LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƯƠNG PHÁP DẠY HỌC BỘ MÔN TIẾNG ANH - EFFECTS OF METACOGNITVE STRATEGY INSTRUCTION ON STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION

Trung tâm Học liệu ĐH Cần Thơ @ Tài liệu học tập và nghiên cứuỘ CHÂU THỊ HOÀNG HOA EFFECTS OF METACOGNITVE STRATEGY INSTRUCTION ON STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ: GIÁ

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Ộ

CHÂU THỊ HOÀNG HOA

EFFECTS OF METACOGNITVE STRATEGY INSTRUCTION ON STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION

LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ: GIÁO DỤC HỌC Chuyên ngành: Lý luận và Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn Tiếng Anh

CẦN THƠ, 2009

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BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CẦN THƠ

CHÂU THỊ HOÀNG HOA

TÁC ĐỘNG CỦA VIỆC HƯỚNG DẪN CHIẾN LƯỢC ĐỌC PHẢN TĨNH ĐỐI VỚI KHẢ NĂNG ĐỌC HIỂU CỦA SINH VIÊN

Chuyên ngành: Lý luận và Phương pháp Giảng dạy Tiếng Anh

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

CAN THO UNIVERSITY

CHAU THI HOANG HOA

EFFECTS OF METACOGNITIVE STRATEGY INSTRUCTION ON STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION

Program: Principles and Methods in English Language Education

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Luận văn Thạc sĩ với đề tài:

“The Effects of Metacognitive Strategy Instruction on Students’ Reading Comprehension” do học viên Châu Thị Hoàng Hoa thực hiện và báo cáo đã được

Hội đồng Chấm Luận văn thông qua

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DECLARATION

This thesis entitled “The Effects of Metacognitive Strategy Instruction on Students’ Reading Comprehension” is conducted under the supervision of Ms Le

Thi Tuyet Mai It is ensured that this thesis has not been accepted for any degree and

or concurrently submitted in any candidature for any other degree or diploma

Supervisor Researcher

Lê Thị Tuyết Mai Châu Thị Hoàng Hoa

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Secondly, I would like to show my deep appreciation and to my supervisor, Ms Le Thi Tuyet Mai for her intellectual and material assistance She was the one who first taught me

what metacognitive reading was I also owed her for valuable advice as well as supports I

am indebted to her for her patience to read the drafts of the thesis and gave feedback on them again and again She not only leaded me to make first steps in researching way but also helped me how to be a good teacher I admired her devotion, sympathy and responsibility because they all made my research work burdenless but full of happiness Next, I appreciate Mr Le Van Don, Director of Tra Vinh Teacher Training College (TVTTC) and Mr Vo Hoang Khai, Vice-Director of TVTTC because of their acceptance and support for my participation in the postgraduate program in TEFL at Can Tho University My deep thanks go to all the people at the Department of Administration at TVTTC especially Ms Le Thi Kim Loan - my chief – and Ms Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hieu, my colleague They covered most of my work during the time I studied at Can Tho University and implemented my M.A research

I am heartedly grateful to those who contributed much to my research I would like to thank

Ms Cao Thi Hong Cam, a teacher of English at TVU, for her assistance to score the students’ reading tests and Ms Hua Thi Tuong Vi, for her control of metacognitive instruction on the control class Besides, my thanks go to Ms Tran Nhu Minh Phuong, Ms Nguyen Thi Ngoc Lan, members in my MA class who helped me to read and gave me ideas for improving my questionnaire I could never forget their affection and cooperation

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Finally and most importantly, my deepest gratitude goes to all of my family members: my parents, mother – in - law, my brothers who were always ready to help me in need Without their love, sympathy and care, I would not have been able to complete this postgraduate program and this thesis I also thank my daughters: Phuc An for her independence when I was away from home and Binh An for her lovely accompany during the time when I was in Can Tho University I cannot express my gratefulness to my husband by words for his silent encouragement, assistance, and consideration of in every step I go

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TÓM LƯỢC

Mục đích của đề tài là kiểm chứng tính hiệu quả của việc dạy chiến lược đọc phản tĩnh đối với sự nhận thức về chiến lược này và khả năng đọc hiểu của sinh viên Đối tượng tham gia trong đề tài này là 61 sinh viên học Tiếng Anh không chuyên ở trường Cao đẳng Sư phạm Trà Vinh: có 31 sinh viên trong nhóm thực nghiệm và 30 sinh viên trong nhóm đối chứng

Đề tài sử dụng bảng câu hỏi trắc nghiệm và bài kiểm tra đọc hiểu để đo trình độ nhận thức

và khả năng đọc hiểu của sinh viên trước và sau khi thực nghiệm Bên cạnh đó, sinh viên viết nhật ký học tập để ghi nhận lại quá trình vận dụng chiến lược đọc phản tĩnh trong khi đọc Kết quả nghiên cứu khẳng định rằng nhận thức về chiến lược đọc phản tĩnh của nhóm thực nghiệm tăng nhưng nhóm đối chứng không tăng Khả năng đọc hiểu của hai nhóm đều được cải thiện nhưng nhóm thực nghiệm thể hiện sự vượt trội hơn so với nhóm đối chứng Qua các bài nhật ký học tập của sinh viên và kết quả của phép toán thống kê, đề tài này khẳng định có sự tương quan giữa nhận thức phản tĩnh và khả năng đọc hiểu của sinh viên sau chương trình thực nghiệm Cho nên, tác giả đề tài khẳng định vai trò tích cực của việc dạy sinh viên đọc phản tĩnh để cải thiện kỹ năng đọc của mình và từ đó kiến nghị rằng chiến lược đọc phãn tĩnh cần được chú trọng và sinh viên nên luyện tập thường xuyên để nhận thức về chiến lược này trở thành kỹ năng Tuy nhiên, một vài điểm mà đề tài này cần chú ý là đề cập đến các yếu tố như sự khác nhau về giới, kinh nghiệm và thói quen đọc trong Tiếng mẹ đẻ của đối tượng tham gia trong đề tài Đó cũng chính là hướng tác giả đề xuất cho các nghiên cứu sâu hơn trong lĩnh vực này

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ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is investigating the effects of metacognitive strategy instruction

on students’ metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension ability The participants

of this study were 61 non – English majored students in TVTTC: 31 in the experimental group, 30 in the control group A metacognitive self - report questionnaire and a reading comprehension test were used to measure students’ metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension ability in the pre – and post - test Besides, they were also asked to write journals to record their metacognition and comprehension process The findings of the study showed that the experimental group made a meaningful increase in metacognitive level after the intervention, but the control group did not Both of the experimental and control group gained a higher level of reading comprehension in the post – test but the experimental group surpassed the control group in the test scores Students’ journal reports and the result of correlation test revealed that the growth of students’ metacognition was interrelated with their comprehension progress This finding confirmed the role of metacognitive instruction in teaching reading Hence, the study strongly recommended that metacognitive strategies should be taught and frequently used to improve reading comprehension Nonetheless, the study showed some shortcomings for ignoring some important issues in foreign language learning like gender, L1 reading habits and experiences which should be considered in further research

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IRA: Index of Reading Awareness

