Effects of a metacognitive reading program on the reading achievement and metacognitive reading strategies

Reading comprehension strategies which readers refer to make the process of reading easier gained specific attention by the late 1970s with the conclusion that readers who use effective reading comprehension strategies comprehend better than the others who do not. In this respect, the present study focused on metacognitive reading strategies which seem to be involved in a number of classroom cognitive activities such as planning, monitoring, and evaluating. Therefore, it aimed to investigate the impact of metacognitive reading strategy training programme (METARESTRAP) which was developed by the researcher of the present study, on the use of metacognitive reading strategies and reading comprehension.A quasi-experimental pilot study was conducted at the Department of English Language Teaching (ELT) of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University (ÇOMU) with a number of 93 freshmen over the fall semester of the 2008-2009 academic year in Advanced Reading and Writing I Course. The quasi-experimental main study was conducted with a number of 46 preparatory class students at the departments of ELT and English Language and Literature of ÇOMU over the spring semester of the 2008-2009 academic year in Reading Comprehension Course. In both studies, pre and post tests of the reading test and Metacognitive Reading Strategy Questionnaire were administered and the six-week METARESTRAP was implemented.The statistical data generated in this study demonstrated that METARESTRAP significantly improved learners? reading comprehension skills by outperforming the conventional reading instruction. Gaining awareness on metacognition along with declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge about metacognitive reading strategies with the implementation of METARESTRAP turned out to be more efficient than the conventional reading instruction. It can be concluded that METARESTRAP worked well specifically for multiple matching type cohesion, coherence, text structure, and global meaning questions.