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European Journal of Educational Studies 3(2), 2011European Journal of Educational Studies 3(2), 2011© 2011 Ozean PublicationMETACOGNITIVE AWARENESS OF READING STRATEGIES OF TURKISHLEARNERS WHO LEARN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGETURAN TEMUR* AND OZGE BAHAR,Dumlupınar University, Education Faculty, Kutahya, Turkey.*E-mail adress for correspondence: turtemur@yahoo.comINTRODUCTIONCurrently, there is an interest in understanding second/foreign language readers’ reading strategies. They are ofinterest to many researchers as they show how readers interact with the written material and in what way thesestrategies are associated with text comprehension (Carrell, 1989, 121).Traditionally, as reading has been viewed as a cognitive task, regarding research has generally centered on suchcognitive processes as language, memory, and attention, and their influence on reading skills. The restricted viewof reading as a combination of decoding and comprehension has been replaced by a view that also takes readers’awareness and control of their cognitive activities into account (Schneider, 1988, 53). In other words, recentresearch has begun to center upon metacognition, “metacognitive awareness of, or perceptions about, strategiesand the relationships among awareness or perception of strategies, strategy use, and reading comprehension”(Waxman & Pardon, 1987; Pardon & Waxman, 1988; Barnett, 1988; Carrell, 1989a; cited in Carrell et al., 1989,648).J. H. Flavell was the first to use the term metacognition. In his own words, metacognition:refers to one’s knowledge concerning one’s own cognitive processes and products or anythingrelated to them, e.g., the learning-relevant properties of information or data. For example, I amengaging in metacognition (metamemory, metalearning, metaattention, metalanguage, orwhatever) if I notice that I am having more trouble learning A than B; if it strikes me that Ishould double check C before accepting it as a fact; if it occurs to me that I had better scrutinizeeach and every alternative in any multiple-choice type task situation before deciding which isthe best one; if I sense that I had better make a note of D because I may forget it. (Flavell, 1976,232; cited in Sanacore, 1984, 706).Literally, metacognition means “cognition of cognition” (Carrell et al., 1989, 648) or as Anderson (2002) definesit, it is “thinking about thinking”. Similarly, Shimamura states that (2000, 142), “knowing about what you know”lies in the center of metacognition. It is contingent on the ability to monitor or evaluate one’s own cognitiveactivities to be able to make a proper assessment about his/her future performance and decide, accordingly, howmuch further processing is needed. In sum, while cognition refers to knowledge and skills one has and their use,metacognition refers to awareness and conscious control over those.421

European Journal of Educational Studies 3(2), 2011Metacognitively aware learners “know what to do when they don’t know what to do”. In other words, they havestrategies for discovering or working out what needs to be done. The use of metacognitive strategies ignites one’sthinking and can lead to better learning and higher performance, especially among learners who strive (Anderson,2002).The union of the art of teaching and the science of how the brain reacts to stimuli helps educators to find the bestways in preparing lessons and using strategies to increase students’ success as they learn to read in an effectuousand joyous manner (Willis, 2009, 334). As reading skill is not just the decoding of letters, the strategies thatstudents use while reading, especially in a language other than mother tongue, becomes very important incomprehension and development of this skill. In the last two decades, great attention has been given tocomprehending what proficient, skilled readers commonly do when reading, identifying the strategies they adoptand determining how and when they use them (Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001, 432). As Sheorey and Mokhtari (2001,432) put forward, strategic awareness and checking of the comprehension process are very important componentsof skilled reading, which is often referred to as metacognition that can be regarded as the knowledge of thereaders’ cognition concerning the reading process and the self-control mechanisms employed to monitor andincrease understanding.Metacognition is an important feature of effective reading and reading instruction (Israel, 2007, 1), so ismetacognitive awareness of the reading strategies one uses. In particular, reading strategies employed by readers,their metacognitive awareness, and reading proficiency are closely related. Essentially, successful