Жамият ва инновациялар –
Общество и инновации –
Society and innovations
Journal home page:
https://inscience.uz/index.php/socinov/index
Preparing conscious self-regulated readers through metacognition
Zaure KERTAEVA
1
Tashkent State University of Uzbek language and literature named after A. Navoi
ARTICLE INFO
ABSTRACT
Article history:
Received April 2021
Received in revised form
20 April 2021
Accepted 15 May 2021
Available online
25 June 2021
The purpose of the article is to share the results of the
experiment carried out in order to compare the readers who use
and do not use metacognitive strategies and procedures
intended to make readers more conscious and self-regulated
through metacognition. The research was carried out following
Dhieb-Henia’s theory which states that metacognition includes
four phases – selective attention to the task, planning, self-
monitoring, and self-evaluation. The hypothesis of the research
“Successful implementation of metacognition makes learners
conscious effective self-regulated readers” has been confirmed
by the end of the experiment.
2181-1415/© 2021 in Science LLC.
This is an open access article under the Attribution 4.0 International
(CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.ru)
Keywords:
metacognition,
metacognitive strategies,
selective attention
to the task,
planning,
self-monitoring,
self-evaluation,
conscious reader.
Metaanglash orqali ongli va o‘z-o‘zini boshqaradigan
o‘quvchilarni tayyorlash
ANNOTATSIYA
Kalit so‘zlar:
metaanglash,
metakognitiv strategiyalar,
vazifaga e’tibor berish,
rejalashtirish,
o‘z-o‘zini nazorat qilish,
o‘z-o‘zini baholash,
ongli o‘quvchi.
Maqolaning maqsadi metakognitiv strategiyalardan foyda-
ladigan va foydalanmaydigan o‘quvchilarni taqqoslash maqsadi-
da o‘tkazilgan eksperiment natijalari; va metaanglash orqali
o‘quvchilarni yanada ongli va unumli o‘quvchi qilish uchun
mo‘ljallangan protseduralar bilan bo‘lishish. Tadqiqot Dib-
Xeniya nazariyasidan kelib chiqib amalga oshirildi, metaanglash
to‘rt bosqichni o‘z ichiga oladi-vazifaga tanlab e’tibor berish,
rejalashtirish, o‘z-o‘zini nazorat qilish va o‘zini baholash.
Tadqiqotning gipotezasi bo‘lgan “Metaanglashni muvaffaqiyatli
amalga oshirish o‘quvchilarni ongli ravishda o‘zini-o‘zi
boshqaradigan o‘quvchilarga aylantiradi” eksperiment yakunida
tasdiqlandi.
1
Lecturer, Tashkent State University of Uzbek language and literature named after A. Navoi, Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
E-mail: zaurekertaeva@gmail.com.
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Подготовка сознательных саморегулируемых учеников
через метапознание
АННОТАЦИЯ
Ключевые слова:
метапознание,
метакогнитивные
стратегии,
избирательное внимание
к задаче,
планирование,
самоконтроль,
самооценка,
сознательный ученик.
Целью
статьи
является
обмен
результатами
проведенного эксперимента с целью сравнения учащихся,
которые используют и не используют метакогнитивные
стратегии; и процедуры, призванные сделать учеников
более сознательными и саморегулируемыми с помощью
метапознания. Исследование проводилось в соответствии с
теорией Диба-Хении, которой метапознание включает
четыре
фазы
– выборочное внимание к задаче,
планирование, самоконтроль и самооценку. Гипотеза
исследования
«Успешная
реализация
метапознания
делает учащихся сознательными и саморегулирующимися
учениками» подтвердилась к концу эксперимента.
