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ENGLISH ACADEMIC DISCOURSE

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Analyzing Metacognitive Strategies in Reading Comprehension

of First-year College Students: A Survey

Introduction
Metacognition is "cognition about cognition", "thinking about thinking", or "knowing about
knowing" and higher order thinking skills. It comes from the root word "meta", meaning
beyond (Metcalfe & Shimamura, 1994). Metacognition literally means "big thinking (Fountas &
Pinnel, 2000 ).

Metacognitive strategies training can consist of teaching the studens in thinking skills that will
allow them to monitor their own learning. Examples of strategies that can be taught to students
are word analysis skills, active reading strategies, listening skills, organizational skills and
creating mnemonic devices (Thompson, 1998). The focus in this paper is the use of
metacognitive strategies in reading comprehension.

Fogarty (1994) has mentioned several functions of the strategies, which are to develop in
students a deeper understanding of text, to take students' thinking to a higher level, to steer
students into adulthood. These could be acquired using the three skills of metacognitive
regulation that are essentials. They are Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluating (Jacobs & Paris
1987) . Planning refers to the appropriate selection of strategies and the correct allocation of
resources that affect task performance, monitoring refers to one's awareness of
comprehension and task performance, and evaluating refers to appraising the final product of a
task and the efficiency at which the task was performed. This can include re-evaluating
strategies that were used.

Through good reading strategies, students can have a better, deep understanding of text and
also develop their vocabulary for their academic success. The problem is that most first-year
students lack academic reading skills, especially because University-level reading is really
different from High School reading. In addition, reading is a process in which one needs to not
only understand its meaning, but also comprehend its ideas. Researchers have indicated that
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the process of comprehension is quite complex and students often struggle in constructing the
meaning and comprehension of text (Grabe & Stoller, 2002). Moreover, difficulty in
comprehension is an attention for most researchers, and it has been known that, one of the
factors that can possibly enhance readers comprehension is metacognitive reading strategies.
(Salataki & Akyel, 2002).

This led to several questions of the research, which are What is the most effective strategy of
Metacognitive used in students reading comprehension? What is the limitation when
developing Metacognitive strategies in students reading comprehension?

According to the explanation above, it is obvious that the purpose of this paper is to find out
and analyze the use of metacognitive strategies for first-year college students reading
comprehension.

Literature of Review

Definition of Metacognitive

Metacognitive is also known as thinking about thinking. The infamous of the earliest
definition of metacognition is knowledge and cognition about cognitive phenomena (Flavell
1979, Anderson 2002) . Flavell divides metacognition into two aspects, one is namely as
metacognitive knowledge; a knowledge concerning ones own cognitive processes. The other
one is executive functions; It is an important element of what makes us adaptable, thinking
human beings. Metacognitive, therefore, is a process of thinking beyond.

Metacognitive elements

Metacognition is classified into three components:

Metacognitive knowledge (also called metacognitive awareness) is what individuals know about
themselves and others as cognitive processors.
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Metacognitive regulation is the regulation of cognition and learning experiences through a set
of activities that help people control their learning.

Metacognitive experiences are those experiences that have something to do with the current,
on-going cognitive endeavor.(Flavell 1979)

Metacognitive Knowledge

Furthermore, Flavell distinguishes Metacognitive knowledge into three elements: Person

knowledge - ones beliefs about the nature of oneself and others as cognitive processors. Task
knowledge - ones belief about the demands, goals, and nature of a particular task. Strategy
knowledge - ones perception of the utility of a strategy.

Metacognitive Strategies

In addition to the meta-strategies, Anderson (2002) have listed many learning strategies:
planning, predicting, assessing prior knowledge, selecting appropriate strategies, monitoring
comprehension, monitoring strategy use, problem solving, and evaluating the learning process.
All these strategies can be grouped into four major categories: 1. planning, 2. monitoring, 3.
problem solving, and 4. evaluating. These strategies generally follow a sequential order even
though metacognition need not be a linear process.

Reading Comprehension

According to Anderson (2003), reading is the interaction of four things including the reader, the
text, the fluent reading; the ability or read at an appropriate rate with adequate
comprehension, and strategic reading; the ability of the reader to use a variety of reading
strategies to accomplish a purpose for reading.Reading Comprehension skills are important for
students to become effective readers. Reading comprehension skills allow us to read
proficiently, learn effectively and to conceptualize. (Grabe and Stoller 2002).
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Metacognitive and Reading

Research on the relationship between metacognition and reading comprehension has
progressed through several different stages. During the early stages, research focused on the
investigation of the relationship between metacognition and reading comprehension from the
developmental perspective. Brown (1980) and Baker and Brown (1984) were among the first
influential researchers in this field. They concluded that young students are ignorant of
metacognitive strategies in knowing when they are comprehending, knowing what they need to
know and what they have comprehended, knowing where they fail to comprehend, and
knowing what they need to do in order to repair comprehension failure.

University level reading is much more sophisticated than at high school, and in special course ,
students may encounter and face many more literary genres than ever before. They may be
asked to read, comprehend, and apply them in a meaningful way. Understanding these texts
are essential for academic success, yet in average class, attention will not be given to reading
strategy training which may be important for the language learning tasks.
Metacognition involves several elements in the reading tasks. They are: (1) the ability to
recognize errors or contradiction in text, (2) the understanding of different strategies to use
with different kinds of text, and(3) the ability to distinguish important ideas from unimportant
ones. (Nist and Mealey, 1991). While research suggests that many university level students lack
metacognitive skills (Baker, 1985), intervention studies also show that university students can
try to learn and understand their level of text comprehension by using different strategies.
Studies also reveal that university-age students are highly motivated to use different strategies
than younger, less experienced students. Older students seem better able to regulate and
control their understanding than do younger children. as children become older, their
capacity to use metacognitive skills increases, and their reasons for not using these skills
change (Nist and Mealey, 1991)
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References
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measurement, and instruction". Educational Psychologist. 22: 255278.

Flavell, J.H. (1979). "Metacognition and cognitive monitoring. A new area of cognitive-
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Anderson, N. J. (2002). The role of metacognition in second language teaching and learning.
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Anderson, N. J. (2003). Teaching reading. In D. Nunan (Ed.), Practical English language

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Baker, L., & Brown, A. L. (1984). Metacognitive skills and reading. In P. D. Pearson (Ed.),
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Brown, A. L. (1980). Metacognitive development and reading. In R. J. Spiro, B. C. Bruce, &

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Baker, L. (1985). Differences in the standards used by college students to evaluate their
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Grabe, W. & Stoller, F.L. (2002) Teacher and Researching Reading. Harlow: Pearson

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Salataki, R., & Akyel, A. (2002). Possible effects of strategy instruction on L1 and L2 reading .
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Hermida, Julian (2009). The Importance of Teaching Academic Reading Skills

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