THE IMPACT OF EXPLICITNESS-BASED TRAINING IN (META) COGNITIVE READING STRATEGIES ON MOROCCAN EFL LEARNERS’ READING COMPREHENSION SCORES IN ENGLISH (L3): A COMPARISON BETWEEN HIGH SCHOOL-LEVEL AND UNIVERSITY-LEVEL STUDENTS

Mohammed Msaddek

Abstract


The present quasi-experimental study, conducted from 2012 to 2014 during the prolonged period of doing my PhD research (from 2010 to 2015) on metacognitive EFL reading, aims to unveil the perceived impact of explicit training in cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies on Moroccan EFL learners’ reading comprehension scores. By means of the pre-post-test design, this study draws a comparison between the reading achievement gains obtained by the English department first-semester university students and the ones attained by the first-year baccalaureate students. For the fulfilment of this articulated objective, the study targeted 113 university students (Control Group: n=50; Treatment Group: n=63) and 86 high school-level students (Control Group: n=42; Treatment Group: n=44). The data were assembled through the reading comprehension tests (i.e., pre-test, post-test) both before and after the conduct of the explicit (meta) cognitive reading strategy training, which was coupled with a corpus of reading comprehension texts. The results indicate that (meta) cognitive reading strategy instruction (CMRSI) positively impacted the reading outcomes attained by the university learners in the treatment rather than the control condition at post-testing. Further, the high school-level learners in the treatment group did not reveal any incremental advance in the level of reading achievement scores compared to their counterparts in the control group at the post-test stage. Hence, the study puts a high premium on some viable implications associated with EFL reading instruction and sets forth a few research limitations.

 

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metacognition, metacognitive experience, metacognitive reading strategies, reading achievement, reading strategy instruction

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejals.v7i1.529

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