An investigation of Turkish as a foreign language learners' perceptions of metacognitive reading strategies

The aim of this study is to investigate "Turkish as a foreign language" learners' perceptions of metacognitive reading strategies. "Survey method" was used in the current study. The study sample consists of 124 (54 male and 70 female) B1 level students, who learn "Turkish as a foreign language" at "Hacettepe University TÖMER", "Gazi University TÖMER" and Tehran Yunus Emre Institute in 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 academic years. A 30-item questionnaire of "Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI)" developed by Mokhtari and Reichard (2002) and adapted to Turkish by Öztürk (2012) was used as the data collection tool. The first part of the questionnaire contains the demographic information of the students. "Descriptive statistics" such as "means" and "frequencies" were utilized to characterize the data. Besides collected data were analyzed via "inferential statistics" such as "t-test" and "Anova". The data obtained from these tests was analyzed by using "SPSS 21.0 program". The results of the study revealed that students use "metacognitive reading strategies" in "moderate level". The findings showed that "problem solving strategies" is the most preferred strategy among "metacognitive reading strategies". In the study findings revealed that there was statistically significant differences with males and females participants in "problem solving strategies". The result did not show any statistically significant differences with males and females participants in overall "metacognitive reading strategies". However, it has been realized that female students' mean scores of strategy use are higher than the male students. Furthermore there was statistically significant differences between age factor and metacognitive strategy use whereas department did not statistically affect the participants' "metacognitive strategies". Key Words: Metacognition, Reading, Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language, Metacognitive Reading Strategies