OKUMA STRATEJİLERİNE DAİR BİLİŞÜSTÜ FARKINDALIK VE İLERİ OKUMA VE YAZMA BECERİLERİ DERSİNDEKİ AKADEMİK BAŞARI: BİR KORELASYON ARAŞTIRMASI
Author :
DOI : 10.18033/ijla.3591
Year-Number: 2017-16
Language : null
Konu : English Language Teaching
Abstract
Bu çalışmanın amacı birinci sınıf Türk öğrencilerin okuma stratejilerine dair bilişüstü farkındalıkları ve İleri Okuma ve Yazma Becerileri dersindeki başarıları arasındaki ilişki üzerine bir açıklama getirmektir. Söz konusu çalışmada Türkiye’de bir devlet üniversitesinde İngilizce Öğretmenliği Bölümü’nde okuyan 52 birinci sınıf öğrencisinin kullandığı okuma stratejileri araştırılmış ve okuma stratejileri kullanımındaki cinsiyet farkına bakılmıştır. Katılımcılara 30-maddelik likert tipi bir Okuma Stratejileri Bilişüstü Farkındalık Envanteri (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002) uygulanmıştır. Envanterdeki maddelerin her biri betimsel analiz yöntemiyle analiz edilmiş olup, bulgular frekans ve yüzde halinde raporlanmıştır. Buna bağlı olarak, kız ve erkek katılımcıların okuma stratejilerine dair bilişüstü farkındalık düzeyi arasında anlamlı bir farklılık olup olmadığını anlamak için Bağımsız Örneklemler T-test analizi yapılmıştır. Devamında, öğrencilerin okuma stratejilerine dair bilişüstü farkındalıkları ve İleri Okuma Yazma dersindeki akademik başarıları arasında önemli bir ilişki olup olmadığını görmek amacıyla basit doğrusal korelasyon tekniklerinden Pearson Momentler Çarpımı kullanılmıştır. Sonuçlara göre, katılımcıların en çok tercih ettiği stratejiler problem çözme stratejileridir. Ayrıca, kız ve erkek katılımcıların okuma stratejilerine dair bilişüstü farkındalık düzeyi arasında anlamlı bir farklılık bulunamamıştır. Bunun yanı sıra, bilişüstü farkındalık düzeyi ve okuma yazma başarısı arasında herhangi bir ilişki olmadığı da saptanmıştır.
Keywords
Abstract
This study aims at providing an account on the relationship between freshman Turkish students’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and their academic achievement in the Advanced Reading and Writing Skills course. In this particular study, we investigated the reading strategies employed by 52 freshman students studying in the English Language Teaching (ELT) department at a state university in Turkey and described the gender difference in the use of reading strategies. To achieve this, the participants were administered a 30-item Likert-Scale Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002) and descriptive statistics was applied in the analysis and presentation of the inventory items. Independent Samples T-test was utilized to see whether there was a difference between males’ and females’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. Afterwards, Pearson Correlation Coefficient, one of the simple bivariate correlation techniques, was employed to see if there was any significant relationship between the students’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and their academic achievement in the Advanced Reading and Writing Skills course. Results revealed that problem-solving reading strategies were the most preferred strategies. In addition, there was not found any significant difference between metacognitive awareness of males and females. Finally, some implications were drawn from the correlation coefficient regarding the relation between metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and academic achievement in the Advanced Reading and Writing course.
Keywords
- Reading has long been one of the most widely studied areas in foreign language teachingresearch (Yükselir, 2014; Hosseini et al., 2012; Yussof et al., 2012; Ozek & Civelek, 2006;Grabe, 1991; Block, 1986; Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983; Groebel, 1979). In these studies,researchers found that the one basic distinction between a high achieving and lowachieving reader was that high achieving readers tend to be “better strategy users”(Grabe, 1991:393). Also, the notion that gender may be an influential factor on the use ofreading strategies by second language learners led to some research about the issue. Arelevant study was carried out in Egypt and it was found out that female ELT studentsseemed to use reading strategies more frequently when reading in English (Arrastia,Zayed & Elnagar, 2016). Identically, Lee (2012) found that females used greatermetacognitive strategies than males and this may be because females were better atlearning a second language. Contrariwise, there was no significant difference betweenmales‟ and females‟ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies in Poole‟s (2005) andKasımi‟s (2012) studies. Poole (2005) also added that all participants used metacognitivestrategies at high frequencies. Apart from gender, achievement in reading comprehensionand the link between metacognition and reading strategies are in the scope of the present study. The following paragraph summarizes some studies about that link.
