Cultivating students’ English independent learning ability is one of the core contents in English teaching. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of teaching mode guided by metacognitive theory on college English independent learning ability. Taking classroom practice as an opportunity, two classes of a university with a total of 98 students were selected as research subjects, and data were collected and statistically analyzed through questionnaires. The metacognitive level of the experimental students was improved, and the use of metacognitive strategies rose by 64.14% compared with that before the experiment. There is a significant difference between the independent learning ability of students in the two classes after the experiment (p<0.01), and the experimental students’ English independent learning ability is 11.84% higher than that of the control students, and 11.87% higher than that before the experiment. From the perspective of correlation, it is concluded that there is a significant correlation between metacognitive strategies and independent learning ability. The results show that the teaching model based on metacognitive theory can improve the independent learning ability of college English.
