【正文】 chool as a necessary and supplementary part of normal courses according to the requirement of the standards for the new curriculum, which is totally different from other traditional courses.According to L252。 and Liu (2003), ROL was first carried out in 38 statelevel experimental areas for basic education curriculum reform in 2001, aimed at bining school education with life, practice and students’ selfdevelopment, thus changing students’ learning mode and developing students’ abilities to find and research problems. Therefore, ROL refers to students’ learning activities of choosing and determining certain research topics or projects from their learning and social life, and of collecting, analyzing and processing information in which they experience the process of knowledge acquisition. With the teacher’s guidance, students can have a better understanding of society, learn how to learn, develop their abilities to analyze and solve problems, and improve their creativity. The main characteristics of ROL are practicalness, studentcenteredness, inquiry, autonomy and openness. Previous studies of metacognition Previous studies of metacognition abroad The word “metacognition” was put forward in America. Even though researchers from other countries also made a lot of studies on this subject, the greatest achievements e mainly from the results of American researchers. Metacognitive knowledge:According to Flavell (1979), metacognitive knowledge refers to one’s stored world knowledge that “has to do with people’s cognitive creasures and with their diverse cognitive tasks, goals, actions, and experiences”. Metacognitive knowledge subsumes three scale—person knowledge, task knowledge and strategy knowledge. Knowledge of person variables refers to the “general knowledge about how human beings learn and process information, as well as individual knowledge of one39。s own learning processes!” (Flavell, 1979). There are two dimensions for this variable: the knowledge about interindividual differences and intraindividual differences (Flavell, 1979). Flavell defines intraindividual variables as “knowledge or beliefs about the interests, propensities, aptitudes, abilities, and the like, of oneself or of another person”. “Interindividual variables provide parisons between or among people in a relativistic manner” (Cooper, 2005). Examples given by Flavell for this type of knowledge are that a person conceives that he can learn better by means of listening instead of reading and a person thinks that her friend is more socially conscious pared with him. One’s beliefs about himself as a learner may contribute to or impede performance during learning process.Knowledge of task variables is the knowledge about “the nature of the task as well as the type of processing demands that it will place upon the individual” (Flavell,1979). This kind of knowledge directs the learners when they deal with a task and provides the clues of how successful that they can be. There are several aspects of this variable that learners should have relevant knowledge. First, learners should have the knowledge about the nature, purpose and content of the specific task. That is to say, they should know the classification of a certain task and what the task is. Learning a language is quite different from finishing other tasks and different skills of languagelearning involve different efforts. Second, learners must be conscious of those tasks that entail deliberate efforts on their part. Third, the knowledge of task demands is also necessary. For example, learners should know the difficulty level, the relevant materials needed for the task, the methods for going through the task. In a word, learners should have a better understanding about the implications that various tasks carry with them, since different tasks require different processing and place different demands on the learners. Knowledge of strategy variables concerns the knowledge about “both cognitive and metacognitive strategies, as well as conditional knowledge about when and where it is appropriate to use such strategies” (Flavell, 1979). This kind of knowledge involves the nature and utility of the strategies, most importantly which strategy can be used most effectively in dealing with particular tasks. According to Flavell (1987, cited in Cooper, 2005), strategy variables are closely related with learners’ goals or objectives during the learning process. In addition, it is important to differentiate between cognitive strategies and metacognitive ones. Wenden (1991) adapts Flavell’s (1979) classification of metacognitive knowledge to describe second language learner’s metacognitive knowledge. According to him, person knowledge includes cognitive factors and affective factors that facilitate learning. Strategy knowledge is knowledge about effective strategies for particular tasks and general principles to determine strategy choice. Task knowledge consists of task purpose or significance and task demands. Later, bining new development in the concept, Wenden (1998, cited in Thanasoulas, 2000) states that “metacognitive knowledge includes all facts learners acquire about their own cognitive processes as they are applied and used to gain knowledge and acquire skills in varied situations”.Schraw (1998, 2001) points out that learners’ metacognitive knowledge includes three types of knowledge: declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge and conditional knowledge. He describes in detail the definitions and uses of these three types knowledge. In his view, the declarative knowledge means knowing “about” things. It helps students have more knowledge about different aspects of memory such as capacity, limitation and rehearsal. Procedural knowledge refers to how to do things. Much of his knowledge is represented as heuristics and strategies. It helps individuals perform tasks automatically, process a larger repertoire of strategies, sequence strategies effec