What is metacognitive awareness?

Metacognition is a term that was coined by Flavell in 1970 and there has been much debate over a suitable definition. In a language learning context this means knowing about oneself as a learner, in other words, the knowledge and self-awareness a learner has of their own language learning process, and is regarded as the key to successful language learning.

Metacognition and secondary school learners

What about metacognition and school learners? Research has shown that even quite young children possess a considerable degree of metacognitive knowledge. By the time they reach secondary school, basic skills have been mastered, they are in the early years of adolescence and, for most young people, there is a marked development of mental functioning, an increased self-awareness and a change from Piaget's concrete operations to formal reasoning. Translated into classroom terms this means that our pupils are at a stage where we can encourage them to reflect critically on what they are doing and why, in order to plan and direct their own learning.

However, many teaching situations and teaching materials do not encourage this kind of reflection and therefore do not contribute to the development of metacognitive awareness, despite the fact that it is generally agreed that the learning purposes, strategies and the possibility of strategy transfer to other tasks must, at some point in the learning process, be made explicit to the learner. Learners should not be left to uncover the implicit without some kind of prompt or help. It is, therefore, the responsibility of the concerned, individual teacher to add this missing dimension.

My own classroom practice has shown that students are capable of understanding and benefit from being given information about classroom procedures. Furthermore, asked the right questions, they are capable of expressing an awareness about their own learning that they are rarely given credit for and this awareness can be developed. The kind of awareness or knowledge that learners do have about their learning concerns the comparative difficulty of different types of tasks, knowledge about themselves as learners and an awareness of the ways in which they generally operate strategically. What does not develop either as fast or as inevitably is the ability to use that knowledge spontaneously in pursuance of a cognitive goal.

Metacognitive awareness in a language learning context

In a language learning context I see metacognitive awareness as an umbrella term (Fig. 1) which incorporates the following areas. These overlap to some extent and all involve the development of positive attitudes, self-confidence and self-awareness.

a Language awareness
The aim here is to stimulate students' interest and curiosity about language "to challenge pupils to ask questions about language" (Hawkins 1984) in order to develop understanding of and knowledge about language in general, including the foreign language, the mother tongue and, if appropriate and depending on the context. other languages. This would involve using metalanguage (the mother tongue or target language) for stating the aims of a lesson. for explaining the use of different classroom activities, for signposting the stages of a lesson. for giving classroom instructions. for describing language, for analysing language, for making comparisons to find similarities and differences between the L1 and L2 and for discovering rules.

b Cognitive awareness
The main aim here is to help students understand why they are learning a foreign language at school and that in addition to linguistic outcomes, it also offers important personal, cognitive. cultural, affective and social gains. It involves explaining how they are going to learn a foreign language in class, the type of materials they are going to use and the activities they are going to do; getting them to think about how they learn. which strategies they use to help them to remember, to concentrate, to pay attention; how and when to review. how to evaluate and monitor their learning and to decide what they need to do next.

c Social awareness
This will involve students in collaborative activities which, in some contexts, may involve a new understanding of how to behave in class, towards the teacher and towards each other; to establish a working consensus which will contribute towards building class, peer, teacher and individual respect; and to learn to interact and cooperate together in activities.

d Cultural awareness
Girard's (1991 ) definition of this important area "to develop understanding and openness towards others" would involve pupils in activities which would enable them to discover similarities and differences between themselves and other people and to see these in a positive light. The development of tolerance and positive attitudes to the foreign language culture and people will draw pupils away from a mono-cultural perspective and into a broader view of the world.

Why is the development of metacognitive awareness important?

As already stated, the development of metacognitive awareness is considered to be the key to successful learning.

