Metacognitive Strategies on Reading English Texts of Non-English Majored Students at Dong Nai Technology University, Vietnam: A Mixed Design

Abstract

The goal of this study is to see if there is a link between the usage of metacognitive reading strategies by non-English major students and their reading comprehension performance. This research was conducted at Dong Nai Technology University with 70 students ranging in age from 19 to 22 years old. Both quantitative and qualitative data were used in the investigation. These students were asked to complete a TOEIC reading test to assess their reading ability, followed by the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) (Mokhtari and Reichard, 2002) to assess their metacognitive use. Semi-structured interviews with four high scorers and four low scorers from the sample were used to acquire qualitative data. The findings demonstrated that students’ metacognitive reading strategy use is at a moderate level, and the most frequent and least frequent strategies that they used are Problem-solving and Global strategies, respectively. Additionally, it found that more proficient readers used metacognitive strategies more frequently, more successfully, and more appropriately than less proficient readers and vice versa. Some qualitative results were also mentioned. The results of the study have some implications for both teachers and students to employ appropriate metacognitive reading strategies in second language acquisition.