Investigating metacognitive knowledge in reading comprehension: The case of Indonesian undergraduate students

Abstract

Myriad studies have conveyed that metacognition is a key to successful reading comprehension in language classes. However, these studies focus on metacognitive strategies, metacognitive awareness, and metacognitive skills in ESL reading contexts. Anchored by the lack of empirical works on the EFL reading situation, this study investigated the metacognitive knowledge of Indonesian undergraduate students in their reading classes. Data were obtained through in-depth interviews with four successful and four less successful EFL students. The results of this study portrayed that successful readers encompass more metacognitive knowledge, awareness, motivation, and behavior if compared to the less successful readers. It is also evidence that students with good cognition, habit, and attitude in reading activities are more successful in their EFL reading, and their cognition, habit, and attitude serve as essential elements in constructing their metacognitive knowledge. Suggestions are also discussed at the end of this paper.

The Important Role of Metacognitive Strategies in Indonesian Efl Reading Learning Contexts

“…Through this proactive L2 reading action, these readers will transfigure into more life-long academicians inculcating a higher degree of reading learning persistence and motivation. This line of arguments is in conformance with the major metacognitive reading strategies finding unearthed by Hamiddin and Saukah (2020) avowing that the actual presence of proficient, critical, and long-life L2 readers can be ascertained through the intensive utilization of metacognitive reading strategies requiring them to forge their metacognitive knowledge along with strategies, which at the same time inculcating a higher degree of reading perseverance along with volition within readers. In the same way, Mudra (2018) also propounded that highlymetacognitive L2 readers will also be more resilient academicians consistently made vigorous attempts to implement a considerable number of appropriate reading strategies to resolve the existing reading learning issues hampering the conduciveness of their reading processes, comprehend the major ideas forming in their texts with more sophisticated reading strategies, and be capable of simplifying particular intricate ideas in their texts.…”

EFL teacher educators’ experiences in teaching critical reading: evidence from Indonesia

“…It indicates that the teacher educators' teaching practices, as informed in previous research findings, illuminate higher level comprehension strategies and questioning skills including backgrounding aims in reading, linking former knowledge to the present reading activities, identifying the text structure and organization, viewing comprehension, enacting evaluation, synthesis, interpretation, and judgment perspectives in reading (Asmari & Javid, 2018;Awada & Plana, 2018;Kavani & Amjadiparvar, 2018). In so doing, the use of metacognitive reading skills designed for out-and in-class circumstance should be tailored (Hamiddin & Saukah, 2020), mindfulness approach (Azizi & Kralik, 2020), and also dynamic assessment in reading class (Fatameh & Kazemian, 2016 Critical reading aims at understanding what is not written in the text explicitly such as finding out the author's purpose/attitude towards the topic, making inferences, and finding hidden messages. As suggested earlier (see Tiffin-Richards & Schroeder, 2015), the process of critical reading happens when readers proceed text-decoding and linguistic knowledge to construct the meaning of the text and they use their critical thinking skills to interpret, analyze, criticize, reflect, and evaluate the text for deeper understanding.…”

EFL Reading: Learning-to-Read and Test-Taking Strategies

“…Zhang and Wu (2009) argued that successful readers in their study were better than their low-proficiency counterparts at planning for reading, monitoring their comprehension, and selecting appropriate strategies. Recently, Hamiddin and Saukah's (2020) qualitative study reported, similarly, that successful Indonesian undergraduate readers possessed more metacognitive knowledge, awareness, motivation, and behavior. However, Habók and Magyar (2019, p. 13), reporting a weak relationship between reading proficiency and strategy uses, argued that EFL reading proficiency was not related to strategy uses, but it was significantly related to learners' attitudes.…”