K-W-L: Know – Want to know – Learned

Max: Maximum

Meta: Metacognitive awareness

Min: Minimum

SPSS: The Statistical Package for the Social Science

SRI: Self – regulatory Reading Index

TEFL: Teaching of English as a Foreign Language

TVTTC: Tra Vinh Teacher Training College

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration v

Acknowledgements vi

Abstract in Vietnamese viii

Abstract in English ix

Abbreviations .x

Table of Contents xi

List of Tables and Figures xiv

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale .1

1.2 Research aims .2

1.3 Research questions .2

1.4 Hypotheses .2

1.5 Significance of the study .3

1.6 Thesis organization .3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .5

2.1 Introduction .5

2.2 Metacognition and its related aspects .6

2.1.2 Metacognition: definitions and components .6

2.1.2 Cognition and metacognition .8

2.1.2 Metacognition and reading comprehension 9

2.3 Reading comprehension .11

2.3.1 Reading and comprehension .11

2.3.2 Levels of comprehension .12

2.4 The possible relationship among the three factors: metacognitive strategy instruction, metacognitive strategy awareness, and reading comprehension in related research .14

2.4.1 Positive effects of metacognition on reading comprehension .15

2.4.2 Questionable effects of metacognition on reading comprehension .18

2.5 Conclusion .19

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .20

3.1 Research Design .20

3.2 Participants .20

3.2.1 Students 20

3.2.2 Teachers 21

3.3 Settings .21

3.4 Instruments .21

3.4.1 Questionnaire on metacognitive reading strategy awareness 22

3.4.2 Pre-test and post- test on reading comprehension 24

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3.4.3 Journals 26

3.5 Procedure .26

3.5.1 Reading strategy training .27

3.5.2 Data collection and analysis procedure .28

3.6 Materials .30

CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH RESULTS .31

4.1 Quantitative analysis .31

4.1.1 Introduction 31

4.1.2 Comparison of the mean scores of metacognitive reading awareness and reading comprehension ability between the experimental and control group before the intervention .31

4.1.3 Comparison of the mean scores of metacognitive reading awareness and reading comprehension ability within each group before and after the intervention .34

4.1.4 Correlation between metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension ability .39

4.2 Qualitative analysis .41

4.2.1 Introduction 41

4.2.2 Analysis of students’ journals .41

4.2.3 Summary .52

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSIONS, IMPLICATIONS, LIMITATIONS SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH AND CONCLUSION .53

5.1 Summary and discussions of the findings .53

5.2 Implications of the findings .56

5.3 Limitations of the study .57

5.4 Suggestions for further research .58

5.5 Conclusion .59

REFERENCES .61

APPENDICES .65

CURRICULUM VITAE 107

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APPENDIX G: Reliability coefficients of the last piloting questionnaire APPENDIX H: Reliability coefficients of piloting reading comprehension APPENDIX I: Reliability coefficients of the pre - test on metacognitive awareness APPENDIX J: Reliability coefficients of the post - test on metacognitive awareness APPENDIX K: Reliability coefficients of the pre - test on reading comprehension ability

APPENDIX L: Reliability coefficients of the post - test on reading comprehension ability

APPENDIX M: Raw data of piloting tests and the pre - and post - tests APPENDIX N: Samples of student’s journals

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

TABLES

Table 1: Characteristics of the participants

Table 2: Research schedule

Table 3: Descriptive Statistics of the mean scores of metacognitive awareness of the experimental group and control group in the pre – test

Table 4: Descriptive Statistics of the mean scores of reading comprehension ability of the experimental group and control group in the pre - test

Table 5: The result of comparison of the mean scores of reading comprehension in the pre - test of the control and the experimental group

Table 6: The result of comparison of the mean scores of reading comprehension in the pre - test of the two groups with the average score (2)

Table 7: Descriptive Statistics of the mean scores of metacognitive reading awareness within each group in the pre - and post – questionnaire

Table 8: The result of comparing the mean scores metacognitive awareness of the pre - and post - questionnaire within each group by Paired – Samples T Test

Table 9: Descriptive Statistics of the mean scores of reading comprehension ability within each group in the pre - and post – test

Table 10: The result of comparing the mean scores of the pre - and post - reading test within each group by Paired – Samples T Test

Table 11: The result of comparing the mean scores of reading comprehension in the post - test between the control and experimental group by Independent – Samples T Test

Table 12: Correlations between metacognitive awareness of the participants in the pre - test and post - test

Table 13: Correlations between reading comprehension ability of the participants in the pre

- test and post - test

Table 14: Correlations between metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension ability of the control group and experimental group in the pre - test and post – test

Table 15: Gained scores of six selected cases in the pre - tests and post – tests on reading comprehension ability and metacognitive awareness

FIGURES

Figure 1: Students’ metacognitive awareness of the two groups in the pre - and post – test Figure 2: Students’ reading comprehension ability of two groups in the pre - and post – test

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter first describes (1) the rationale of the research It then mentions (2) the research aims, (3) the research questions, (4) the hypotheses and (5) the significance of the study Finally, it introduces (5) the general organization of the thesis

1.1 Rationale

Like most of students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in Vietnamese colleges, the non - English major students in Tra Vinh Teacher Training College (TVTTC) share some common characteristics First, they have studied English for seven years but their ability to use English in real communication is questionable Their language performance is not as good as their levels marked by the grades of school assessment Second, learners’ autonomy is not sufficient to enable them to study independently outside the class and this situation might cause negative effects on the efficacy of teaching and learning English in schools Finally, there exists an imbalance of students’ language proficiency levels in terms of language skills and knowledge For instance, students could express themselves in English more effectively in written form than in spoken form; or their knowledge about grammar and pronunciation is better than their skills to use it The three listed problems increase the risks of failure in learning and teaching of EFL and teaching reading in English experiences similar circumstances

Besides the drawbacks mentioned above, teaching reading faces a number of intricacies, among which the most striking problem might be an inadequate reading strategy instruction in English classrooms In fact, the time for students’ practice is no more than ten minutes in a week, no more than six hours in a year Not all of the students do the real reading in that six - hour time; they might think of something out of the texts, or do something not related to the tasks To improve students’ reading efficacy, we could not require more time for in – class reading practice but the innovation of reading strategy instruction should be entailed

Cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies are essential parts in reading strategy instruction In fact, cognitive strategies enable the readers to comprehend the text and metacognitive strategies regulate the use of cognitive strategies, enabling them to control their reading process (Grow, 1996) On that basis, the current research is the introduction

of metacognitive strategy into reading instruction to enable the readers to plan, monitor and assess their reading process for better achievement in comprehension

There are considerable research studies indicating that the relationship between reading comprehension ability and metacognitive strategy awareness is positive El-Koumy

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(2004) claimed that many educators (e.g., Collins, 1994; Maitland, 2000; Urquhart and Weir, 1998) considered knowledge about metacognitive strategies was essential to

reading comprehension However, another researcher, McLain (1993) argued that

metacognitive reading strategy instruction just increased students’ metacognitive awareness, not reading comprehension; or just made good strategy users, not good readers The problems in the teacher – researcher’s teaching context and different findings about the effects of metacognitive instruction on reading comprehension inspire her to research in this field with the hope that metacognitive strategy reading instruction could be a good therapy for students’ insufficient reading comprehension efficacy

