THE METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY TRAINING EFFECTS ON STUDENTS’ READING SKILL PERFORMANCE

Year 2017, Volume: 6 Issue: 2, 147 - 154, 01.09.2017

Nazli Tyfekci

Abstract

For many high school students learning English as a foreign language, the
reading skills are considered as the most important and challenging of the four
language skills. Especially when long reading texts concerns. Based on
outcomes, as defined on a curriculum , it is expected that high school students
who can read foreign languages are able to cope with difficulties in reading
foreign languages, understand what they read, and integrate new information
they have acquired with their background knowledge. Notwithstanding, students
often express the difficulties they face while practicing reading skills,
mainly they struggle understanding long texts. The question that emerges at
this point is how teachers can help high school students in this process, thus
facilitate them on being more efficient and independent readers. As the
scientific researches with respect to the reading skills concerns, it has been
noticed that the theories have changed over time. Carrell (1988) points out
that the initial research on foreign language reading assessed reading as a
process that begins with the understanding of small parts of the text (letters,
words, phrases, etc.) and proceeds with acquisition of the whole text. From
this point of view, during the reading process, the reader does not imply
anything of his/her skill or knowledge, but merely compose the written letters
and combine them with verbal expressions - pronunciations. The reader is in a
passive position; they only alter symbols into verbal form. However, this model
has been the target of various criticisms over time, and in contrary to this
theory it is argued that the reader has an effective role in the reading
process. On the other hand Carrel described reading as a "psycho-logical
predictive game" and claimed that the reader's past knowledge and
predictive ability enabled him/her to read during the reading process (Carrel,
1988).Furthermore Lesser Crouton (1997) notes that the result of this change in
theory from passive to active learners position during reading process is that
language learning strategies started to gain importance with the rapid growth
of foreign language teaching. Eventually, the objective of many foreign
language teachers has begun be based on using language learning strategies,
thus facilitate the language learning process with the aim of educating
independent learners who can take responsibility for their own language
learning. In addition, Oxford (1994) concluded that all strategy studies did not
produce successful and ultimate outcomes that some strategy training studies
were effective in some skills and were not effective in other skills, so
researches conducted that these subjects had to be repeated and thus provide
more stable information. When the use of strategy is examined within the
framework of reading skills, it has been found that successful readers use the
strategies at a higher rate compared to the 
weak readers and that the successful readers use the strategies
consciously and effectively (Block, 1992; Carrell, 1998). Moreover Carrell
(1998) emphasizes that the effective use of reading strategies is closely
related to metacognitive skills and meantime she defines the metacognition as
"thinking about how the thinking process takes place and what is happening
during this process". Anderson (2003) states that the teaching of
metacognitive skills described in this way is an effective evaluation and
management of teaching time.

Keywords

READING SKILL PERFORMANCE

References

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