The Comparative Effect of Teaching Collaborative Strategic Reading and Metacognitive Reading Strategies on EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension

This study aimed at investigating the comparative effect of two different treatments, one of which emphasized collaborative strategic reading and the other metacognitive reading strategies, on the reading comprehension of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Sixty intermediate Iranian male learners of English at Nasser Language House (NLH) in Gorgan were selected and divided into two experimental groups (collaborative strategic reading and metacognitive reading strategies) and received sixteen sessions of instruction. The two experimental groups were taught two different sets of reading strategies at three stages of pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading. The learners in both groups took two types of tests as a general proficiency test and a posttest on reading comprehension. In order to test the null hypothesis, the two groups’ mean scores of the reading comprehension posttest were compared through an independent samples t-test. Therefore, the results of this study motivate EFL teachers to provide their learners with metacognitive reading strategy training which can lead them to better reading comprehension. In this regard, teachers can provide their learners with guess provoking setting, encouraging participation in risk-taking activities, helping learners to find and use contextual clues in the text to explore the meaning of unknown words, activating learners relevant schemata in reading warm-up activities, minimizing the use of dictionaries, and giving reasonable feedbacks to incorrect guesses, to prepare learners for a better use of reading strategies in general, global, and problem solving reading strategies in particular.

Keywords:

Collaborative Strategic Reading , Metacognitive Reading Strategies , Reading Comprehension