Effects of Metacognitive Reading Strategies Explicit Instruction on EFL Students’ Reading Comprehension, Strategy Awareness, Motivation and Perception among Grade 11 Students of Ambo Preparatory School

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of metacognitive reading strategy explicit instruction on Grade 11 students’ reading comprehension, strategy awareness, motivation and perception with a particular focus on Ambo Preparatory School in Ambo town of Western Shoa Zone, Western Oromia. Data for this study were collected using a reading comprehension test (RCT), metacognitive reading strategy awareness inventory (MARSI), motivation for reading questionnaire (MRQ) and interview. A quasi-experimental research design was used to achieve the purpose of the study. Two groups participated in the study. The treatment group (N=82) participated in the metacognitive reading strategy instruction while the comparison group (N=87) learned the metacognitive reading strategy in a conventional way. After administering both pre-tests and post-tests of RCT, MARSI, MRQ, ANCOVA was used to test the hypothesis of the study. First of all, the finding of this study indicated that eight weeks of metacognitive reading strategy explicit instruction positively affected students' reading comprehension. The finding indicated that there was statistically significant difference between the treatment group and the comparison group, which is reported as F(1,1 67)= 179.415, P=.001. The effect size of Partial Eta Squared was 519. This means, the power of the explicit instruction was .519, which was large. This indicated that there was a statistically significant difference in metacognitive reading strategy awareness between the students who participated in the metacognitive reading strategy explicit instruction and the students who participated in the conventional way of learning metacognitive reading strategy instruction, which is reported as F(1,167), =246, P=.001, Partial Eta Squared=.596. Among the three subcomponents of MARSI, supportive reading strategy (M=3.38, SD=1.01) was mostly affected by the metacognitive reading strategy explicit instruction. Problem-solving reading strategy was least affected by the instruction (M=3.21, SD=0.96). The mean score of global reading strategy was 3.23.Additionally, the findings of this study showed that there was a statistical difference in reading motivation between the students who participated in the metacognitive reading strategy and those who participated in the conventional way of learning metacognitive reading strategy instruction. The result is reported as F(1,167)=180.530, P>.05. The effect size was .519. Finally, the data collected through interview showed that almost all of the interview participants had a positive perception of learning metacognitive reading strategy. This study concluded that explicit teaching of metacognitive reading strategy accompanied by in classroom and out of classroom reading strategy practice improves students' reading comprehension, strategy awareness, motivation and perception about metacognitive reading strategy explicit instruction. Therefore, Based on the findings, EFL teachers should consider explicit reading strategy instruction, practicing and modeling of reading strategies, with more opportunities practicing extensively.