Metacognitive Skills: Building on techniques for teaching grammar

Another recent article in Foreign Language Annals echoes, at least for me, my last post on teaching grammar in the target language. David R. Thompson argues we should promote metacognitive skills in language classrooms ("Promoting Metacognitive Skills in Intermediate Spanish: Report of a Classroom Research Project" Vol 45 No 3 Fall 2012 pgs 447-462). Meaning we should encourage our students to self-monitor and reflect on their learning. As a result they will be more aware of their learning and feel a greater sense of ownership over it.

A couple of highlights:

• "Learning should include opportunities for students to talk explicitly about methods of problem-solving and connect strategy selection and evaluation to particular scenarios" (449). My thought: doing this will give students tools and should empower them.
• "Most educational psychologists agree that metacognitive skills should be embedded in disciplinary content instruction and that instructors should include cues for strategy selection and evaluation in assignments" (449, citing Pintrich 2002, Svinicki 1999, Veenman et all 2006). My thought: it makes sense to share with students techniques that are likely to be more effective for them, perhaps things that worked for us, the instructors, when we were first learning the concepts. At the same time I wonder if this reflection, which will inevitably be done in the students' first language, will be a mental detour away from the important concepts at hand. Furthermore, I wonder if this self-monitoring and reflection replicates L1 learning. It seems to me no, it doesn't...

Examples of metacognitive activities:

• posttest reflection exercises
• talking explicitly about study strategies during classtime
• anonymous surveys getting students to think about their learning strategies

Why this made me think of my last post:

Although assigning students self-monitoring assignments may lead them in the direction of L1 use and away from the central concept being taught, I think any activity that builds awareness and confidence, is a good one. Learning grammar in a second language can be very intimidating to students who don't know the formal grammar rules of their first language. Metacognitive skills can boost confidence.