The purpose of this study is to examine whether the metacognitive strategy instruction of the low achievers in high schools on English reading can or cannot result in the developments in the English reading proficiency, the Metacognitive Awareness Inv...
The purpose of this study is to examine whether the metacognitive strategy instruction of the low achievers in high schools on English reading can or cannot result in the developments in the English reading proficiency, the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory and the self- efficacy.
The subjects of this study were eighty high school sophomore students. Twenty four students got more than 90% of pre-achievement test, and the other twenty four students obtained less than 50% of pre-achievement test. These subjects were selected to conduct the survey SILL version 8.0 (Oxford, 1990), and the analysis results confirmed that the metacognitive strategy had the greatest difference between the two classes.
Based on the result, twelve students of the experiment class with underachievement were taught the metacognitive strategy 10 times for 5 weeks through the composition of the Action Plan, while 12 students of the control group with underachievement were given English reading lessons without the metacognitive strategy. Data was later collected after the English reading proficiency test and survey were implemented on MAI and self-efficacy. For data analysis, IBM SPSS Statistics 19 program was used and independent and correspondent T-test were carried out to examine the difference between the pre and post experiment groups. The results of the analysis of the changes in English reading proficiency, MAI, and self-efficacy are as follows:
First, both the high achievers and the low achievers were found to have used compensation strategy frequently, followed by metacognitive strategy, memory strategy, cognitive strategy, affective strategy, and social strategy. Second, matacognitive strategy was analyzed to have a significant difference between the high achievers and low achievers. Third, it was found that the metacognitive strategy instruction had a considerable effect on the English reading proficiency (p= .032). Fourth, a considerable change of MAI were brought about in the experiment group with the metacognitive strategy instruction in comparison with the control group without it (p= .020). Fifth, there was less difference in the self-efficacy between the experiment group and the control group (the pre P-value= .040 and the post P-value = .032).
This study confirmed that the metacognitive strategy instruction considerably influenced on the English reading proficiency and MAI to the high achievers as well as to low achievers, but there was an insignificant difference in the case of the self-efficacy.
Thus, as a self-learning method for high school low achievers under the EFL environment and/or a method for low achievers to improve their self-efficacy, the long-term metacognitive strategy instruction is recommended for high school teachers.