Assessing Saudi EFL Learners’ Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

With extant studies producing inconclusive findings regarding English as foreign language (EFL) readers’ metacognitive strategies, researchers are yet to investigate the perceived metacognitive awareness and use of reading strategies among tertiary EFL learners with varying proficiency levels, an area that has not fully received attention in the Saudi context. Hence, this study investigated differences in the metacognitive reading strategies that Saudi students learning English as a foreign language used when reading English texts to determine whether metacognitive awareness varied across proficiency levels (low, intermediate, and high). The study adapted and administered the Survey of Reading Strategies questionnaire to 260 Saudi English majors and analyzed the data using independent-samples ANOVA across the three proficiency groups, and found how participants varied in their perceived use of reading strategies across global, problem-solving, and support strategy categories. Overall, EFL learners with high-proficiency reported global and problem-solving strategies more often than intermediate- and low-proficient groups did, while low-proficiency group reported using support strategies more often than high- and intermediate-proficiency groups did. The study results also revealed how problem-solving strategies were most frequently reported by study participants, followed by support and global strategies. Subsequently, two major pedagogical implications are discussed: the need for Saudi EFL readers to be exposed to diverse reading strategies to help facilitate their reading comprehension of English texts, as well to reading-strategy instruction, which should emphasize global, problem-solving, and support strategies for Saudi EFL learners with varying reading abilities across different reading tasks.