The Development of English Reading Comprehension Ability of Grade 11 Students

Using Metacognitive Strategies

Acoording to the reseach which was conducted by Praphaithong Sitthiprom in Udon

Thani Rajabhat University, November 2012. The purposes of this study were to compare the
English reading comprehension abilities of Grade 11 students before and after using
metacognitive strategies and to study the students attitude towards teaching English reading
comprehension using metacognitive strategies. The sample group consisted of 21 Grade 11
students in a secondary school in Udon Thani, Thailand during semester 2 of the 2011
academic year. A cluster random sampling technique was used. The research instruments
were comprised of 9 lesson plans, an English reading comprehension ability test and an
attitude questionnaire. The instruments in each cycle of the action research consisted of a
teaching observation form, a learning observation form, lesson plan quizzes, cycle quizzes
and a student interview form. Percentage, mean, standard deviation and t-test for dependent
samples were used to analyze data.

Three cycles of action research were employed in this study. The findings revealed as
follows. The students average pretest and posttest scores on English reading comprehension
ability were 55.83% and 80.24%, respectively. The students English reading comprehension
found to be significantly higher after learning using metacognitive strategies at the .05 level.
2. The students attitude towards teaching English reading comprehension was at a good
level. (x = 4.64).

Results of the National Testing of the Educational Basic Level (2011) indicate that the
average English language score of Nonghanwittaya School students was 19.22%. English
language reading comprehension of Grade 11 students was at a very low level. Reference
also found that some Thai students did not succeed in their studies because of their deficient
reading skills. Also from this study, it was found that students other English language
abilities were unsatisfactory and reading was the skill that most urgently required
development. Reading comprehension is the most important skill in language learning. It is
therefore essential for a leaner who studies English as a foreign language to acquire reading
ability. The study population consisted of 79 Grade 11 students at Nonghanwittaya School
during semester 2 of the 2011 academic year in Udon Thani, Thailand. The samples of the
study were 21 Grade 11 students at this school. A cluster random sampling technique was
used.

These research findings provide practical information about developing English

reading comprehension abilities using metacognitive strategies. They improve reading skill
by enabling more enjoyable and easier language learning.The limitation of this study is its
small sample size. This should be extended to other contexts. It should be compared with
other reading strategies to seek a set of best practices for effectively improving students
English language comprehension.

The secod research study is by Phakiti (2003b), through the use of a cognitive and
metacognitive questionnaire drawn from the existing literature, retrospective interviews and
an EFL achievement test, investigated the relationship between 384 Thai learners cognitive
and metacognitive strategy use and their reading test performance. Unlike Purpura (1999), the
test takers completed the test first and immediately after the test completion, they answered
the questionnaire on the degree of their strategy use during the test taking. The rationale
underlying this design was that strategy use, like other online cognitive processes would be
more directly related to specific lan- guage performance than to general strategy use. Using
the factor structures to form composites of cognitive and metacognitive strategies for further
quantitative analyses, Phakiti found that metacognitive strategies were statistically positively
related to cognitive strategies (the correction for- attenuation correlation = 0.76). In his
qualitative data analysis, cognitive and metacognitive strategy use by successful test-takers
was highly complex. For example, when they translated part of a text (cognitive strategy use),
they aimed to see if it made sense (evaluating strategy use), and when they made efforts to
summarize the passage (cognitive strategy use), they checked for comprehension (monitoring
strategy use). In regards to the relationships be- tween strategies and test performance,
cognitive and metacognitive strategies were both positively correlat- ed with the reading test
performance.

Phakiti (2003b) also compared the differences in the strategy use and reading performance
among highly successful, moderately successful and unsuccessful learners by means of
factorial multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and found the significant differences
among these learner groups. There was strong evidence that the highly successful learners
reported significantly higher use of metacognitive strategies than the moderately successful
ones, who in turn reported higher use of these strategies than the unsuccess- ful ones. The
qualitative data analysis further supported such findings, suggesting that the successful learn-
ers approached the test tasks more strategically than the less successful ones. In his
subsequent study, Phakiti (2003a) reported the differences between males and females in
terms of strategy use and L2 reading performance. Phakiti (2003a) found that although males
and females did not differ in their reading perfor- mance and their use of cognitive strategies,
males were found to report significantly higher use of metacog- nitive strategies than females.
However, at the gender plus success level, no gender difference was found (e.g., highly
successful males did not differ in terms of L2 reading performance and strategy use from
their female counterparts).

A further goal was to asses stuednts attitude towards English lamguage learning
when this stratgies were used. So on this study, the researcher want to investigate is there
any correlation between metacognitive awarenes of reading strategies and reading TOEFL?