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Chapter 2 Literature Review

In this chapter, the author will give a brief account of previous studies on metacognition and reading which have been given by linguists both at home and abroad.

2.1 Previous Studies on Metacognitive Strategy

The concept of metacognition was set up at first by American psychologist Flavell in 1970s on the basis of meta-memory. Flavell (1976) pointed out that metacognition referred to one’s knowledge concerning one’s own cognitive process or anything related to them. Also, some other linguists set up concepts of metacognition on the basis of their own understanding. Brown (1983) said metacognition was a cognitive machining process of jumping out of a system then observing it and he thought metacognition was any knowledge aimed at cognitive process and result, and a cognitive activity adjusting cognitive process. He defined metacognition as a conscious awareness and ability of control over thinking in process of learning (Brown, 1987). He distinguished metacognitive knowledge and regulative knowledge and divided metacognitive knowledge into tasks, subjects and strategies. Brown stressed there were three elements in regulative knowledge, which were: planning, monitoring and evaluating knowledge. All of the knowledge about these three components helped students use appropriate metacognitive strategies in learning English. Cohen (1998) held the viewpoint that metacognition was a enthusiastic, self-examination of cognitive machining process.

Of which, there were different thoughts on metacognitive structure. Flavell(1979) thought metacognition was made up of two parts: metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive experience. He said that metacognitive experience was conscious cognitive and conscious action based on situations, subjects and emotions. Strategies were used when conscious action or emotion had occurred before. Both two parts of metacognition interact with each other and one influenced the other. On one hand, Metacognitive knowledge helped explaining the metacognitive experience, and it guided behavioral performance of metacognitive experiences. On the other hand, metacognitive experience revised, influenced, added, deduced and consummated the metacognitive knowledge. Moreover, with the progress of era, metacognitive knowledge needed more practice and experiences to help it be more perfect. He also classified clearly between cognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategy. He said cognitive knowledge was the cause of cognitive goal when using metacognitive strategy. However, metacognitive strategy monitored the developing of cognitive knowledge. He also set a sample to support this theory. When a student did reading comprehension exercise, he would read title of passage firstly to get writer’s purpose or to guess the main content of passage. text headings to get the meaning of the content. Here he unconsciously used metacognitive strategy to get information he has just read. Then, the information he got transformed into his own words and thinking of this passage. He would have the main meaning of what the text showed based on his own cognitive knowledge.

Brown(1987) considered that metacognition was conscious knowledge and supervision or regulation about cognition. Metacognitive structure included metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive supervision. It was cal