points ofview on this topic. Most of them proposed that students' meta-cognitive strategy canbe cultivated thorough English listening,speaking,writing and reading skills. In orderto broaden the application of meta-cognitive strategy, the author chose to studymeta-cognitive strategy as applied to both language and culture teaching. From thisnew teaching model, students can effectively manage their studies by applyingmeta-cognitive strategy to their language and culture learning. Therefore, this articlehas both theoretical and practical significance.
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1.2 Research Background
Even though meta-cognitive strategy has been extensively used in the field oflanguage teaching, educators still find it difficult to apply it properly. Most previousstudies chose college students as subjects, researchers believed that college studentshad a higher level of knowledge and autonomy, they had self control and madegreater achievements in language learning. At the same time, many studies haveapplied the meta-cognitive strategy to listening, speaking, reading and writingteaching. Because, since 2002, cultural awareness has been an important aspect ofcomprehensive language application ability in the New Curriculum Standards^ cultureteaching should attract more attention. So this study not only proved that meta-cognitive strategy can be used in the middle schools"language and cultureteaching,but also influenced students,language and culture learning. From Joan Rubinand Irene Thompson(2004) points of view,to be a successful language learner,students should be in control of paying attention to procedures and strategies indifferent language learning situations.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Language and Culture
So many definitions of language exist but the basic concept is the same, languagedistinguishes humans from animals. Only when the main idea being presented is fullyunderstood within a cultural context does true communication take place. In this sense,language is not just a tool but an important carrier of culture. English anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor was the first one to give the definitionof culture. Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art,morals, law, customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as amember of society. (Edward Burnett Tylor，1871:1)Culture may be defined as what a society does and thinks. (Sapir, 1921:216)What really binds men together is their culture~the ideas and the standards theyhave in common. (Ruth. Benedict, 1935:16)Culture is man，s medium： there is not one aspect of human life that is not touchedand altered by culture. This means personality，how people express themselves,including shows of emotions, the way they think, how they move, how problems aresolved, how their cities are planned and laid out’ how transportation systems functionand are organized, as well as how economic and government systems are put togetherand function, (Edward T, Hall, 1959:16)Throughout history, there are nearly 400 definitions of culture. From these complexdefinitions.we can see culture is a complex concept. Therefore, Chastain( 1976,388)classified culture into two categories: large C culture and small c culture. Large Cculture focuses on contributions of a society in general or of outstanding individuals,such as great politicians，heroes, writers and artists. Small c culture is more broadly，referring to people's way of life, their ways of thinking, habits, customs, traditions.
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2.2 Language Teaching and Culture Teaching
The purpose of foreign language teaching is to improve the learners ’communicative ability. Hymes (1971) pointed out that communication skills includedlanguage ability and pragmatic competence. Imagine if a man does not have thecultural background knowledge of the target language and does not understand itstraditions and values. It becomes harder for him to communicate correctly. That is tosay, in cross-cultural communication, the practical application of language ability ismore important than the language itself. However, in foreign language teaching,teachers can easily see that most of the students' pragmatic competence issignificantly lower than the language ability. In actual interactions students willalways meet all kinds of obstacles which are caused by the misunderstanding betweeneach other's social and cultural background. In the early 1980s, Xu Guozhang (1980) first proposed culture connotations andpointed out the insufficient attention given to cultural factors. Since then，culturalfactors have started to attract more attentions in English teaching. Chinese scholars'research proposes dividing the content of culture teaching into two categories. Thefirst category is based on the idea that culture teaching should be focus on the contentof the target language culture because the ultimate goal of foreign language teachingis to enable students to communicate effectively with the native speaker.(LiuAizhen，2000:9) The second category is defined by the theory that culture teachingcontent should include the target language culture and native culture. Liu Changjiang(2003) stated more clearly that there were two problems in current foreign languageeducation and cultural education: learning the target culture and native culture,expressing these two cultures in the target language,
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Chapter Three Theoretical Basis ........13
3.1 Meta-cognition Theory .......13
3.2 Meta-cognitive Strategy .......14
3.2.1 The Definition of Meta-cognitive Strategy....... 14
3.2.2 The Researches on Meta-cognitive Strategy....... 15
Chapter Four The Research Design .......17
4.1 The Purpose of the Researc....... 17
42 The Research Question .......18
4.3 Instruments .......18
4.4 The procedures of the Survey....... 20
4.5 Results and Discussions of the Surve....... 21
Chapter Five Experiment .......29
5.1 Purpose .......29
5.2 The Hypothesis of the Experiment....... 29
5.3 Participants....... 29
5.4 Instrument....... 30
5.5 Pre-test....... 30
5.6 The Experimental Application....... 30
5.7 Post-test....... 35
Chapter Six Data Analysis and Results
6.1 Data Analysis
The pre-test included some culture knowledge from Module 5 to 9. There were10-item and each item was 10 score. The author used it to test the meta-cognitivestrategy level in the experimental class and control class separately before theexperiment. 71 students from Grade 8 participated the test in total. The results ofpre-test in these two classes as follows; From table 6-1 and table 6-2, it showed that the mean of control class andexperimental class were 60.00 and 63.44. It meant that the difference of average scorebetween these two classes was not so obvious. The Sig.between these two classes was0.502 which was higher than 0.05. So the Equal Variances assumed should bechecked. The Sig.(2 tailed)=0.445(P<0.05) manifested there was no significantdifference between the control and experimental class in the pre-test. Therefore, thelanguage and culture learning ability was similar in two classes before they weretaught.
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Conclusion
In this experiment, the teacher used the same teaching material but with differentstrategies to students. Before teaching module 5 to 9，there was no remarkabledifference in the language and culture learning ability by testing the same questions.After teaching six modules, the experiment results in these two classes were different.The experimental class's test score was higher than the control class. The post testresults also showed that the experimental class students' answering speed was faster.This means meta-cognitive strategy can effectively improve the students' languageand culture study. To sum up, students can recognize the importance ofmeta-cognitive strategy. Meta-cognitive strategy can help them manage themselves inthe process of learning by planning, monitoring or evaluating.
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Reference (omitted)