Language learning strategies are a valuable addition to the challenging task of
learning and teaching a second language. Students can benefit from these strategies, but it
cannot be assumed that merely presenting them as lists will make them a permanent part
of successful learning. Teachers need to help students see how they can develop and
transfer such knowledge into rules for action, that is, into successful procedures for
undertaking a specific task. Metacognitive strategy training fulfills this objective by helping
learners incorporate the strategies in a meaningful way that transforms students’
declarative knowledge of reading strategies into procedural knowledge. This is especially
important for university students because reading efficiently is a critical skill that is
directly related to academic life. Dhieb-Henia (2006) suggests using metacognitive
strategies in 4steps – selective attention to the task, planning, self-monitoring and self-
evaluation. The researcher intends to carry out an experiment following those four steps.
Before trying an experiment, reading sessions of the 3
rd
year students were
observed. Since in the 3
rd
year of study of Bachelors, students become more sophisticated
foreign language learners, the main source of materials contain authentic and semi-
authentic materials. This approach was chosen in line with State standards for graduate
students (based on CEFR) and the specificities of communicative teaching approach. To
put it simply, students are to be exposed to authentic communication in higher education
considering the fact they will need it in their further occupational and professional lives.
The initial lesson observed was devoted to materials taken form daily newspapers,
namely, “True stories”. The objective of the session was to give students an opportunity to
develop skimming and scanning skills and familiarize with topic based vocabulary. The
lesson contributed greatly to the researcher to set a further experiment and familiarize
with subjects of the research. In accordance with theoretical base of current research, good
readers tend to have proficient skimming and scanning sub-skills due to their
metacognitive awareness and training. Thus, with the help of observation, the researcher
was able to come to initial conclusions about how well students are in reading strategies
and whether they are aware of metacognition. To summarise,
●
Most of the students are aware of scanning and skimming strategies theoretically,
but the results are not as effective as expected due to the lack of conscious reading
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●
Students have problems with time management if they have to deal with text tasks
in limited time and ask for extension
●
Students get discouraged if they cannot do tasks successfully comparing
themselves to more successful peers
●
Importantly, they tend not to have post reflection when they finish reading task
such as monitoring or evaluating the degree of reading performance.
The current preliminary observation results served as an inspiration and
foundation for coming up with a questionnaire to have more detailed and more exact
background information about the research subjects’ use of reading strategy. The
questionnaire was designed according to one used by Mokhtari & Reichard (Cited in Dhieb-
Henia, 2003) where it was categorized into three components – global, problem-solving
and support strategies. Then it was adopted regarding the most necessary needs and
interests of research subjects. The questionnaire contains 15 questions intentionally
selected from all three – global, problem-solving and support strategies. Out of it, first
seven questions belong to global, next four to problem-solving, and last four to support
strategies.
The subjects of the research have been chosen randomly, as there is not specific
criterium and experiment should be carried out on average learners and results of it
should serve for all types of learners. The students’ ages ranged from 20–26 and they speak
Uzbek, Tajik, Kazakh and Karakalpak as first or native languages. The foreign language
learning experience differed from at least 4years up to 8years. In general oral elicitation,
students mentioned that they find reading complicated enough, especially, deciding
true/false statements or matching headings as they did not use to have this type of
approach in their first languages. On the other hand, some of the students mentioned that
they feel significantly improved in their all skills because of the practical language courses
of university.
The results of the survey show that most of the participants are not aware of the
strategies mentioned in the questionnaire or rarely use them. To be more precise, only
nine per cent of the question was responded as
always
, 36 per cent of strategies are used
rarely by students, which is highest in the proportion. Other categories such as never,
sometimes and often are 19%, 20% and 16% respectively.
It should be noted that there are some points that students already know and
actively use when they do reading. For example,
●
They can incorporate visual aids like tables, pictures or diagrams to have better
understanding or they can check whether the content of the text suits their reading
purpose when selecting necessary data. However,
●
Most of the students do not pay particular attention on putting purpose for
reading, which is probably because they are always instructed by the teachers.
●
Organization and length of a text material is mostly out of consideration
●
Readers are not conscious about what works and helps best for their effective
reading
●
Strategies related to summing up and evaluating the reading performance was
almost never considered by research subjects which means they do not reflect and
paraphrase what they have read in order to have better comprehension
We also organized the questionnaire with the English language teachers to reveal
their needs in the aspect of strategies used in reading classes. In the survey, 10 teachers of
the TSUUL (Tashkent State University of Uzbek language and literature) participated. The
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evaluated aspect included informants’ answers to the question “Do you use these
strategies in reading articles?”. The teachers should tick the given ranks “Every time”,
“Sometimes”, “Never”. The results of the survey are given in the percent in the
Table 3.
