在大学英语教学改革困难重重的今天,广大外语教师从未停止过实践改革的尝试。元认知的价值及其对外语教学所起的重要性已是有目共睹。在英语学习过程中,学生的语言学习有多种策略可循,但如果没有必要的元认知技能来帮助他们决定在某种情况下使用哪种策略或改变策略,那么他们就不是成功的学习者。学生元认知能力的缺乏是导致其语言学习效率低下及学习失败的原因所在。在文献检索这一门实践课中培养学生的元认知能力能够促进学生改进学习方法、自觉调整学习策略、不断提高学习效率的有效手段。同时又能促进高校教师改进教学管理、获取教学反馈信息、保证教学质量的重要依据。本文从元认知策略的具体手段出发,对文献检索的课程设置进行了探讨。 At the difficult university English teaching reform today, the majority of foreign language teachers have never stopped trying to practice the reform. The value of metacognition and its importance to foreign language teaching is obvious to all. There are a number of strategies that students can use to facilitate their language learning in English learning, but they are not successful in learning without the necessary metacognitive skills to help them decide which strategies to use or change in a given situation By. The lack of students’ metacognitive ability is the reason of their low efficiency of language learning and learning failure. In the practical course of document retrieval, cultivating students’ metacognitive ability can promote students to improve their learning methods, consciously adjust learning strategies and continuously improve their learning efficiency. At the same time, it can promote college teachers to improve teaching management, access to teaching feedback, to ensure the quality of teaching an important basis. In this paper, starting from the concrete means of metacognitive strategy, the paper discusses the course setting of literature retrieval.