Some researchers proved that there was a correlation between metacognitive strategy instruction and reading comprehension However, others believed that there was no relationship between these two factors; metacognitive strategy instruction just made good strategy users by improving metacognitive awareness, not made good readers Derived from different findings on the impact of teachers’ metacognitive strategy instruction on students’ reading comprehension ability, the researcher would like to investigate this effect in her teaching context In other words, the aim of the present research is to test whether (1) metacognitive instruction affects students’ metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension ability and (2) whether there is a correlation between metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension ability

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1 It is hypothesized that metacognitive reading strategy instruction may improve students’ metacognitive strategy awareness

2 It is hypothesized that metacognitive reading strategy instruction may improve students’ reading comprehension ability

3 It is hypothesized that there is a correlation between students’ metacognitive strategy awareness and their reading comprehension ability after the treatment

1.5 Significance of the study

Metacognitive abilities enable students to be consciously aware of what and how they are learning It is supposed that if the students are good metacognitive strategy users, they could utilize their knowledge about the test, task and themselves (their reading process to fulfill the assigned task) for optimal comprehension In some ways, it helps them be more confident with reading tasks and deal with the tasks properly This promising result is mostly expected by many language teachers especially reading teachers However, there have been not many research studies in the field of application of metacognitive strategy instruction in teaching reading in the researcher’s local teaching context It is believed that this experimental research to some extent would provide empirical results to prove the impact of metacognitive strategy reading instruction on students’ reading comprehension ability Furthermore, the present research could inspire more searching or discussions in the field of cognition and metacognition to bring the process of these psychological phenomena into light in terms of instruments for assessment, instruction for application as well as the impact of their intervention

1.6 Thesis organization

Five chapters included in this thesis are: (1) Introduction, (2) Literature Review, (3) Research Methodology, (4) Research Results, and (5) Discussions, Implications, Limitations, Recommendations for Further Research and Conclusion

The first chapter is the general introduction of the research, which first introduces the rationale of the study on the effects of metacognitive reading strategy instruction on adult non - English major students’ reading comprehension ability The other parts like research aims, research questions, hypotheses, and research significance are presented to state why and how this research is carried out Thesis organization is finally mentioned in this chapter

In the second chapter, the issues of metacognition, metacognitive reading strategies are clarified in terms of their definitions, components, and sub-categorizations Levels and

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aspects of reading comprehension are presented in the next part as the theoretical base for measurement of reading comprehension ability and the deployment of the experimental program The last part of this chapter is the review of five pieces of research on the effects of metacognitive reading instruction on reading comprehension

The third chapter is aimed to present the design, the participants, and the materials of the study The description of the instruments for data collection and data analysis are also included in this chapter

The fourth chapter offers the results of the study with the aim to answer the three mentioned research questions

The last chapter presents the summary and discussions on the findings of the study Implications for using metacognitive reading strategy instruction to improve students’ reading comprehension ability as well as the limitations of the study are then covered in the last part of this chapter

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter presents the definitions, components, and classifications of metacognition as well

as the possible relationship between metacognition and comprehension Besides, it explores the process of reading comprehension in terms of aspects and levels to form a logical background for the selection of instruments used in this research The last part of this chapter will report five pieces of research into the effects of metacognitive reading strategies instruction on students’

reading comprehension

2.1 Introduction

In foreign or second language teaching and learning especially in Vietnam context, reading has received significant attention because of many different reasons For instance, many teachers consider this subject to be easier to test and mark in comparison with the others; materials for teaching and testing reading are more available and accessible Besides, reading is an effective way to help learners to improve language proficiency and gain knowledge However, the concern for reading is not worthy of its importance For example, students are rarely instructed to deal with different kinds of reading tasks while reading strategy instruction is supposed to improve reading strategy awareness which could help students their own ways to succeed by promoting their autonomy and self-adjustment For these reasons, the role of reading in language learning and teaching should be appreciated, and teaching reading is not simply teaching the text but teaching students how to explore the texts by themselves

Reading is generally defined as a process of interaction between texts and readers If the texts are accompanied with pictures or illustrated with diagrams, have clear formats, or convey interesting information, they will be easier for reading Likewise, when the readers have good prior knowledge about the texts, set their own goals for reading, know the nature of the tasks, and decide suitable strategies, they can plan, monitor, and adjust their reading process for better comprehension Such activities are known as parts of metacognitive reading strategies, which are believed to be teachable That is the reason why metacognition in reading has recently received substantial attention from educators and researchers For a clearer vision to this process, the following would present different views on metacognition, its components, metacognition in reading comprehension and the possible relationship among metacognitive strategy instruction, metacognitive strategy awareness and reading comprehension from the empirical results of five studies

in this field

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2.2 Metacognition and its related aspects

2.2.1 Metacognition: definitions and components

The term metacognition coming from cognitive psychology has been widely used in language learning and teaching The prefix of this term, “meta” has three different meanings: behind or after, super, and transition; “meta” in metacognition takes the first meaning Cognition means the act or process of knowing or perception Therefore,

metacognition can generally be defined as understanding what is behind, thinking about our understanding or thinking about thinking

According to many educators (e.g., Biehler and Snowman, 1993; Eggen and Kaucbak, 1995) metacognition was one’s knowledge about one’s own cognition However, Collins (1994), Maitland (2000) argued that metacognition was not only the knowledge about one’s cognition but also the regulation of cognition In line with those educators, Leahey and Harris (1997) defined metacognition as the knowledge, awareness, and monitoring of one’s own cognition (cited in El-Koumy, 2004) El-Koumy agreed that metacognition was also the combination of two phenomena: the first one is the conscious awareness of one’s own cognition and the second one is not conscious control of one’s own knowledge but the conscious control of one’s own learning process His idea about metacognition does not contradict with the others’ but it is more focused on the application of this psychological phenomenon to learning Definitions of metacognition are not only different among different researchers; the view on metacognition of the same researchers also changes from time to time

At first, Tei & Steward (1983) defined metacognition as people’s awareness of the knowledge they possessed (cited in Abromitis, 1985) This view concurred with the idea

of Biehler and Snowman (1993), Eggen and Kaucbak (1995) as mentioned above; it just focused on one aspect of metacognition - the awareness of one’s knowledge, not the control or the regulation of knowledge However, they improved the definition of metacognition by expanding the components of metacognition To them metacognition combined the three components separately: having knowledge about one’s understanding, controlling and using that knowledge appropriately (Tei & Steward, cited in Scales,

1987) This definition is overlapped and wider in comparison with the others It is

overlapped because the meaning of the term “using appropriately” covers the meaning

of “controlling” We could not use the knowledge of cognition appropriately without

controlling it successfully It is wider because it focuses on not only the control of

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cognition but also the use of cognition It is assumed that Tei & Steward redefined metacognition in this way to emphasize on both the process and product of this phenomenon For the sake of briefness and clarity, metacognition could be understood as the understanding about one’s knowledge and the control of that knowledge for the ultimate goal

In a similar way, Paris (1987) described metacognition as the combination of self - appraisal (awareness) and self-management (control) The former could be recognized as declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, and conditional knowledge about cognition, and the later as strategic planning, evaluation of process, or regulation of cognition (cited in Yore & Craig, 1992) Yore & Craig (1992) concurred with Paris by the definition of metacognition as the awareness and executive control of cognition – a

construct revealing insights about the what, how, why and when of cognition Paris

