Differences between monolinguals and bilinguals/males and females in English reading comprehension and reading strategy use

Abstract

The present study aims at finding the differences between bilingual and monolingual learners across gender in the use of cognitive, metacognitive, and total reading strategies, as well as reading comprehension ability. To this end, 50 Persian–Turkish bilinguals and 36 Persian monolinguals participated in the study. A standard test of reading comprehension and two questionnaires were employed for data collection: a background questionnaire to determine if the subjects were bilingual or monolingual and a standardized Likert scale questionnaire to identify the reading strategies used by bilinguals and monolinguals. To analyze the data, four factorial ANOVAs were conducted with an alpha set at .05 for each effect. The results showed that bilinguals and females outperformed monolinguals and males, respectively, in reading comprehension. Moreover, bilinguals and monolinguals differed in their use of metacognitive strategies but not cognitive ones. Interestingly, there was no difference between males and females in using cognitive and metacognitive strategies, but they differed in total strategy use. The results which are discussed in the light of previous research can provide some useful insights into syllabus design and English language teaching.