readers usemore strategies compared to less successful students and use them more frequently. Moreover, better readers havebetter metacognitive awareness of their own strategy use, which leads to an enhanced reading ability (Baker &Brown, 1984; Garner, 1987; Afflerbach, 2002 as cited in Hamdan et al., 2010, 135). The research findings suggestthat good readers are better at monitoring their understanding than poor readers, are more aware of thecharacteristics of the text and the strategies they use while reading (Block, 1986, 465; Presley, Wharton-McDonald, 1997; Brown, Armbruster, & Baker, 1986, 49 as cited in Carrell, Pharis, & Liberto, 1989, 650; Baker,& Brown, 1984; Kletzien, 1991 as cited in Sheorey,&Mokhtari, 2001, 445; Duffy et al., 1987, 348 ) In addition,students who have effective reading strategies can engage in higher thinking skills about texts and their relationsto those texts (National Rading Panel, 2000; cited in Hernàndez-Laboy, 2009, 4). In other words, strategic readersare very metacognitive and they are aware of the ongoing of the reading process and how a text can be difficult(Pressley, Warthon&Mc Donald, 1997).Sheorey and Baboczky (161) define reading strategies as purposeful and intended steps taken to understand whatis being read. Reading strategies are an important part of a skilled reader’s occupation with text and his or herfollowing success with that text. For the skilled reader, strategic reading is an automatic process before, duringand after reading (Brushaber, 2003, 3). Reading strategies have to do with understanding the point of reading,activating the related background knowledge one has, paying attention to key concepts, monitoringcomprehension, and consequencing (Brown, Palincar, Armbruster, 1984; cited in Magno, 2008). Good readers,being able to read strategically, overview, read selectively, summarize, and recite information that they want toremember (Pressley& Wharton-McDonald, 1997). They are metacognitively aware while reading. That is, goodreaders attend the characteristics of the text (e.g. relevance of the text to their reading goals, how the differentcomponents of the text are connected) (Pressley, 296). They also monitor when they are having problems whilereading. Thanks to the awareness of the difficulties they encounter, they can adjust their reading such as speedingup, slowing down, or stopping to read another text to get some background information about the text at hand(Pressley & Gaskins, 2006, 101). However, as poor readers lack these critical reading strategies, they putstrenuous effort into the text to be able to comprehend it. If instructed how to employ and apply the readingstrategies, poor readers, too, can become strategic readers.Instruction in metacognitive strategies may lead to an improvement in reading comprehension(http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Metacognitive_knowledge). It is because, in that way students become aware ofwhat they already know about the text, what they expect to get out of it, and how to read it effectively helping themidentifying and remembering the necessary information later on. As reading is not just a cognitive task and cannotbe developed just by an individual practice, it is the teacher’s duty to help his/her students be aware of their thinkingprocesses and develop their reading comprehension consequently. Of these reading strategies, some can be veryeffective for some learners while being ineffective for some others. The important thing is that the learner canchoose the strategies efficient for his/her reading or use several of them simultaneously (Güngör, 2005,102) and that422

European Journal of Educational Studies 3(2), 2011reading teachers expand average and poor readers’ awareness and their knowledge in comprehension strategies toincrease students’ performances in reading comprehension tasks (Ahmad&Asraf, 2004, 34).METHODThe present study which aims to analyze the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies of Turkish learners ofEnglish as a foreign language is a descriptive one.The Study GroupThe study group was composed of freshmen, sophomore and junior students studying English Language Educationat a state university. The descriptive data for the students participated in the study is shown in Table 1 below.Table 1: The descriptive data for the study groupGenderTotalFemale MaleGrade 1 42 10 522 43 7 503 21 9 30Total 106 26 132Data Gathering Process and AnalysisSurvey of Reading Strategies (SORS) developed by Kouider and Sheorey (2002) was used for gathering the data.The scale has three sub-dimensions: global strategies, supporting strategies and problem solving strategies, and thereare 30 items in these sub-dimensions in total. Students’ agreeing level with the statements in