Table 3.
Result of teachers’ questionnaire
Reading strategies used by teachers
Every time
Sometimes
Never
Planning
25%
20 %
55 %
Problem-solving
30%
39%
31%
Comprehension monitoring
58%
32%
10%
What stands out from the
Table 3
, more than half of the teachers do not use
planning
strategies, the other half using frequently or randomly.
Problem solving
strategies are
more or less common among EFL teachers, as the result of questionnaire says that
proportion of frequent, rare and no users is almost equal. (around 30%).
Comprehension
monitoring
is the most common among Reading instructors of local context – almost two
third mentions using it every time, only one tenth have not applied this strategy to reading
yet. What can be concluded from survey is that all the strategies should be promoted to
use by reading instructors, especially, latter two needs more active application. Without
reading teachers’ cognition of metacognitive strategies, EFL learners cannot be taught to
be efficient conscious readers.
Thus, the metacognitive strategies are important for improving reading skills but
during reading lessons the teachers don’t focus their attention to their development. So we
need to introduce the instructions for teaching them.
Oral reflection of students about their reading performance (to what extent they feel
satisfied with it), conclusions made after observing reading sessions and questionnaire
statistics functioned as a guideline to a come up with a design and organization of research
experiment. It was decided that set of reading activities and exercises will be set up to work
on skills and competence the students lack, through teaching and training metacognitive
strategies.
The purpose of the experiment:
to make students aware of concept of metacognition
and develop their metacognitive competence through authentic/semi-authentic media
materials
Hypotheses of experiment:
successful implementation of metacognition makes
learners conscious effective self-regulated readers
The research is carried out in three major steps following the model in the previous
chapter
Step 1
●
Ten – pages professional article “Exploring Children’s Picture Storybooks with
Adult and Adolescent EFL Learners” from journal English Teaching Forum
2013/Volume4/Number 3 is given to students for reading. Then after 5-7 minutes, they
are asked to reflect on the main idea of the article. Plausibly, students get surprised to be
asked to answer after a very short period of time. Some of the students may talk about only
introductory part as they hardly begin reading
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●
At this confusing moment, researcher starts to give brief explanation of
importance of setting a goal before starting reading by exemplifying that what happens
when they start reading without specific purpose
●
Here a little theoretical information on metacognition, in particular, selective and
planned purposeful reading will be of only benefit
Step 2
●
Taking the same article, now teacher asks students to preview the text
macrostructure (genre, organization) and activates any background knowledge students
associate with the theme of the article
●
Researcher requests students to ask the following questions
1)
What is the topic?
2)
Am I intended reader of the article?
3)
What is the source and data of publication of the article?
4)
What is the issue discussed in the article?
5)
Does the article contain any sub-headings familiar to me?
6)
Do these indicators help me activate any relevant or content knowledge?
Step 3
At this point, the researcher asks students set a goal for reading according to the
task of it
Task 1
Selective attention to the information (
Dhieb-Henia, )
Aim of the task
: working with 6 sub-headings of the text, help students to locate
where to find piece of statement from the text
Procedure
Students, working with synonyms and generalization or specification techniques,
should decide in what paragraph they can find particular piece of information (this is more
general and skimming sub-skill is supposed to be used)
Sub-headings of the text
Statements from the task
a)
Characteristics of picture storybooks
1.
What are the picture storybooks like?
b)
Rationale for using storybooks
2.
Instruction how to use storybooks
c)
Language, storytelling, and culture
3.
How the storytelling is related with other
social areas
d)
Using storybooks with adults and adolescents
4.
The method of applying storybooks with
particular age group learners
e)
Selecting high-quality children’s picture storybooks
5.