(1990) herself specified the definition of metacognition as referring it to the knowledge about cognitive states and abilities to construct “affective and motivational characteristics

of thinking” (cited in Kouider and Carla, 2002) in “Assessing students’ metacognitive

awareness of reading strategies” She viewed metacognition as the state of cognition and

the ability to control this cognition, and made it more specific to the construction of characteristics of thinking as effectiveness and “motivativeness” This is a radical improvement in the definition of metacognition because it covers another factor - motivation From those characters of thinking, it could be inferred that the aim of this researcher is to focus on the application of metacognition in learning especially language learning

For both of the two definitions of metacognition, researchers generally believe that metacognition is the awareness of one’s cognition and the control or regulation of that cognition However, according to Wikipedia, metacognition has another component besides the knowledge and regulation of cognition That is experience of cognition Metacognition is made up of three components: metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive regulation, and metacognitive experiences (Wikipedia) For different purposes of studies, metacognition is defined and sub-categorized in distinctive ways From different views in metacognition and for the purpose of this research, it is assumed that metacognition is the knowledge about and the regulation of one’s cognition Further explanation about the components of metacognition and their classification will be discussed later in this review

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2.2.2 Cognition and metacognition

Before the definitions and classifications of metacognition in reading are discussed, the relationship and distinction between the two terms: cognition and metacognition are presented As presented earlier in this review, most of the researchers defined metacognition basing on the term “cognition” Cognition is the prerequisite condition of metacognition Cognition functions as the base of metacognition; and metacognition improves cognition Nist and Simpson (1994) agreed that metacognitive strategies increased readers’ efficacy and improved their cognitive strategies Both cognition and metacognition are psychological processes The former refers to an information processing view of our psychological functions The later refers to the knowledge about, regulation of and experience from cognition (Wikipedia) Cognition and metacognition are both important in language learning These two processes are interrelated, and the distinctions between them are problematic and it will be partially presented in the following session

It is important to make distinctions between cognitive and metacognitive strategies because it helps teachers to decide which strategies are important to determine the effectiveness of reading (Graham, cited in Anderson, 1987) However, making the distinction between the two types of reading strategies is a complicated task for many different reasons For example, it is difficult to distinguish metacognitive strategies from other reading processes like thinking, or reasoning Moreover, one strategy could be both cognitive and metacognitive Some strategies such as activating prior knowledge and predicting were considered cognitive strategies but now metacognitive strategies Effective reading is a continuous and intertwining process of cognition and metacognition As Lopez cited the idea of two researchers Alvino and Pesut (1990) for the distinction between the two strategies: while cognition was described as a basic mental skill such as “simple recall, analyzing the parts of a whole, recognizing cause and effect, comparing and contrasting, classifying, conceptualizing”, metacognition was defined as one’s ability to think about one’s own thinking, - or one’s knowledge concerning one’s own cognitive process and product

Hitherto, cognition and metacognition, these two interrelated psychological phenomena have been partly examined from the variety of visions They have been recognized in different ways and received a great deal of consideration from educators and researchers

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The role and application of metacognition in reading comprehension will then be presented and categorized in the next part

2.2.3 Metacognition and reading comprehension

As Abromitis Barbara cited Brown‘s idea (1985) in her research, the two facets of metacognition were the knowledge about and regulation of cognition First, the knowledge about cognition was the knowledge that the readers had about their own cognitive resources Second, the regulation of cognition was the regulation of one’s reading process, which raised the control of readers’ strategies to overcome difficulties with text comprehension El – Koumy (2004) concurred with Brown’s classification that metacognition was about one’s own cognition and knowledge about self-regulation of

one’s own learning” (p.7) The former involves knowledge about self, task, and cognitive

strategies, and the latter involves knowledge about metacognitive strategies Of them, the

three strategies self - planning, self - monitoring and self - assessment receive a great deal

of attention in the field of reading Self - planning denotes “making a comprehensive plan for dealing with the text” (El – Koumy, 2004:14) This strategy increases students’ interest and motivation in reading Self - monitoring or comprehension monitoring indicates the readers’ regulation of their comprehension in the reading process (Glazer, cited in El – Koumy, 2004) This strategy helps students recognize whether they comprehend the text or not and modify the strategies when comprehension is lost In fact, self - monitoring could be accomplished by self-questioning Self-assessment could provide the readers with potential opportunities to monitor and adjust strategic thinking in reading

In the article “The role of metacognition in second language teaching and learning”,

Anderson (2002) agreed on the general definition of metacognition, which was simply thinking about thinking Equipped with those strategies, the learners could be metacognitively aware of what to do in case they had problems with their learning He believed that metacognition combined various thinking and reflective possess and metacognition comprised five main components: preparing and planning for learning, selecting and using learning, monitoring strategies, orchestrating strategies, and evaluating strategies The first component is used to engage in preparing and learning goal in the reading process during which the students thought of what and how to do The second component involves how to use specific reading strategies to accomplish the goal set in the first stage Monitoring strategy helps the readers keep themselves on the track

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of the reading task In fact, this strategy is essential because during the reading process, the students are often off - task, or they do not comprehend the text but they are not consciously aware of this fact Orchestrating refers to the activity in which the readers organize, coordinate, and adjust the strategies used for the optimal goal The last strategy makes condition for the learners actively involving in metacognition by self–evaluating the effectiveness of the four strategies carried out above This strategy is deployed during, not only after the reading process The division of the five components making up metacognition in reading of Anderson is clear, specific and easy to follow However, some other researchers combined the first and second components and named self - planning, the third and the fourth as self - monitoring, and the last as self - evaluating or self - assessing Further discussion about the miss of concurrence in the division of metacognition in reading will be presented subsequently

According to Schmitt (1986), the two facets of metacognition involved here were knowledge and regulation aspects of cognition The knowledge aspect refers to one’s awareness of his or her cognitive resources in relation to the task This assumption means that he or she is aware of his or her own strengths and weaknesses in dealing with the requirement of the learning situation The regulation aspect refers to self-regulatory activities: planning, monitoring and revising in case comprehension breaks down The reading activities involved in the three self-regulatory functions mentioned in this article are numerous, clear and essential to second language learning and teaching For example, planning entails determining the purpose of reading with the following activities: previewing, self-questioning, predicting, hypothesizing, and activating prior knowledge Monitoring is the act of evaluating if the strategies used are effective or not, and if comprehension occurs or not It involves summarizing and self-questioning That is the reason why monitoring could be named as self-questioning In this research, the term self-questioning is not used for monitoring to distinguish self-questioning in planning and monitoring process In fact, self - questioning in those two activities are not the same In planning, the readers might ask themselves the purpose of their reading, or predict the content of the reading text while in self-questioning of monitoring, the readers ask themselves whether they understand or not, and whether the strategies used are appropriate or not Finally, revising involves modifying or adjusting strategies when needed They are re-hypothesizing, prediction making, rereading and clarifying

In a different way, Bonnie Billingsley and Terry Wildman (1990) regarded the two elements of metacognition as metacognitive knowledge and ability to use self-regulatory

