The Adoption Of Metacognitive Strategies As Predictors Of Success Among Online Business English Students In Ecuador. Research & Development Thursday, November 15th Start Time: 18:00 End Time: 18:30 Edificio CFRD, Room PC1 Christopher Allen Linnaeus University, Sweden christopher.allen@lnu.se Maria del Carmen BoloĂąa LĂłpez Universidad Casa Grande, Ecuador contacts_@hotmail.com ABSTRACT This presentation explores the extent to which online business English trainees are able to adopt specific metacognitive strategies stemming from work in learner autonomy and language learning strategies in accordance with the framework put forward by Oxford (1990) and Chamot and O'Malley (1990) and furthermore whether the adoption of specific strategies can serve as predictors of success in the completion of a Moodle-based workshop. While there is an extensive research literature on language learning strategies from f2f teaching and mainstream language education, the adoption of strategies in purely online and asynchronous contexts has received less attention. The study focuses on academic progress on a Moodle-based ESP workshop for Business English and Entrepreneurship offered by a university in Ecuador. The workshop, running over a three week period, was aimed at exam preparation and project management. The students, all business professionals (profesionalizantes) studying online alongside full-time working commitments, followed a skills and content-based workshop in business English proficiency. The workshop included the selection of self-study resources related to effective communication in business organisations, business writing and entrepreneurship. The workshop also focused on business environments, operations and business tools with a focus on business project management. A final component of the workshop addressed business enterprise, leadership and the fostering of entrepreneurship. Specific language skills in focus included the receptive skills of reading and listening and the productive skills of email writing and oral presentations. Following the completion of the workshop, professionals were interviewed in Spanish about their adoption of metacognitive strategies in developing learner autonomy through the university's Moodle VLE site. Metacognitive strategies were identified in advance based on a previous study (Allen and BoloĂąa Lopez 2018) and included time organization, learning management, progress monitoring in response to teacher feedback and reflective assessment on learning. On the basis of interview responses, students were assigned to various categories depending on their perceived adoption of specific strategies. Using the results from the Cambridge Business English Preliminary Test administered at the end of the workshop by the university, the strategy categories best predicting success on the test were identified.
201