The Effect of Metacognitive Strategy Instruction on the Comprehension Reading Abilities of Undergraduate Students

Abstract

English educators in Thailand should know that there is a need to incorporate reading strategy instruction into regular English classes to foster reading comprehension among high school students, as well as to foster motivation and positive attitudes towards English reading. There is evidence that reading strategies were not widely taught in high schools or middle schools in Thailand, and EFL students hoped that reading strategies should have been taught to them. The findings of this study were conducted on reading comprehension abilities using CALLA, a metacognitive strategy instruction, for four weeks. A one-shot case design was used to investigate the effects of metacognitive strategy instruction on the reading comprehension skills of 15 undergraduate tourism students. During the intervention, they used reading logs to reflect on their metacognitive awareness and self-regulatory mechanisms while they were engaged in reading tasks on the internet. Data from participants' reading logs were analyzed qualitatively. The findings reveal that metacognitive strategy instruction can increase students’ reading comprehension skills. In addition, the results imply that metacognitive awareness increased. Thus, they have become strategic readers and autonomous learners. However, they also require vocabulary and syntax instructions and exercises. In addition, Reading Comprehension Strategies for the Internet should be taught to students. Recommendation 1. Although lower-level students' reading comprehension abilities improved after the four-week metacognitive strategy instruction, instructing lower-level readers should take a longer time. Many models of reading strategies are required for classroom demonstrations. 2 Because of their lack of knowledge of vocabulary and syntax sentences, teachers should review the basics of reading to help them tackle their reading problems, especially some tourism terms and complex syntax in a hypertext on a website.