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behavior The first is the awareness or knowledge about the readers’ strategies to perform the learning tasks The second is the ability to use self-regulatory behavior to complete those tasks (cited in Lopez, 1992) As stated above, according to Paris, metacognitive knowledge involves declarative knowledge (knowing that), procedural knowledge (knowing how), and conditional knowledge (knowing when and why) and she further divided conditional knowledge into three categories: evaluation, planning, and self - regulation Self - regulation is an important part of metacognition Self - regulatory skills

in reading are known as goal - setting, self - incentives, and self - monitoring (Gentile & McMillan, cited in Lopez, 1992) This type of division is complicated The hierarchical structure of this classification made Paris contradict herself In the above definition, she accepted that metacognition comprised two factors: cognitive states and abilities to control thinking However, in the division she believed that self – regulation or controlling was a part of conditional knowledge, which was one of the three parts making

up metacognitive knowledge In spite of the variety of classification of metacognition, the researchers shared one common agreement that metacognition and comprehension were interrelated and metacognition had an active role in reading comprehension

Among various metacognitive strategies mentioned above, three of the self-regulated reading strategies: self-planning, self-monitoring and self-assessment, or sometimes generalized by the term “metacognitive reading strategies” are studied in this research In other words, the term “metacognitive reading strategies” is understood as “the strategies used by the readers in their reading process to regulate cognitive strategies” and three sub

- division strategies mentioned are identified with the features recommended by Maribeth Cassdy Schmitt in the above section

2.3.1 Reading and comprehension

Most of the researchers agreed that reading was a process of comprehension For instance, McLain (1993) defined reading as an active process of interacting of the readers with the print clues to construct meaning, and comprehension as a process where the readers grasped the meaning from the text Therefore, to McLain reading was the process

of achieving comprehension In line with McLain, Lenz (2005) stated that reading comprehension was the process of constructing meaning from text by readers and the ultimate goal of reading was to comprehend the text According to Anderson (cited in McLain, 1993) comprehension was the combined product of knowledge possessed from

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the reader, information from the text, and the contextual situation How much comprehension achieved by this process depended on the nature of interaction between the text and the reader Three researchers mentioned share the same idea that reading process is active and interactive but whether comprehension is a product or process had not been clearly emphasized

The argument whether comprehension is a process or product is an issue of controversy According to Myers (1991), there existed two different views on reading comprehension

- comprehension as a process and comprehension as a product and they entailed two opposing ways in reading instruction - metacomprehension and comprehension testing respectively He believed that reading constituted a strategic meaning - acquisition process, requiring the regulation of reasoning process and “comprehension as an active process of hypothesis testing or schema constructing” According to Johnston (1981) reading was “any readers’ interaction with the texts” (p.11) The view of reading comprehension as a process focuses on the immediate reception of information while the other emphasizes the role of long - term memory in comprehension Comprehension requires reasoning ability, and the role of memory Therefore, the process of comprehension and memory are interrelated For that reason, it is assumed that reading comprehension is both a process and product

The above idea initiates another discussion about the way to test comprehension whether

we should focus on both process and product or only product because product is the natural outcome and indication of process The present research is done to study the readers’ comprehension and metacognition process Therefore, students’ reading achievement should be investigated from both product and process view From the product perspective, students’ reading comprehension achievement is mainly accessed by comprehension tests (pre - test and post – test) focusing on some of micro-reading comprehension skills which are intended to be trained during the course However, this kind of reading comprehension test could hardly provide enough insight into these mental processes That is the reason why this research means to collect information from students’ journals, which could provide supplementary information about their comprehension advancement during the intervention program

2.3.2 Levels of comprehension

There have been different classifications of comprehension levels in reading research history It varies according to the views of mental process of reading and levels of

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language proficiency involved in “digesting” the text of the readers Based on the way the readers’ mind processing incoming information of the texts, reading comprehension was

divided into three levels: literal, interpretive or referential, and critical comprehension (Mohamad, 1999); or here, hidden, and head (Graham & Wrong, cited in Spiegel et al

1999) Another strand in reading comprehension classification is related to Bloom’s taxonomy On this basis, reading process is inspected from the levels of cognitive ability The last, maybe the most practical one, depends on the purpose of assessment Therefore, reading capacity is evaluated in parallel with the proficiency of other language skills

The three levels of comprehension known as here, hidden, and head or so-called might

be the clearest and simplest classification The first comprehension level - here or literal reading - involves the surface meaning At this level, students could find the information and ideas that are explicitly stated in the text The second one is hidden or reading for interpretive or referential comprehension, which requires the learners’ ability to read between the lines This idea means they have to connect the information presented for the implied or deeper meanings Thinking process engaged in this level is drawing conclusions, generalizing and predicting outcomes The third level of comprehension is critical reading whereby the readers have to evaluate the information using their own head At this level, students are required to deal with most challenging tasks like reading for facts or opinions, for the writers’ attitudes and so on These levels of reading comprehension are not distinct to one another but recursively develop with age and reading experience

Applying Bloom’s taxonomy in teaching reading comprehension, there are six levels of intellectual behavior in cognitive reading tasks: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation In fact, depending on students’ cognitive ability and language proficiency, different tasks inquiring different thinking levels could be designed For instance, in the first level of the classifications, the task might require students to recall specific information, which is explicitly presented in the written text; for the comprehension level, the readers are required to understand what is read like reading for the main idea of the text by collecting details across the sentences It is not easy for the researcher to indicate students’ specific cognition level involved in the task and test designation because of the miss of concurrence between two factors: students’ levels of cognition and their language proficiency

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Although comprehension has several levels, they are not clear-cut in the reading process

It means that the mastery of one level is not a prerequisite condition to the following ones In reality, different texts and tasks require the readers’ different ways of interpretations For this reason, it is supposed that the students could possibly be able to

do the reading tasks designed at different levels of cognition and the level of their reading proficiency is around post - elementary or low - intermediate as described in ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines of American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (Appendix F) This was also reading proficiency level required in the pre - and post – test

2.4 The possible relationship among the three factors: metacognitive strategy

instruction, metacognitive strategy awareness, and reading comprehension in related research

Whether comprehension can be taught and reading strategies are teachable or not is still

an issue of great concern Many educators believe that reading is rather “learnt than taught” or “caught than taught” It implies that the role of reading practice overweighs the role of strategy training in improving reading performance It is reasonable especially in the first language reading Many people become good readers not thanks to strategy training but owing to practice Good readers move around the spiral circle of reading, gaining, and growing We might pose a question at this point “Can these proficient readers, without being taught with explicit reading strategies, be aware of any reading strategies and use them better than the trained readers?” This is a tricky question which is not further discussed in this research but it raises the awareness that reading is a skill, not

an inborn skill Learning how to read, at first, a child needs morphological and phonological awareness for decoding words and word meaning This process is related to cognitive reading skills From these basic reading skills, one could improve his or her reading proficiency through practice Besides cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies could also assist to improve getting meaning skills According to Anderson (2002), the use of metacognitive strategies ignited one’s thinking and enhanced his reading performance This question is also the main question of the present research “Are there any different effects between reading with and without metacognitive strategy instruction on reading comprehension ability?”

