Publication Date

5-2012

Type of Culminating Activity

Thesis

Degree Title

Master of Arts in Education, Curriculum and Instruction

Department

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies

Supervisory Committee Chair

Keith W. Thiede

Supervisory Committee Member

Holly Anderson

Supervisory Committee Member

Phil Kelly

Abstract

Metacognitive knowledge has been linked to use of metacognitive strategies and effectiveness in reading (e.g., Flavell, 1979). In the present research, I evaluated whether teaching three metacognitive strategies (planning, monitoring, and evaluating) would (a) improve English as a Second Language (ESL) students’ metacognitive knowledge, which in turn would (b) improve their comprehension. Eight non-English speaking students completed the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategy Inventory (MARSI) (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002) and a reading test at the beginning of a reading-writing course and again at the end of the course. The results revealed an increase from pretest to posttest in all three areas of metacognitive knowledge: global strategies, problem-solving strategies, and support strategies with statistically significant differences in each reading scale. Comprehension test performance revealed mixed results. Whereas performance on true/false and word reference tests did not change significantly from pretest to posttest, performance on wh- questions improved across time.

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