each item wasdetermined and then the reading strategies total points for the sub-dimensions and the scale in general wascalculated. The scale was pre-applied to another group before it was applied to the study group of the present studyand the reliability coefficient was calculated then (Alpha= 86.6).Nonparametric statistics were used with the data gathered taking the range in the number of the participants intoconsideration. So, Mann-Whitney U was used for the difference resulting from the gender, Kruskall-Wallis Test forthe grade level difference and students’ views regarding the items were analyzed using the mean and standarddeviation.RESULTIn this part of the study, descriptive data for the use of reading strategies and the difference between the use of thesestrategies depending on gender and grade level variables was tested.Table 2: Descriptive data for the students’ use of reading strategiesStatements n M Sd1. I have a purpose in mind when I read. 132 3,9 1,092. I take notes while reading to help me understand what I read. 130 3,5 1,083. I think about what I know to help me understand what I read. 129 3,8 0,984. I take an overall view of the text to see what it is about before reading it 127 3,7 1,16423

European Journal of Educational Studies 3(2), 2011Based on the answers that the participants gave to the scale items, it can be said that the metacognitive awareness ofreading strategies differ depending on gender. When the mean rank is taken into consideration, it is seen thatfemales’ mean scores are higher than those of males in GLOB, SUP and PROB strategies. However, the differencebetween the means is not statistically significant (U Glob = 863.5, p> 0.05; U Sub = 861.5, p> 0.05; U Prob = 860.0, p>0.05).Table 4: Kruskal Wallis Test results of the metacognitive awareness of readingstrategies depending on the grade levelsinif N Mean Rank Chi-Square pGlob 1,00 49 61,052,00 38 53,923,00 27 56,09Sup 1,00 51 71,572,00 46 56,083,00 27 56,31Prob 1,00 49 74,522,00 44 46,953,00 27 57,131,063 ,5885,548 ,06214,977 ,001University students’ metacognitive awareness of the reading strategies differ according to the grade level. As thegrade increases, the use of GLOB, SUB and PROB strategies decreases. However, the difference between the gradelevels is not statistically significant in GLOB and SUB (X 2 Glob= 1,063, p> 0.05; X 2 Sub = 5.548, p> 0.05) strategieswhile it is statistically significant in PROB strategies (X 2 Prob= 14.977, p< 0.05). So, it can be said that problemsolving strategies for reading comprehension is used more by the freshmen compared to the sophomores and juniors.CONCLUSIONThe present study which aimed at finding out the metacognitive awareness of the reading strategies of universitystudents who learn English as a foreign language came up with the findings below:University students use PROB, GLOB and SUB strategies respectively. While the strategy used most is the problemsolving strategies, the least used one is the supporting strategies. It can be said that the university students use theproblem solving strategies to solve the comprehension problems while reading a text in English. So, the students usetechniques as adjusting their reading speed to understand better, re-reading at times, paying closer attention whenthey have difficulty in understanding the text and guessing the unknown words.Other strategies used by university students while reading a text in English are global reading strategies. They usethese strategies usually in the pre-reading session to understand the text better. Students use such techniques asdetermining the purpose for reading, taking an overall view of the text, seeing how the text is organized, usingvisuals like pictures, figures or tables and paying attention to the words or sentences in bold face and italic.The strategies that university students use less are the supporting reading strategies, which are used while reading tobetter understand and increase remembering. While reading, students use the techniques like taking notes,underlining the important points, using a dictionary, reading aloud, paraphrasing, and asking questions andanswering them.425