To get a further view on the above issues about reading, the researcher reviewed five related pieces of research on the impact of metacognitive strategy instruction or

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metacognitive awareness on reading comprehension from 1999 to 2006 Although they were conducted to study the reading process in the first language, they could be applied

in second or foreign language teaching and learning situations In fact, many research results showed that the reading process in L1 generally shared common characteristics with that in a second or foreign language and these two processes had positive effects on each other (Hardin, 2001) Moreover, reading in L2 was assumed more difficult in reading in L1 because L2 readers’ comprehension was more likely at risk due to insufficient linguistic knowledge like syntax, semantics and so on For example, according to Jimenez, Garcia and Pearson (cited in Pelletier, 2004) unknown vocabulary caused obstruction to L2 reader’ comprehension so the role of metacognition was very important to them Furthermore, in Sheorey & Mokhtari (2001) and Pelletier (2004)’s research, it was found that L1 and L2 readers might activate their metacognition in different ways in terms of types of strategy, levels of reading achievement and genders However, they all agreed that metacognitive use of L1 and L2 readers was mostly equivalent and metacognition had a positive role in both L1 and L2 reading

The five studies reviewed in this research are classified into two groups The first was the collection of research with the positive effects of metacognitive awareness on reading comprehension; and the second with negative effects of metacognitive awareness on reading comprehension

2.4.1 Positive effects of metacognition on reading comprehension

The first study reviewed in this part titled “A study of the effects of metacognition on

reading comprehension” was conducted by Cattell Micki’ (1999) to examine the effects

of metacognitive strategy instruction on reading comprehension of grade fourth students (of the USA educational system) The instruments used in this research were both qualitative and quantitative Reading comprehension was measured by reading test and metacognitive strategies acknowledgement was recorded and by students’ response journals which contained seven categories of readers’ strategies: connecting text-to-text, connecting text-to-self, connecting text-to-word, focusing on important information, self-questioning, activating prior knowledge an identifying difficult text or structure Nine students of three reading achievement levels were chosen to participate in the experimental program The criteria for choosing participants were based on miscue scores and reading comprehension evaluation The researcher divided the students into three groups: high, medium and low to examine if there were any different effects of

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metacognition on the reading proficiency of the students of different reading levels The result indicated that there was a positive effect of metacognition on the students’ reading comprehension All students used one or more than one metacognitive reading strategies The students of low and medium reading level were able to increase their comprehension

in the post-test but the students of high reading level did not The reading progress of students of these levels in the control group was not so obvious Therefore, without considering the ceiling effect of the high reading level group, it could be inferred that metacognitive strategies could help students to improve reading comprehension ability the students of low and medium reading level Another interesting finding from this research is that the students trained with metacognitive skills were more confident with the text and more willing to conquer it for meaning In line with this finding, Ekbatani (2000) claimed that metacognition promotes students’ autonomy (cited in El-Koumy) This study was noted with many good points like the way to choose samples, test designs

to evaluate students’ reading comprehension, qualitative instrument to measure students’ metacognitive awareness

In the research titled “Metacognition: effects on reading comprehension and reflective

response” (2001) four researchers Valerie Barton, Barbara Freeman, Dorothy Lewis, and

Tamera Thomson aimed to find solutions to the problem of students’ inability to comprehend the text The subjects were second, third, and fifth grade class students in the USA They supposed the cause of this problem was the lack of time for focusing on reflection and metacognitive strategies specifically taught They believed that good readers who comprehended the text well were able to use metacognitive strategies, and metacognition could foster students’ ability to “move beyond the literal to higher levels

of thinking” The five metacognitive strategies suggested were accessing prior knowledge, sensory imaging, story mapping, journaling and buddy reading Students’ reading comprehension was measured by IRTI (Informal Reading Thinking Inventory) (Manzo & Manzo, 1995) To measure students’ metacognitive awareness, the authors used Student Thinking Log (designed by themselves) and Student Thinking Interviews The result of the post – intervention indicated an increase in students’ reading comprehension They concluded that if metacognitive strategies were specifically taught and become automatic they would improve reading achievement

Another metacognitive reading research continuing this review was conducted by three educators (Tara Barbe - Clevett, Nancy Hanley, and Peter Syllivan, 2002) This research was ignited from the problem with reading comprehension of fiction and non-fiction texts

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of sixth grade students (of the USA educational system) Analysis of pre - intervention data showed that the lack of comprehension skills was related to cognitive and metacognitive processing The students lacked ability to reflect their own thinking in reading and motivation for reading They believed that the main thread of education was teaching students how to think The authors suggested an intervention of metacognitive reflection as a therapy for the above problems The result of the research showed that the increase of metacognitive reading strategies paralleled with the improvement of motivation and emotional involvement, and there was a positive relationship between metacognitive reading awareness and reading comprehension This research took the improvement of the students’ metacognitive awareness after the intervention for granted but focused on the change of students’ motivation and conscious involvement during the reading Studying from this study, the researcher should be aware of the fact that time and reading task modification were needed when implementing these thinking skills in the students’ reading process This study showed very detailed illustrations of the context, and statements of the problem that were proven by quantitative and qualitative reasoning The measurement of metacognitive awareness and comprehension was carefully carried out and recorded

The last research finding the positive effect of metacognitive strategy in this review was

“Effects of metacognitive strategy instruction and instruction time on reading comprehension” It was conducted by A.A.M Houtveen and W.J.C.M Van de Grift

(2006) It was an experimental research with two-group design The participants of the treatment were 344 students from students from Dutch elementary schools The teachers were trained and students taught with metacognitive strategy instruction for the experimental group The authors carefully described the implementation of the research with clear illustrations of teachers’ training reading, and the treatment process To ensure reliability and validity, the authors managed to control many kinds of mediator variables like students’ intelligence, age, gender, ethnic backgrounds, reading habits and attitudes, teacher training and used variety of measurements: observation (metacognitive strategy instruction), questionnaires (measurement of metacognitive knowledge), intelligence test, comprehension test Any difference about the score of intelligence, age, gender, metacognitive awareness was corrected before the treatment The research found that the teachers trained with metacognitive instruction outperformed the teachers in the control group; the students in the experimental group made greater progress in metacognitive knowledge The authors concluded that an improvement in metacognitive skills leaded to better results in reading comprehension This research offered the findings of the follow-

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up study that one year later, the students in experimental group still outperformed those

in control group on reading comprehension Besides, it was confirmed that reading comprehension was an innate ability, but it could be learnt and taught

2.4.2 Questionable effects of metacognition on reading comprehension

Different from many educators researching into metacognition, Victoria McClain (1993) found no positive effects of metacognitive strategy instruction on metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension The two specific metacognitive reading strategies

in the study were K-W-L (Know – Want to know - Learned) comprehension monitoring strategy and predicting or evaluating comprehension monitoring strategy The subjects of the study were 51 third grade and 57 fifth grade students selected from four schools in the USA and randomly assigned to the three groups of the study: one taught with K-W-L comprehension monitoring strategy, one with predicting or evaluating comprehension monitoring strategy and the control group

