Effect of reading instruction activities based on cognitive awareness strategies on improvement of reading comprehension skills

In the present study, the effect of reading instruction activities based on cognitive awareness on improving reading comprehension skills of primary school students is examined. The primary purpose of this study is to determine the effect of reading instruction based on cognitive awareness strategies implemented to experimental group and traditional reading instruction implemented to control group on students? cognitive awareness level related with reading comprehension according to text types.In the present research, pretest ? posttest control group experimental design was used. The present research was conducted with sixth grade students from two different primary schools in Yenimahalle, Ankara during spring semester of 2010 ? 2011 academic years. Totally 105 students (42 in experimental group and 63 control group) participated in this research. . Reading instruction activities based on metacognitive awareness strategies were administered in experimental group over a period of seven weeks while traditional reading instruction activities were administered in control group.The tools for data collection were Reading Comprehension Test based on text types and Reading Strategies Metacognitive Awareness Scale.Data collected by these tools were analyzed via SPSS 15.0 (Statistic Package for Social Science) program, in order to probe whether the differences between the data obtained from experimental group and from control group is statistically significant (or not), t-test was conducted. To make comparison between two groups significance level was acknowledged as .05.The results showed that (1) statistically significant difference was found between pretest and posttest? mean scores of reading comprehension test administered to students in both experimental and control group; (2) no significant difference was found between the pretest and posttest? mean scores related reading comprehension level of students in control group; (3) the reading instruction activities based on metacognitive awareness strategies being implemented to experimental group was more effective than the traditional reading instruction activities being implemented to control group in improving students? metacognitive awareness level related with reading strategies; (4) the reading instruction activities based on metacognitive awareness strategies being implemented to experimental group are more effective than the traditional reading instruction activities being implemented to control group in improving students? reading comprehension level.Key Words: Reading comprehension, reading strategies, metacognitive awareness, text, text types.