Metacognitive Strategies Used By Good Students To Improve Their English Achievement: A Case Study at SMP Muhammadiyah 4 Sambi Boyolali

The objectives of this research are to investigate (1) the types of metacognitive strategies and (2) the preference’ types of metacognitive strategies which are used by good students in learning English. The learning strategy is based on Oxford’s classification of metacognitive strategies. This research used qualitative research in the form of a case study research. This research used six good students of SMP Muhammadiyah 4 Sambi who had the high report and listed from the English teacher. Data were collected in two ways: distributing a set of open questionnaires and open-ended interviews. In analyzing the data, the researcher used Huberman which consists of data reduction, display of the data, and verification of data. The findings indicated that (1) all types of metacognitive strategies used by good students, they are overview and linking with already known material (7,3%), paying attention (14,6%), delaying speech production to focus on listening (14,6%), finding out about language learning (7,3%), organizing (9,76%), setting goals and objectives (7,3%), identifying the purpose of language task (2,4%), planning for a language task (4,9%), seeking practice opportunities (12,2%), self-monitoring (7,3%), and self-evaluating (12,2%); (2) The preference’ types of metacognitive strategies used by good students are paying attention (66,67%) and seeking practice opportunities (33, 33%). The use of metacognitive strategies gives positive impacts to the good students in improving their English achievement