Metacognitive awareness and reading achievement were separately and carefully measured by Index of Reading Awareness (IRA) devised by Paris and Jacob (1987) and Gates-MacGinitie Tests third edition (1989) respectively This research, however, raised awareness about the validity of these measurements because of the inconsistency of metacognitive awareness and the complexity of reading comprehension process Besides the main question that the research aimed to answer - the possible effects of two monitoring strategies on students’ metacognitive awareness and reading achievement, it meant to show the comparative effects of the two variables on the subjects’ metacognitive awareness and reading achievement in terms of gender and grade level

The result of this finding would surprise anyone who advocated the use of metacognitive strategies for improving comprehension Metacognitive awareness might be a late developing process that was not sensitive to strategy taught and reading comprehension was not affected by comprehension monitoring instruction From this study, it could be inferred that the effects of teaching comprehension strategies on metacognitive awareness and reading achievement were questionable

That was the reason why she posed two questions that were ground for further research

“whether strategy instruction teaches students to be better readers or just better strategy users” and “whether metacognition is a late developing skill” If metacognition could develop with age, it was not necessary to be taught explicitly This research drew a great

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deal of attention from many researchers for the unexpected finding, careful design, measurement, and dealing with the variety of participants in terms of genders and reading levels

In a word, most of the studies investigating the possible effect of metacognitive instruction or metacognitive awareness on reading comprehension ability were experimental studies with two - group design and the instruments for these studies might

be qualitative or quantitative However, none of them mentioned the interactive relation between metacognitive reading awareness and reading comprehension ability except the

research conducted by McClain (1993) This research just raises the question on the

correlations between two factors: metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension ability For that reason, it could be inferred that the correlation between metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension is still a newly exploited land in the research field Moreover, the different ideas about the measurements of metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension should be considered in assessing readers’ comprehension and metacognition

A notable number of studies on the effects of metacognitive awareness on students’ reading comprehension was found and presented in this literature Besides, in this literature, a variety of the definitions, classifications of metacognition as well as the levels and aspects of reading comprehension ability and comprehension process were partly noted Considerable problems like the validity of the instruments to measure metacognitive awareness, the complexity of reading comprehension aspects, risks of not ensuring research reliability and validity due to the size of the study, inexperience of research novice are quite predictable Nevertheless, the researcher hopes the review of the literature would set a theoretical framework that could be able to logically support the issue discussed in the next parts of this research

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CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter first introduces (1) the overall design of the study (2) The participants, (3) the

settings, (4) the instruments for measuring reading comprehension ability and metacognitive

reading strategy awareness, (5) and procedure of main research activities are then presented

(6) The materials for implementing the experimental program are finally mentioned in the rest

part of this chapter

To investigate the different possible effects of metacognitive reading strategy instruction

on students’ metacognitive strategy awareness and reading comprehension, the researcher

conducted an experimental research with two-group design The homogeneity of reading

comprehension ability and metacognitive reading strategy awareness of the experimental

group and control group was proven by their performance scores in pre - tests (reading

comprehension test and metacognitive reading strategy awareness questionnaire)

An intervention program was carried out with the experimental group in one semester

through seven reading lessons During that time, the students in the experimental group

were suggested to use metacognitive reading strategies in reading After the intervention

program, the researcher administered the post - tests (reading comprehension test and

metacognitive strategy awareness questionnaire) to test whether there would be any

difference in students’ metacognitive reading strategy awareness and reading

comprehension ability of the two groups of participants and whether there would exist

any correlations between these two factors

3.2 Participants

3.2.1 Students

The participants in this study were non - English - major students in TVTTC They were

all in the first year of their college program Only 30 students of K13MN (total number:

45) and, 31 students of K13M (total number: 54) were selected to join in the control and

experimental group for the sake of homogeneity of these two groups in the level of

reading comprehension and metacognitive awareness The mean scores in reading

comprehension test and questionnaire about students’ metacognitive reading strategy

awareness in the pre - test were the main standard for choosing subjects However, the

mean scores of the students’ age and the percentage of male, female and ethnic students

in the two groups were not equivalent due to the limit number of classes of TVTTC in

this school year

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Table 1: Characteristics of the participants

After the treatment, the researcher studied the journals of six students in the experimental group, the representatives of three different reading levels in the post – reading - test to get an insight into their reading comprehension and metacognition process

3.2.2 Teachers

The researcher herself taught the experimental group to save time training teachers An experienced teacher in her school was invited to teach the control group Another teacher, also her colleague, an M.A in TEFT and the researcher were the two raters of the test Three other teachers in English M.A class 13 helped to improve the questionnaire and reading comprehension tests

The two variables in this study were repeatedly measured by different instruments The result of the pre - test and the post – test on students’ metacognitive strategy awareness and reading comprehension ability was analyzed quantitatively to measure the effect of the treatment on students’ reading comprehension Besides, other qualitative information about the program like students’ reflection, reaction towards the experimental program and their progress in reading practice applying metacognitive reading strategies were

revealed in students’ journals

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Metacognition and reading comprehension are intricate mental process Ensuring the reliability and validity of the measurement of these variables is therefore problematic As shown in the related studies in the literature, comprehension ability was generally measured quantitatively by reading tests while metacognition was assessed with variety

of instruments namely students’ response journals, students’ thinking log, interview, questionnaire or IRA Each type of measurement has its own strengths and weaknesses For example, the quantitative instruments provide the coded data that were clear and not

difficult to analyze for reaching the conclusion Besides, according to Weinreich (1996),

the result from quantitative analysis is evaluated more objective, generalizable, and reliable On the contrary, information collected from qualitative instruments like journals, interview (semi-structured) could help researchers get an insight into the process of learners’ mind during the intervention that is essential to the research on metacognition For those reasons, this research follows both qualitative and quantitative approaches with the hope that they could complement each other

The two variables in this study were repeatedly measured by different instruments Like other research, students’ comprehension ability was measured by the pre - and post – test

on reading comprehension Metacognitive awareness was measured by questionnaire The use of questionnaire to measure metacognition might be susceptible because students’ random sticks on the questionnaire were possible Despite the proven questionnaire reliability, the limit number of research participants (under 50) might make collected information mistrusted This situation necessitated the use of a qualitative instrument to provide supplementary information In comparison with students’ interview, students’ journal was preferable It is believed that the students have more time and freedom to report their reading process in written form than in spoken form Besides, the use of students’ journals was more advantageous than students’ thinking log because it could provide more concrete and comprehensive information In conclusion, other researchers might have their reasons to choose other ways to measure metacognition but the combination of the pre – and post – test on metacognition and students’ journal is believed to offer the researcher with clearer, more meticulous description of the reality that assists the researcher to answer the research questions

3.4.1 Questionnaire on metacognitive reading strategy awareness

• Clustering

To measure metacognitive reading strategy awareness was one of the most difficult tasks

in this research In fact, until now metacognitive awareness measurement has received

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countless attention and argument among the researchers First, different views on metacognition brought variety to its measurement Second, metacognitive awareness has been considered invisible From the working definition of this research, metacognitive reading strategies were used to regulate their cognitive strategies in their reading process

To generalize, metacognitive strategies are self - planning, self – monitoring and self – assessing activities, which were recommended to use to foster comprehension