- In a very recent research conducted by Meniado (2016) to investigate the relationshipbetween Saudi EFL learners‟ use of metacognitive reading strategies and their readingcomprehension performances, it was seen that while participants moderately usedvarious metacognitive reading strategies, they performed below average on the readingcomprehension test which refutes the existence of a relationship between metacognitivereading strategy use and reading comprehension. Still, since the majority of researchsupports the fact that there is a link between strategy uses and reading comprehension,researchers have long acknowledged the role of reading strategies in improving foreignlanguage learners‟ reading skills in the target language. As the use of reading strategieshave been proven to help language learners enhance their reading comprehension skills,implications have pointed to the necessity of strategy training in foreign languageclassrooms. Accordingly, some research has been conducted to investigate the effect ofexplicit instruction on the use of reading strategies by foreign language learners. Asshown in two different experimental studies conducted by Şen (2009) and Aghaie &Zhang (2012), students receiving an explicit instruction on the use of reading strategiesperformed better on a reading comprehension test than their peers who did not receive any strategy training.
- In recent years, however, the focus has mainly shifted from the use of reading strategiesto the metacognitive awareness of the reading strategies. As stressed by Carrell (1989), areader‟s awareness about his/her weaknesses as a reader will provide the reader with anopportunity to develop his/her own techniques to overcome the difficulties faced whilereading. Accordingly, foreign language learners need to become aware of where and whento use which reading strategies in order to use them intelligently and purposefully. In aresearch conducted by Rajoo & Selvaraj (2010), it was seen that although the studentsutilize a number of strategies while reading in a foreign language, they use thesestrategies unconsciously with a lack of awareness about the fact that they are actuallyusing strategies. With the consciousness raising activities gaining utmost significance inrecent years, an extensive amount of research has been devoted to explore the foreignlanguage learners‟ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies (Pinninti, 2016; Hong-Nam, 2014; Hong-Nam et al., 2014; Takavoli, 2014; Magogwe, 2013; Memiş & Bozkurt,2013; Khonamri & Kojidi, 2011; Anastasiou & Griva, 2009; Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002;Zhang, 2002; Carrell, 1989). In these studies, metacognitive awareness of readingstrategies was found to make a significant contribution to reading comprehension and itwas also seen that advanced readers tend to use the reading strategies more consciouslythan their less proficient counterparts, leading to a link between metacognitive awarenessand proficiency level as well. As a result, it has been widely accepted that teachers areexpected to raise the students‟ awareness of reading strategies to help them become more efficient readers in a foreign language.
- The above studies present a link between metacognitive awareness of reading strategiesand reading comprehension. Other studies refer to the link between metacognitiveawareness and critical thinking skills, and reading proficiency as well. In some studies, apossible link is also considered to exist between metacognitive awareness and academicachievement since it is believed that academic learning can be enhanced throughmetacognition which is of interest in the present study (Magogwe, 2013; Rajoo & Selvaraj,2010). Although much research has been conducted to identify the link betweenmetacognitive awareness of reading strategies and reading achievement, there is hardlyany research investigating the link between metacognitive awareness of reading strategiesand academic achievement in a course where reading is the core skill to be developed inan academic context. This study aimed at filling this gap in literature by providing anaccount on the relationship between Turkish ELT students‟ metacognitive awareness ofreading strategies and their academic achievement in the Advanced Reading and Writing Skills course.
- A descriptive research design was implemented in this research as one of our attemptswas to reveal the reading strategies used by freshman ELT students. A causal-comparative research design was employed to explore if there was any significantdifference in the strategies used by male and female students. And, a correlationalresearch design was established to describe the relationship between Turkish ELTstudents‟ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and their academic performancein Advanced Reading and Writing Skills course. As Fraenkel et al. (2012) state, we canidentify “the degree to which two or more quantitative variables are related” (p.331) through conducting a correlational research.
