A Study of The Relationship between Metacognitive Reading Strategies among Undergraduates

Abstract

Reading is a fundamental skill in language learning for learners to produce: write and speak the target language. In order to perform successfully in academic and professional settings, learners are required to learn new knowledge by reading and comprehending the written texts extensively and effectively. Nevertheless, poor reading literacy rate, performance and struggling readers are evidently some reading problems among second language learners and to better comprehend learners’ difficulties this study explored learners’ perceptions on their usage of metacognitive reading strategies. 109 undergraduates of a Malaysian university responded to the survey for this quantitative study. The study found that global reading strategies, problem solving strategies and support reading strategies were employed in reading tasks and the relationships between strategies were strong indicating that planning before reading, monitoring reading progress, solving issues and relying on support or help during reading are strategies used in reading tasks. Thus, this suggests that background knowledge or pre-reading activities and guidance are critical for learners to be able to complete reading activities well.