Empowering ESL Readers with Metacognitive Reading Strategies

Abstract

Reading is regarded as one of the essential skills for learners wanting to attend university. Many researchers believe that readers need to be aware of and employ effective reading strategies in order to be able to read accurately the information from print and beyond. In the academic context, reading involves numerous activities such as understanding and remembering ideas, identifying and selectively attending to important information, monitoring comprehension and learning, synthesizing information as well as critically evaluating a text. As readers, they interact with the text and their strategic actions lead them to effective reading comprehension. Strategic knowledge (metacognition) and monitoring of the comprehension processes is an important aspect in skilled reading. Previous studies have evidence that indicated many second language learners are ill-equipped to handle the academic reading demands. One of the most cited reasons is that these learners are not making full use of their own cognitive process or metacognition to regulate their reading abilities. This paper aims to explicate the metacognitive reading strategies employed by a group of EFL undergraduates when reading academic texts at a public university. A quantitative research design is used to collect data from a group of 41 respondents. A questionnaire which consists 30 items that are categorized into 3 components: global reading strategies, problem-solving strategies and support reading strategies are used as the main research instrument. Data is analysed quantitatively. The findings showed that there is a range of moderate to high level of metacognitive strategy use among the undergraduates. The overall mean scores for all the three categories are Global (M= 3.73) Support (M= 3.38) and Problem solving (M= 4.10). The findings showed that the respondents are conscious of their process of constructing meaning from the reading text. They are able to utilize a wide array of these reading strategies to achieve comprehension. These findings support many other studies which assert that effective L2 readers, like their native counterparts, are aware of a multitude of metacognitive reading strategies available for use and these strategies will eventually helped them to become skilled readers.