- In order to answer the first research question regarding the strategies used by TurkishELT students , participants were administered Metacognitive Awareness of ReadingStrategies Inventory (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002) which was originally designed to assess“students‟ awareness and perceived use of reading strategies while reading academic orschool-related materials” (p. 251). The inventory involves three subscales exploring globalreading strategies, problem-solving strategies and support reading strategies. There are30 statements in the inventory to which the participants respond from a 5-point Likert-Scale ranging from 1 „Never or almost never true of me‟ to 5 „Always or almost always trueof me‟. Afterwards, the students‟ overall grades in the Advanced Reading and WritingSkills course at the end of the term were accessed with permission from the courselecturer in order to find an answer to the second research question relevant to therelationship between metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and academic achievement.
- When total scores of each subscale are considered, it can be asserted that participantsmade use of reading strategies with a “high” level awareness and the highest scorebelonged to PROB subscale (4.10). Similarly, the overall score (3.78) showed thatparticipants were at a “high” level of awareness about their reading strategies. This is inconsistency with the findings of Poole (2005) claiming that metacognitive reading strategies were used at a high frequency.
- In terms of gender, it was found out that there was not a meaningful link betweenmetacognitive awareness of reading strategies of males and females.In consistent withthat, Poole (2005) and Kasımi (2012) claimed that gender did not play a crucial role indefining the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. However, the non-influentialrole of gender in the present study did not overlap with findings of some studies. Forinstance, it was revealed that females used metacognitive strategies more often than males (Lee, 2012; Arrastia, Zayed & Elnagar, 2016).
- With regard to correlation between metacognitive awareness of reading strategies andacademic achievement in Advanced Reading and Writing Skills course, no significantrelation was found out in the current study. In a similar vein, Meniado (2016) argued thatthere wasno relationship between metacognitive reading strategy use and readingcomprehension. However; many other studies (Pinninti, 2016; Hong-Nam, 2014; Hong-Nam et al., 2014; Takavoli, 2014; Magogwe, 2013; Memiş & Bozkurt, 2013; Khonamri &Kojidi, 2011; Anastasiou & Griva, 2009; Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002; Zhang, 2002;Carrell, 1989) supported the idea that there was a connection between metacognitiveawareness and academic achievement in reading and writing skills. That is to say, thecurrent study contradicts with most of the other related studies. It may be because of thecontext of this study or the participants‟ insufficient use of metacognitive reading strategies that they have already been aware of (Koşar & Bedir, 2015).
- The lack of any connection between metacognitive awareness of reading strategies andacademic achievement in reading and writing may show us that there can be some otherfactors influencing participants reading and writing skills in such an academic context.To exemplify, the most probable reason for this may be about the participants‟ unguidedor unconscious usage of reading strategies. This is most probably linked tometacognition. Identically, some studies show that a possible link might exist betweenmetacognitive awareness and academic achievement since academic learning can be enhanced through metacognition (Magogwe, 2013; Rajoo & Selvaraj, 2010).
- As an implication, it should be stated that academic achievement and metacognition inany kind of language skill may be indirectly related to critical thinking skills (Bedir,2013). This is because one needs to be aware of his/her metacognitive skills in order torealize how he/she could be better in improving language skills and correspondinglyacademic achievement. Especially for advanced reading skills, being a critical thinker orreader can be of crucial importance in order to select and use appropriate readingstrategies. Using appropriate reading strategies may depend on the reading ability inEnglish, which is a foreign language in the present study, on the type of material,purpose in reading and so forth. Needless to say, all these require a high level ofmetacognitive awareness. Participants of the present study were found to have a highlevel of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies, but still, it can be suggested thatthe lecturers should use explicit teaching methods, particularly with an aim to makestudents explore their own techniques in reading since one basic distinction between agood and a poor reader was that good readers tend to be “better strategy users” (Grabe,199:393). In that respect, an explicit instruction on the use of reading strategies providesstudents to perform better on reading comprehension activities (Aghaie & Zhang, 2012; Şen, 2009).
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