The effect of reading comprehension strategies on the reading comprehension and cognitive awareness skills of different reading levels

The skill of reading comprehension is one of the most important characteristics of individuals who are suitable for the needs of the age and respond to these needs, and this skill gained at school also plays an important role in the academic success of the individual at school age. Reading comprehension strategies used in the development of reading comprehension skills are tools used to understand any material and play a key role in constructing meaning. The score data in the Turkish course in both PISA and exams in our country revealed the need to focus more on students' reading comprehension skills. Based on this requirement, it was aimed to examine the effect of the Collaborative Strategic Reading strategy used in the whole reading process on reading comprehension and cognitive awareness skills of eighth grade students at different reading levels. The research is a quantitative study and a quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest control group was used. As the research group, a total of 144 students from 8th grade classes in four different schools in Amasya were determined. In the research, "Sentence Verification Test" developed by İlter (2017) was used as a data collection tool to determine the reading level of students as low, medium and good. The "Reading Comprehension Test" developed by Ülper, Çetinkaya and Bayat (2017) to measure the reading comprehension skill as a pre-test and a post-test, and the "Reading Strategies Test" developed by Karatay (2009) to measure cognitive awareness skill as a pre-test and post-test. Cognitive Awareness Scale "was used. At the point of forming the experimental and control groups in the study, information was obtained from the course teachers and the written scores of the students in Turkish in the first term were obtained. When the skewness and kurtosis values of the written scores of the experimental and control groups were examined, it was seen that the values were in the range of +1, -1, thus the values showed a normal distribution. According to the results of the independent sample T-test applied to the determined experimental and control groups, there was no statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups. This situation shows that the groups are in similar structure. Care was taken to make the applications in the determined experimental and control groups by the same teacher in order not to spoil the validity of the research. Before starting the research, "Sentence Verification Test" was applied to the experimental and control groups and the reading levels of the students were determined as good, medium and low. In the research, 10 texts in the 8th grade Turkish textbook of MEB Publications were used in the 2018-2019 academic year and the research was completed in 30 lesson hours. SPSS 22 program was used in the analysis of the data, and for the statistical calculations of the data obtained as a result of the research, the t-test for independent samples was used for the analysis of the pre-post test scores in terms of the group, and the two-way ANOVA for the repeated measures was used to examine the change of the pre-post test scores in the group and level distinction. While the pre-test scores of the reading comprehension and cognitive awareness scale did not differ significantly according to the group (p> 0.05), the post-test scores differ significantly according to the group (p <0.05). The average of the reading comprehension test of those in the experimental group is 25.76, while the average of the control group is 22.25. While the cognitive awareness scale mean score of the experimental group was 2.77, that of the control group was 2.26. Significant changes occurred in both reading comprehension and cognitive awareness scores (p <0.05). The reading comprehension scores of the students in the experimental group were 5.50 and the cognitive awareness scale scores were 0.62; In the control group, reading comprehension scores increased by 1.49 points and cognitive awareness scale scores increased by 0.05 points. The score difference between the increase in the experimental group and the increase in the control group was found to be statistically significant (p <0.05). The reading comprehension scores of the good students in the experimental group were 3,74; The scores of those in the middle level increased by 6.14 points and those in the low level by 6.14 points, while the scores of those in the control group increased by 0.95, 1.64 and 1.81 points, respectively. Cognitive awareness scores of good students in the experimental group were 1,02; The scores of those in the middle level increased by 0.51 points and those in the low level by 0.43 points, while those in the control group increased by 0.06, 0.04 and 0.04 points, respectively. These results show that significant changes occur in both reading comprehension and cognitive awareness scale scores in group and level discrimination (p <0.05). According to the results of the study, it was seen that the Collaborative Strategic Reading strategy is very important in developing both reading comprehension skills and cognitive awareness skills of students.