Metacognitive Awareness and Comprehension Monitoring in Reading Ability of Iranian EFL Learners

Abstract

We report an investigation on the relationship between metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and comprehension monitoring of language learners in English as a foreign language context. Participants were thirty first year university students majoring in electronics. They completed a questionnaire aimed at discerning the strategies that readers use when coping with academic reading tasks. Participants were then divided into six groups according to their reading proficiency and metacognitive awareness. Think-aloud protocol analysis, error detection and retrospective questions were used to examine the comprehension monitoring of readers. The data were analysed through descriptive statistical procedures as well as t-tests. The results indicated the combined effect of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and reading ability of academic reading texts on language learners' comprehension monitoring.

Keywords

• Comprehension monitoring
• metacognitive awareness
• proficient readers
• reading comprehension
• reading strategies