Text Structure Awareness as a Metacognitive Strategy Facilita ...

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  • Title: Text Structure Awareness as a Metacognitive Strategy Facilitating EFL/ ESL Reading Comprehension and Academic Achievement
  • Author(s): Beata Latawiec
  • Publisher: Common Ground Research Networks
  • Collection: Common Ground Research Networks
  • Series: The Learner
  • Journal Title: The International Journal of Learning: Annual Review
  • Keywords: Reading Strategies, Metacognition in Learning Processes, Instructional Methods & Curriculum, EFL/ESL Learning & Literacy, Tertiary / College Education, Text Structure Strategy
  • Volume: 17
  • Issue: 5
  • Date: October 13, 2010
  • ISSN: 1447-9494 (Print)
  • ISSN: 1447-9540 (Online)
  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.18848/1447-9494/CGP/v17i05/47021
  • Citation: Latawiec, Beata. 2010. "Text Structure Awareness as a Metacognitive Strategy Facilitating EFL/ ESL Reading Comprehension and Academic Achievement." The International Journal of Learning: Annual Review 17 (5): 25-48. doi:10.18848/1447-9494/CGP/v17i05/47021.
  • Extent: 24 pages

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Abstract

The study examines effects of text structure awareness as a metacognitive strategy on English-as-a-foreign-language/ English-as-a-second-language (EFL/ESL) reading comprehension and academic achievement over 3 years of tertiary education of 115 Polish EFL learners at an English Teachers’ Training College. The rationale comes from the theory of strategic text processing, and the paradigm for teaching rhetorical form of texts as a conventional macrostructure, which when attained – incidentally or via direct instruction - enables better global comprehension, better memory for texts, and better learning from texts. The pre-test, post-test study examines relationship between students’ awareness and use of text structure strategy, as measured by recognition and recall of EFL expository texts, and metacognitive strategies’ repertoire on the one hand, and reading comprehension and academic achievement - on the other. The results of 2-way ANOVA show a positive correlation between the use of metacognitive strategies and general reading comprehension. The hypothesized text structure strategy correlates moderately with better comprehension and the use of text structure strategy shows correlation between academic achievement and top-level structure of the recalls. The results of linear regression analysis suggest that the awareness of text structure seems to be a valid predictor of academic achievement along with other available predictors: reading comprehension and verbal intelligence. Since the rhetorical patterns of English expository texts are not only characterized by distinctively different generic styles and “global organizational schemas” than their Polish more meandering, digressive or unsegmented and continuous counterparts, the call for rhetorical EFL text-structure instruction seems even more justified. The findings of this study bear pedagogic implications that suggest even more intensified instruction than the investigated one, wherein metacognitive text structure strategy training amounted to over 50% of the 1st year classroom time. Likewise, EFL reading syllabus that would be more geared towards rhetorical awareness may be imperative in the Polish college and higher education curriculum.