From the definition and category of metacognitive reading strategies, and learning from metacognitive awareness questionnaires of other researchers especially Pintrinch et al (1991), cited in Trinh (2005), the researcher redesigned a questionnaire with three main clusters namely self - planning, self – monitoring and self – assessing to measure

students’ metacognitive reading strategy awareness Each cluster included five statements

as some typical descriptions of how good metacognitive readers planned, monitored, and assessed their reading strategies Four reversed versions randomly occurred in three clusters of the questionnaire The final questionnaire was piloted twice with two different groups of students who are first year non – English major students in TVTTC with the coefficient reliability α = 0.77 and 0.78 (Appendix G)

• Moderating

Of the fifteen items in the metacognitive awareness questionnaire used in this study, ten items were adapted from Pintrich et al.’s (1991) SRI The other five were created by the researcher Not all of the items in the SRI were kept and most of the selected ones were modified because the classification of metacognitive reading awareness in this research is not similar to the self-regulatory reading awareness as presented in the SRI created by Pintrich et al

The piloting result of the original questionnaire showed the lack of internal consistency

of some items and some of typical metacognitive strategies were not properly concerned

in the questionnaire That was the reason for the adjustment of this version In fact, four

of fifteen items in the metacognitive questionnaire were improved in the second time of piloting In the former version, the activity “looking up for the meanings of new words in dictionary” in pre – planning was negative to good metacognitive readers because it inferred that the readers failed to guess meanings from context in while – reading stage Besides, the other four items did not cover all typical pre - planning activities For those reasons, the statement describing “the skimming over the general organization of the text before reading” as a reserved version in the first part of the questionnaire was selected for the replacement

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The fact that related ideas were expressed in separate statements and some of representative self - monitoring activities were not yet introduced necessitated the improvement of statement 7 and 10 in the second part of the questionnaire In fact, the two statements “not understanding the text but not recognizing this fact” and “not understanding the text but not knowing what to do” were not the same but they in part overlapped each other The former mentioned the readers’ awareness about ones’ own thinking The later conveyed the readers’ knowledge about strategies, which were expressed in the three other statements like rereading, self – questioning For that reason,

it was omitted and replaced with “making questions to help focus reading” which was one of the most important monitoring activities Additionally, the deletion of statement

10 was also a similar case Instead of offering further description of self-monitoring activities, the new version conveyed the readers’ self – regulatory understanding in form

of a reversed version “getting lost because of thinking of other things out of the texts”

In the same way, one statement in the last part of the original version was replaced by another one to express a new angle of self - evaluating In fact, statements 12 and 13 described the same activity, which was evaluating the text information provided by the author, but they were written in different ways One of the two was consequently omitted and replaced with another statement that aimed to assess writer’s information in comparison to the readers’ expectation

3.4.2 Pre-test and post-test on reading comprehension

For reading comprehension, the researcher tested the students’ achievement by using a pre-test and post-test that tested reading for the main ideas and detailed information, necessitating the use of bottom - up and top - down strategies It did not test all aspects of reading comprehension but mainly focused on five areas: reading for text – gist, reading for text organization, recognizing content details, guessing meaning from context, and using prior knowledge

Among them, the last sub - skill caused considerable controversy and consensus because

it was not easy to know whether students had prior knowledge in a specific area of the world knowledge, whether their prior knowledge matched with that of the writer, and how they used it Therefore, to assess this process remained a somewhat mysterious question However, in the present research, it was assumed that except reading for understanding word – by - word meaning, the readers generally had to activate their prior knowledge, which was an important element in reading for comprehension especially above the sentence level For example, to read for the main idea of the text, the students

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had to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate incoming information based on the existing knowledge For that reason, tests for measuring readers’ using prior knowledge had relative significance Indeed, it was not a sole sub-skill that the readers used to accomplish a specific task but it was overlapped with the others like reading for text – gist, reading for text organization, “reading for the overall purposes of the text” (Nuttall, 1996: p16), and guessing meaning from context

• Test constructing and scoring

The reading comprehension test was planned to be accomplished in 45 minutes It consisted four parts with 20 items for 20 marks totally The first part aimed to test reading for text organization Scoring of this part was dissimilar to others It marked both the position and sequence of paragraphs in a text The candidates got one mark for each right sequence like A and B, or B and C; and correct position of the opening and closing paragraphs The second part of the test included seven items which tested reading for text gist, recognizing content details, focusing on the writer’ s attitude, using prior knowledge and guessing meaning from context in the form of seven multiple choice questions The task of part III was reading for literal understanding by recognizing content details in the form of four True - False statements The final part comprised four items requiring filling

in the blanks with appropriate words Fulfilling this task necessitated both top-down and bottom–up reading In fact, having knowledge about syntax, vocabulary as well as world knowledge about the text topic helped students accomplish the tasks successfully The answers were consequently just suggestive Any different answers, which are grammatically and semantically correct, are accepted The correctness of one of the

above two aspects got 0.5 mark

• Moderating and piloting

Most of the original test was selected from PET Practice Tests (CUP, 2004) It was carefully administered to a group of 50 grade -12- students in an upper - secondary school in Tra Vinh province in May 2008 English level of these students’ was assumed the same as that of the students in this study The piloting test was assigned to be finished

in 30 minutes but the time for finishing it varied from 40 to 55 minutes Although the test – takers took a longer time to accomplish the task, their testing result showed unsatisfactory reliability due to the mismatch between their reading comprehension levels

and the difficulty of the test

For that reason, fifteen items in task II and III of the piloting test, which were adopted from PET Practice Tests (CUP, 2004) as mentioned, were omitted Other tasks, extracted

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from the testing bank complied (from assorted standardized reading tests) by TVTTC were chosen to replace the deleted ones The possibility (P), the discrimination (D) and the effectiveness of the distracters of this test was tested Task I and IV whose texts were

taken from the course book “English in Focus level A” by Nguyen and Sampson were

kept unchanged for their reliability was acceptable The final comprehension test used in the present research was administered to a non – elective group of 30 students who were also non-English major English students like the participants in this study in 45 minutes The coefficient reliability of the test in the last time piloting was α = 73 (Appendix H) Ensuring the similarity of the pre-test and post-test in terms of difficulty and reliability levels was a tricky question If the researcher had used two different tests, it would have been unsafe to guarantee that they had similar level of difficulty However, if the same test had been used twice, the reliability of two times testing might predictably be uncertain The solution was that the pre - test and post - test should be the same in terms

of content, construct, task types, task number and scoring method but different in task order, format, and selection of distracters However, the similarity of the pre - test and post – test may be “vulnerable” because of the bias of memory To solve this problem, the researcher did not give students the answer keys or suggested answers after the pre - test and administered two intervention tests between the pre - and post - test time

3.4.3 Journals

Additionally, students’ journal was carried out to ensure the reliability of the pre - and post - test and assisted to approach the students’ reflection, reaction towards the experimental program and their progress in reading practice applying metacognitive reading strategies Each journal was expected to be written in one 120-150 word paragraph in Vietnamese or English optionally In total, they were required to write four journals The first journal should be written right after the metacognitive strategy training

session to describe their reaction to it The other two were supposed to be accomplished during the course as a record or description of how they applied metacognitive strategies

in reading in terms of benefits, problems with the application, and progress in their comprehension process (if any) The last journal focused on the students’ general reaction and reflection on the whole intervention program

This study was planned to be conducted in the school year 2008-2009 with the following steps In the first week of the first semester, the researcher delivered the two pre-tests