Evaluating secondary school students' metacognitive awareness in reading strategies

The purpose of this study is to determine secondary school students' metacognitive awareness in reading strategies. In accordance with this purpose, the method is single screening and relational search model which are parts of generel survey model. A total number of 46178 secondary school students studying at state schools in Yeşilyurt and Battalgazi villages,in Malatya, constitutes the population of the study. The sample group of the study consists of 1064 students chosen with stratified sampling method. The research data was collected by "Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory" developed by Mokhtari and Reichard (2002) and whose adaptation to Turkish was made by Öztürk (2012). The collected data was analyzed by SPSS program. While analyzing the data, firstly descriptive statistics calculations were made. Whether the levels of students' metacognitive awareness of reading strategies have significant difference according to gender, school type, taking reading skills course , the book advice by teacher, the students' having a personal bookcase, "Independent Samples T-Test" was used. Anova was also used to determine whether there is a significant difference between grade levels. As a the result of descriptive statistics, in the sub-dimensions of general reading and supporting to reading strategies, secondary school students' level of metacognitive awareness in reading strategies was found "intermediate" and in the sub-dimension of problem solving strategies and in overall of the scale it was found as "high". At the end of the research a significant difference was found in favor of girls between girls and boys; in favor of students taking reading skills course between the students taking reading skills course and the students not taking reading skills course; in favor of students advised book by the teacher between the students advised book by the teacher and the students not advised book by the teacher; in favor of students having a personal bookcase between the students having a personal bookcase and the students not having a personal bookcase. According to school type variable, it was seen that there was no significant difference between secondary school students and ımam hatıp secondary school students. According to grade level variable, a significant difference was found between 5th and 7th grade students in favor of 5th grade, between 5th and 8th grade students in favor of 5th grade, between 6th grade students and 8th grade students in favor of 6th grade. Key Words: Reading, Reading Strategies, Metacognitive Awareness, Secondary School.