Assessing Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategy Use for Students from the Faculty of Education at the University of King Abdulaziz

Abstract

Accepted: 13.11.2013 In this study, we aimed to investigate the metacognitive awareness reading strategies used by students from the Faculty of Education at the King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. We also aimed to determine whether the strategies varied with gender, area of specialization, and academic achievement variables. To achieve the objectives of the study, the metacognitive awareness reading strategies inventory (MARSI) was used. The inventory consisted of 30 items distributed into 3 subscale categories, namely problem-solving strategies, global-reading strategies, and support-reading strategies. The sample of the study consisted of 550 randomly selected undergraduate students, comprising 269 male and 281 female participants, aged 19 to 22 years. The results of the study revealed that the study sample practicing degree of the strategic reader behaviors was high, where the problem-solving strategies scale came firstly with high degree, followed by global-reading strategies with moderate degree, followed by support-reading strategies with moderate degree too . The results demonstrated that female participants read more, and performed better academically, and these results were statistically significant. No significant statistical difference existed for reading performance linked to area of specialization, except on the global subscale where variance was visible between junior students and students with learning disabilities. The reading performance of students with learning disabilities was superior. In addition, statistical variance was observed regarding the interaction between variables.