KHARASHASH BAZARKHAN (MONGOL ASPIRATION INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL )

EMBRACING METACOGNITION IN LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING : METHODOLOGIES AND TEACHING APPROACHES

“Too often, we teach students what to think but not how to think” (OECD insights, 2014). This quote implies the use of effective teaching strategies to improve learning outcomes. Cognitive strategies, including mnemonics techniques and graphic organizers, are widely employed in the classrooms to engage learners in learning, while the use of metacognitive strategies, involving planning, monitoring, evaluating, and reflecting, remains as challenge for most teachers. Vast research highlights the benefit of metacognition on learners’ academic achievements and self-regulation of learning (Fisher, 2006; Flavell, 1970; Hattie, 2008; Perkins, 1992). However, explicit instruction and deliberate application of metacognitive strategies needs to be emphasised more. Thus, the aim of this practice-oriented workshop is to provide effective metacognitive strategies, including the debriefing cognitive activities, metacognitive talks, and reflective thinking in the language teaching classrooms. Additionally, participants will be encouraged to actively engage in various activities that help them distinguish the cognitive strategies from metacognitive ones. These tasks enable English language practitioners to understand when to use such strategies and how to encourage learners to take responsibilities for developing their metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulations. Hence, the attendees will benefit from the pedagogy and the application of effective metacognitive strategies and reflect on the implication of the session for their daily practices. Moreover, these strongly evidence-based and low-cost metacognitive strategies are encouraged to be applied into language teaching classrooms for the mastery of language learning.

I am an English teacher with 10 years of experience working at secondary and high schools. I earned Master of Education (Language Education) degree from Flinders University, Australia in 2021. My current role is a program leader for Professional Development Qualification Center at the Mongol Aspiration International school where I am responsible for equipping teachers with effective teaching and learning strategies, conducting workshops and observing classroom teachings and providing constructive feedback. The key area of my research is cognition and metacognition therefore, I am passionate about sharing my experience to develop metacognition for effectiveness of language teaching and learning.