A Review of Studies on Cognitive and Metacognitive Reading Strategies in Teaching Reading Comprehension for ESL/EFL Learners

Abstract

Being able to read well is important for English language learners. Through the process of reading, the learner becomes an active participant in producing an interaction with the writer of the text through predicting, analyzing, summarizing and using other types of reading strategies. However, building such a connection between the reader and the written information of the text is complex and for English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) students, it can be quite difficult for them to apply different types of reading strategies. This article provides a review of literature on 27 studies on the teaching of reading strategies (particularly cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies) for ESL/EFL learners, which reveals that ESL/EFL teachers need to keep updating their teaching methods to meet the ESL/EFL students’ needs, particularly in the use of correct reading strategies. The authors also highlight some of the main issues that prevent ESL/EFL students from improving and developing their reading comprehension. Furthermore, the authors discuss and conclude the article by suggesting to ESL/EFL teachers some teaching strategies to be applied in the reading lesson to improve the ESL/EFL students’ use of reading strategies.

Employment of Language Learning Strategies by Chinese School Learners in Learning ESL Vocabulary

“…Habok and Magyar (2017) mentioned the more proficient learners tend to employ on cognitive strategies as it needed more language skills when employing the strategies. Cognitive strategies needed to engage with the information through questioning, summarizing, clarifying and predicting (Ali & Razali, 2019). Thus, it could be emphasized the correlation above shown the respondents did not have sufficient knowledge and facilitation in employing the above strategies.…”

“…The study conducted Erdogan (2018) supported the metacognitive strategies tend to be a useful strategies for learners to do self-learning as they do not need to be depending on any other individuals but the self-regulation would rather help the learners to conduct the development of the vocabulary learning in order to achieve the personal goals. Ali and Razali (2019) supported the metacognitive strategies would create motivational strategies in spontaneously which enhance the learners in the learning needs and enthusiasm for the vocabulary learning because they monitored on their progress in learning. At the same time, the learners could build their own self esteem because they could mark their success after each time they have achieved it.…”

“…Lastly, the presentation of the findings and reporting the result. Metacognitive strategies defined as motivational strategies in term of passion of the learners in the learning of vocabulary by keeping on track of their progress in acquiring the vocabulary (Ali & Razali, 2019). In brief, metacognitive strategies would be strongly recommended for autonomous learning as the learners will be responsible on their learning and monitor the learning with the stages suggested.…”

Metacognitive reading strategies awareness and metacognitive reading strategies use of EFL university students across gender

“…Studies pertinent to metacognitive reading strategies awareness and metacognitive reading strategies use have been conducted in different contexts and involved various subjects (Alami, 2016;Charoenchai & Carmeesak, 2017;Abu-Snoubar, 2017;Aktar & Ahmed, 2018;Wudeneh, 2018;Dardjito, 2019;Sheikh et al, 2019;Teng, 2020). Other streams of research focus on the role of metacognitive reading strategies in predicting students' literal and higher-order reading comprehension (Ghaith & El-Sanyoura, 2018), the teaching of reading strategies (mainly cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies) for English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) students (Ali & Razali, 2019), the effects of metacognition and proficiency on EFL reading performance, and the relation between metacognition and EFL reading performance (Öztürk & Senaydin, 2019). Zhang (2018) conducted a study that focused on gender differences in metacognitive and cognitive strategies use and reading test performance.…”

When to Scaffold Motivational Self-Regulation Strategies for High School Students' Science Text Comprehension

“…Most prior research on learners' self-regulation in the reading context has focused on supporting the cognitive and metacognitive aspects of self-regulated learning (also see Ahmadi et al, 2013;Rastegar et al, 2017; see reviews in Ali andRazali, 2019 andDeliany andCahyono, 2020). In contrast, the motivational aspect has been under-investigated (McNamara, 2017;Egloff, 2019;Egloff and Souvignier, 2020).…”