The Effect of Metacognitive Strategy Training on Students' Speech Act Production

The identification of learning styles and the implementation of successful learning strategies have a significant impact on English teaching and learning. This study investigates the extent to which metacognitive strategy training assists EFL learners to produce speech act of request, apology, refusal and complain. To this end, two intermediate-level classes were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Experimental group received metacognitive training and control group received conventional way of teaching speech acts. The treatment lasted for 11 sessions. Each session involved the metacognitive strategy instruction followed by pragmatic problem-solving tasks. To examine the data, the Shapiro-Wilk test and multivariate analysis of variance were conducted using SPSS software. The findings indicated that metacognitive strategy training led to notable improvements in various aspects of speech act production, such as making requests, apologies, refusals, and complain in experimental group. Moreover, Metacognition is essential for enhancing speaking abilities as it involves individuals being conscious of their own thinking processes to enhance their learning.