Effects of Deliberate Instruction in Metacognitive Reading Strategies on the EFL Learners’ Comprehension of Various Text Types Across Proficiency Levels

Abstract

The existing empirical studies on the effects of deliberate metacognitive reading interventions on students’ comprehension remain inconclusive. Also, previous studies have barely focused on both the literal and the high-order levels of comprehension with a scarcity in research that investigates the effects of metacognitive strategy instruction on learners’ comprehension across text types and proficiency levels. As there is paucity of empirical research and due to the controversy in the literature, the researcher conducts this exploratory study that aims to (a) examine the association between learners’ use of support, global, and problem-solving metacognitive reading strategies, and their literal and higher-order reading comprehension globally and as the text type changes; (b) investigate the impact of deliberate instruction in metacognitive strategies in improving the learners’ use of metacognitive reading strategies; (c) investigate the effect of deliberate instruction in metacognitive reading strategies in improving the literal and higher-order reading comprehension of students globally and as the text type changes; (d) determine if the deliberate instruction’s effect on the reading comprehension of students is more pronounced in high proficient students compared to those with lower proficiency; and (e) determine if metacognitive reading strategies mediate the relationship between deliberate instruction and literal and higher-order reading comprehension. The study follows a quantitative quasi-experimental research design. The participants were seventh grade EFL learners in a private school in Greater Beirut Area. Data were collected using the Test of English as a Foreign Language-Junior Level (TOEFL), the Survey of Reading Strategy Questionnaire (SORS), and 8 reading comprehension tests that measured learners’ literal and higher-order comprehension in narrative, descriptive, persuasive, and expository texts. Students were divided randomly into control and experimental groups, where the experimental group was taught using the Optimal Learning Model (OLM) whereas the control group was taught in a regular implicit pattern that focused on teacher questioning and sharing. Correlational analyses indicated a significant relationship between overall, global, problem-solving, and support metacognitive reading strategies and literal and higher-order comprehension on the general level and across the four text types. ANCOVA analyses showed that the OLM intervention has a significant impact on the students’ use of overall, global, problem-solving, and support metacognitive reading strategies. Factorial ANCOVA (FANCOVA) proved that the OLM intervention has a statistically significant effect on the learners’ post-literal and post-higher-order reading comprehension globally. However, these results change when the text type and the level of comprehension change. Lastly, Hayes Process Macro Model 4 showed that the OLM intervention has a significant indirect effect on both the literal and higher-order reading comprehension through metacognitive reading strategies, which means that metacognitive reading strategies mediate the relationship between OLM intervention and literal and higher-order reading comprehension of students. The study’s findings prove that the use of metacognitive language learning strategies helps learners develop their reading strategies and performance and increase their reading comprehension achievement. It also proved that metacognitive strategy instruction and training sessions have a positive effect on improving the participants' use of metacognitive reading strategies, which implies that students recognize the benefits of employing them in EFL reading and find metacognitive strategies helpful in approaching reading materials. However, the effect of using metacognitive reading strategies changes based on the comprehension level (literal or higher order), text types, and proficiency levels of students. This is due to different reasons that are explored in the body of the research. Lastly, the fact that metacognitive reading strategies mediate the relationship between the metacognitive reading instruction and reading comprehension of students highlights the importance of reconceptualizing reading teaching and improving reading comprehension outcomes through metacognitive reading strategies. Results were discussed in light of the limitations of the study and pedagogical implications and recommendations for future research were made.