Our students get lots of implicit practice in the classroom in experimenting with different cognitive strategies, for example tasks that get them to sort or classify, to compare, to match, to select, to predict, to guess, to sequence, etc., but most classroom situations and materials rarely inform students explicitly about why they are using certain strategies or get them to reflect on how they are learning. In other words, the metacognitive dimension is missing, so students are not helped to understand the significance of what they are doing. Although some published materials now include activities which get students to review what they have learnt, (see Sinclair and Ellis 1992) these are often in the form of self-tests or check lists which focus solely on the product or the linguistic content of a learning unit and not, in any way, on the processes involved. The emphasis here is "on learning something rather than on learning to learn" (Wenden 1987). The inclusion of simple instruments for self-assessment is also a welcome addition to published materials, but again these rarely encourage any reflection on the learning process and teacher's books offer little support or guidance to the teacher on how to develop this important aspect of learning.

Research has shown (O'Malley et al., 198.5, Ellis and Sinclair, 1989) that without the combination of metacognitive and cognitive strategy development learners are unlikely to be able to transfer strategies to other tasks. As O'Malley et al. state, "Students without metacognitive approaches are essentially learners without direction and ability to review their progress, accomplishments and future learning directions."

In other words, students need activities which incorporate reflection, thinking about what they are going to do and why, experimentation, doing a task and manipulating the language to achieve a goal, such as listen and colour, listen and draw, listen and sequence, etc., and further reflection, by asking such questions as What did I do? Why did I do it? How did I do it? How well did I do? What do I need to do next? In this way, the implicit becomes explicit -pupils become aware of what they are doing and why. We can assume that "the more informed (and aware) learners are about language and language learning the more effective they will be at managing their own learning and at language learning" (Ellis and Sinclair, op. cit).

A methodology for developing metacognitive awareness

I would like to propose a methodology for developing metacognitive awareness which could be applied to existing classroom contexts with little disruption. Most lessons consist, more or less, of three principal stages: revision and presentation of language items, and planning and preparation for an activity; doing an activity or a task to practise the language items and to develop skills areas; further practice to consolidate, extend and review language, perhaps in a different context and/or to produce an outcome such as a book, a poster, a completed worksheet and so on. Applied to the skills areas, for example, listening, these stages are usually referred to as pre-, while and post-listening. These stages provide the teacher with a framework in which to incorporate reflection, experimentation and further reflection, as mentioned above, representing the on-going cyclical nature of learning in which children plan, do and review. (Fig.2) This general strategy for learning is important because it can be used as a framework for learning any subject, including language learning.

A methodology for developing metacognitive awareness
stage 1 >> stage 2 >> stage 3
pre-listening >>while-listening >> post-listening
reflection >> experimentation >> further reflection
PLAN >> DO >> REVIEW

In order to do this, teachers will need to expand their role (Wenden 1985) by taking on a guiding, questioning role which will involve informing students about language learning and what they are doing and how they are going to do it. He or she can do this by prompting, modelling questions and strategies, demonstrating, discussing learning and helping students reflect on what they have done, how they did it and how well they did. This is an approach I have used regularly with students in France. Working in this way with beginner or low level learners naturally requires the use of the mother tongue and a little extra time. The extra time can easily be found if the teacher is prepared to take a few minutes away from the content of the foreign language lesson to focus on the process.

Getting students to focus on the process of what they do may be a new experience for many. At first their replies to questions will be vague and they will need to be pushed to think and justify their responses. Such an approach needs to be built up gradually over a period of time but, little by little, students will become more aware of the foreign language learning process and of themselves as language learners, more efficient at thinking for themselves and much more actively and personally involved in their own learning.

Asking the right questions

Reference has been made to the teacher's expanded role, which includes taking on a questioning role. What are the right questions to ask to encourage active and critical reflection? My experience has shown that the questions we ask about learning have to be extremely clear and directly related to a learning experience. We are inviting students to think about an aspect of their learning that is abstract and, for most, will be new. Unless the questions are well-formulated and concrete, in accessible language, the students will be confused and unable to reply in a way that helps them, or their teacher, become aware of their learning processes. A good question, then, must be probing and an invitation to think, so that it makes pupils justify their responses, it must focus their attention and encourage observation, invite enquiry and stimulate, because it is open-ended. It should be productive and seek a response and generate more questions. Below are some examples of the type of questions teachers could ask in order to develop cognitive awareness:

• How do you remember words?
• What helped you understand the words in the story?
• What do we need to know to do the task?
• How can we find out?
• What have we done today? Why?
• How did we do it?
• How well did you do?
• What do you need to revise? Why?
• What are you going to do next? Why?
• What did you do if you didn't understand?
• How did you check your work?
• How did you work out the answers?