European Journal of Educational Studies 3(2), 2011Freshmen use GLOB, SUB and PROB strategies more than the sophomores and juniors. Thus, it can be said that thelevel of using reading strategies decreases as the grade level increases. In other words, as the grade level increases,students’ proficiency in the foreign language they are learning also increases and this language development makestheir reading easier.Although there is a difference in the university students’ metacognitive awareness of the reading strategies in favorof females, this difference is not statistically significant.REFERENCESAhmad, I. S. & Asraf, R. M. (2004). Making sense of text: Strategies used by good and average readers. TheReading Matrix, 4 (1), 26-37. Retrieved January 2, 2011, fromhttp://www.readingmatrix.com/articles/asraf_ahmad/article.pdf.Anderson, N. J. (2002). The role of metacognition in second language teaching and learning. Washington, DC:ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics, Center for Applied Linguistics. Retrieved December 3,2010, from http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/digest_pdfs/0110_Anderson.pdf.Block, E. (1986). The comprehension strategies of second language readers. TESOL Quarterly, 20 (3). RetrievedDecember 3, 2010, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3586295Brushaber, T. (2003). Teaching comprehension through a comprehension strategy framework. Southwest TexasState University, 1-19. Retrieved December 3, 2010, from http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED477160.pdfCarrell, P. L. (1989). Metacognitive Awareness and Second Language Reading. The Modern Language Journal, 73(2), 121-134.Carrell, P. L., Pharis, B. G., Liberto, J. C. (1989). Metacognitive strategy training for ESL reading. TESOLQuarterly, 23 (4), 647-678.Duffy, G. G., Roehler, L. R., Sivan, E., Rackliffe, G., Book, C., Meloth, M. S., Vavrus, L. G., Wesselman, R.,Putnam, J., Bassiri, D. (1987). Effects of explaining the reasoning associated with using reading strategies.Reading Research Quarterly, 22(3), 347-368.Ghonsooly, B., Eghtesadee, A-R. (2006). Role of cognitive style of field-dependence/indepence in usingmetacognitive and cognitive reading strategies by a group of skilled and novice Iranian students of Englishliterature. Asian EFL Journal, 8(4), 119-150.Gil, A., Osiecki, N., Juarez, A. (2001). Students reflecting on what they know. Paper presented at the AnnualMeeting of the International Council for Innovation in Higher Education (19 th , Rome, Italy).Güngör, A. (2005). Altıncı, yedinci ve sekizinci sınıf öğrencilerinin okuduğunu anlama stratejilerini kullanmadüzeyleri (Sixth, seventh and eighth graders’ level of reading comprehension strategy use). HacettepeÜniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, 28, 1001-108.Hamdan, A. R., Ghafar, M. N., Sihes, A. J., Atan, S. B. (2010). The cognitive and metacognition reading strategiesof foundation course students in Teacher Education Institute in Malaysia. European Journal of SocialSciences, 13(1), 133-144.426

European Journal of Educational Studies 3(2), 2011Hernàndez-Laboy, O.I. (2009). Reading strategies ESL teachers utilize to enhance comprehension in students:Implications for classroom practices. Dissertation presented to the Department of Graduate Studies Collegeof Education University of Puerto Rico.Israel, S. E. (2007). Thinking metacognitively. In Using metacognitive assessments to create individualized readinginstruction (pp.1-13). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.Magno, C. (2008). Reading strategy, amount of writing, metacognition, metamemory, and apprehension aspredictors of English written proficiency. Asian EFL Journal, 29. Retrieved January 3, 2011, fromhttp://www.asian-efl-journal.com/pta_July_08_cm.php.Presley, M. (2002). Metacognition and self-regulated comprehension. In A. E. Farstrup & S.J. Samuels (Eds.), WhatResearch Has to Say About Reading Instruction (pp. 291-309). Newark, DE: International ReadingAssociation.Pressley, M. & Gaskins, I. W. (2006). Metacognitively competent reading comprehension is constructivelyresponsive reading: How can such reading be developed in students? Metacognition Learning, 1, 99-113.Pressley, M., Wharton-McDonald, R. (1997). Skilled comprehension and its development through instruction.School Psychology Review, 26(3), 448-466.Sanacore, J. (1984). Metacognition and the improvement of reading: Some important links. Journal of Reading,27(8), 706-712.Schneider, W. (1988). Review: Cognition, metacognition, and reading. Educational Researcher, 17(3), 53-55.Sheorey, R.,&Baboczky, E. S. Metacognitive awareness of reading strategies among Hungarian college students. InK. Mokhtari & R. Sheorey (Eds.), Reading Strategies of First- and Second-Language Learners. See HowThey Read (pp. 161-173). Massachusetts: Cristopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc.Sheorey, R.,& Mokhtari, K. (2001). Differences in the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies among nativeand non-native readers. System, 29, 431-449.Shimamura, A. P. (2000). Review: What is metacognition? The brain knows (book review). The American Journalof Psychology, 113(1), 142-146.Willis, J. (2009). What brain research suggests for teaching reading strategies. The Educational Forum, 73(4), 333-346.http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Metacognitive_knowledge.427