Improving Reading Comprehension Skills with Children’s Books through Metacognitive Strategy: The Turkish Context

Abstract

The aim of this study was to explore the effect of metacognitive strategy in improving reading comprehension skills through children’s literature of literary quality. A quasi-experimental study was carried out in a private secondary school in a city located Middle Black Sea region of Turkey. Two classes were randomly chosen as the study group, and since the academic achievement scores of the students in these two classes were similar, one class was assigned as the experimental group and the other as the control group. There were 35 students in experimental group whereas while the control group consisted of 30. The results of the study were analyzed using independent t-test samples to determine if there was a significant difference in reading comprehension skills during the pre-test and the post-test between the experimental and the control group. Moreover, One Way Ancova analysis was used to determine the effect of metacognitive strategy on improving reading comprehension skills in books of literary quality. According to the results of t-test analysis, there was a significant difference of between the experimental and the control group in reading comprehension skills. As a result of One Way Ancova analysis, a significant difference was found between the pre-test and the post-test in the experimental group. Thus, when students used metacognitive strategy in books of literary quality, they obviously advanced in terms of their reading comprehension. This fact suggests that using metacognitive strategy in books of literary quality helped students in the experimental group improve both their reading skills and reading comprehension skills, when compared to the control group, in which an attempt was made to improve reading and comprehension skills in the conventional way.