These questions can be described as oral prompts which could be integrated into a learning conversation to encourage the learner to reflect and articulate. Written questions, guided journals, or a letter to a teacher are other techniques that can be used.

Applying the 'plan-do-review' strategy

It is the responsibility of the teacher to create a context and purpose for learning, and I would like to demonstrate an example of how I applied the 'plan-do-review' strategy with a class of 12- 13 year-olds at the recently opened Young Learners Centre at the British Council in Paris. I chose a storybook called Ketchup on Your Cornflakes, which, like any good storybook, provides a flexible resource that can be used with a variety of pupils of different ages and levels. Although at first glance the book looks simplistic, the use of the split page technique allows many amusing and crazy combinations of words and images based on the structure Do you like (ketchup on your cornflakes)? Do you ' like (custard on your apple pie)? and so on. Linguistically, it provides an ideal context for introducing and revising the question Do you like . . .?, related vocabulary and prepositions. Grammatically, in Michael Lewis's terms, pupils are provided with a 'pattern' (Do you like.. .?) which allows them to generate all kinds of other questions. However, it goes further than the basic question-form Do you like cornflakes/apple pie? as it requires pupils to think about combinations of things that are both grammatically and culturally appropriate: Do you like custard on your apple pie? as opposed to Do you like custard on your chips?

The 'plan' and 'do' stages involved revision and practice of the question Do you like . . .?, prepositions and vocabulary, and the reading aloud of the storybook when pupils were invited to turn pages of their own choice to create strange and unexpected combinations.

The review and extension stage involved making a book using the same basic idea. In order to do this, the pupils first analysed the text and structure of the book. By questioning the pupils (How is the book structured? Where's the text? Where are the illustrations? What's on the right/left page? How is the text divided, What type of word is this? How does the text begin? How does the text end? What about the text in the middle?), we created a model on the board of how the book was constructed:

Coloured paper was distributed and collated, and the pupils started to think about their own combinations of words and images, and began drafting the first version of their books. Suggestions were tried out, evaluated, selected or rejected, and modified and corrected as necessary. Pupils then produced the final version of their book. The next step was to try the books out on their classmates and invite them to make crazy combinations. (Fig.5) The 'plan-do- review' strategy provided a framework for the exploitation of Ketchup on Your Cornflakes enabling the development of the different aspects of metacognitive awareness as in Fig. 1

The 'plan-do-review' strategy can be applied in a way that it does not disrupt classroom procedures or interfere with the syllabus. The extra time needed to question pupils or to get them to complete a questionnaire is considered a necessary and worthwhile investment. It also allows important questions to be modelled, so pupils will be able to ask themselves these independently on other occasions.

But does developing metacognitive awareness make our pupils better foreign language learners? This I cannot say as I have never had the opportunity to set up a controlled study and a great deal of research still needs to be done to find out the rate at which a learner gains more self-awareness of their own learning process. What I do know and have observed is that students develop a greater understanding of themselves as language learners, become more actively and personally involved in the learning process, more confident, more curious and ask more questions, and zzz develop strong motivation and positive attitudes towards language learning. , These I consider to be valuable and worthwhile outcomes.

To conclude, I would hope that the teaching profession will move to a position where there is a recognition of the benefits of and a purposeful move towards the development of metacognitive awareness, so that this missing dimension is added to day-to-day classroom procedures of classroom management and lesson planning. Teachers need to reflect on the different aspects of metacognition, so they are integrated into lessons and developed as naturally and as systematically as putting up an umbrella when it rains! (Fig.6)

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Storybook: Ketchup on your cornflakes? Nick Sharratt, Scholastic Children's Books