How to be sure about proper choice
of storybooks
f)
Linking storybooks to themes
6.
The ways of associating the storybooks
with the topic of the lesson
This task is aimed to direct readers to be more conscious about their reading
strategy and locate if they have specific questions from respective paragraphs than
spending their time for reading the whole text!
Task 2
Aim
:
●
to check whether students search the information from intended paragraph
●
to investigate the effect of metacognitive training in subjects’ independent reading
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Procedure:
Students should decide whether statements True or False, necessarily be able to
search for the answer correct paragraphs using training in Task1
1.
The author was not supported by his colleagues to use storybooks for adults
(intro)
2.
The examples of Linking storybooks with themes are infinite if you have broad
imaginations and good awareness of books (subheading F)
3.
In one of the experiments, it was difficult to engage older learners to story reading
as the children’s story books do not convey any cultural and linguistic information. (D)
4.
One of the criteria to choose storybooks is that they are free of racist and sexist
ideologies. (E)
5.
Children’s picture storybooks are useful because they conceal diverse beliefs,
conflicts and historical characters. (C)
6.
Picture storybooks are best tools to visualize information without the help of
digital technology (B)
7.
Picture storybooks where is an interpretation of verbal information through
pictures (A)
Step 4
●
Students are asked to reflect from what paragraph they found the answer and
whether the previous activity helped them to save their time and point to location of the
answer. (self-monitoring)
●
If the result is not satisfactory, they start with one of the relevant steps
a)
Setting up for macrostructure
b)
Choice of strategy
c)
Assessing requirements of a task
Similar activities of Step 3 and Step 4 have been implemented to train metacognitive
awareness and competence of research subjects during other three sessions using
different types of media materials according to course syllabus.
Three sessions were devoted to develop three types of metacognitive strategies –
global, problem-solving and support strategies (suggested by Mokhtari and Reichard,
2000) separately and four steps – selective attention to the task, planning, self-monitoring
and self-evaluating (suggested by Dhieb-Henia, 2006) selectively.
At the end, final test has been taken from both Control group (the group did not have
metacognitive training) and Experimental Group (the group in which metacognitive
training has carried out)
In the final test, an article “Dirty War” from magazine Guardian Weekly was used in
two control and experimental groups equally containing 14students.
The text materials contains four tasks and in general 21 questions
1)
Multiple choice questions – 5
2)
Matchings – 8
3)
Filling in the gaps – 8
4)
Vocabulary matching – 8
(See
Appendix C
)
The students’ final work was evaluated in accordance with 30 scores, then their
grades were transformed in to per cent
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According to the results of the experiment, reading performance levels of control
group and experimental group vary greatly. The average score of reading test of control
group accounts for only 68.8 percent while the group who has been trained to
metacognitive competence reaches 82.4 percent in average.
If we analyze it in more details, in control group almost half of the group (6 students)
gets less than 80%, another 5 students do only less than 70% of the answers correct. There
are some students who showed very poor performance at number less than 60% and only
one student can get more than 80%. None of the students do the task for A or more than
90 per cent.
Talking about experimental group, more than half of the students show
sophisticated result, at numbers more than 80 percent (6 students) and more than 90 per
cent (3 students). Only 5 out of 14 students get less than 80 %. It is important to note that
all the students do the task for As and Bs, as none of them get lower than 70%.
These results show the effectiveness of metacognitive strategies and necessity to
apply them widely in the local context. The research has been carried in a small scale with
only 14 students, thus, further attempts to implement them to larger scale will be of only
benefit for students’ reading proficiency.
To conclude, the researcher intends to raise students’ metacognitive awareness and
develop those skills through a model of development of metacognitive strategies in reading
articles. All the experiments follow the steps of planning, monitoring and evaluation,
despite the usage of different types of media materials on each class. The main emphasis
was made into conscious, that is, planned reading which is the core of metacognition.
Briefly, the experiment is divided into three parts: 1) analysis of students’
preliminary reading strategy awareness through a questionnaire and observation;
2) conducting training sessions; 3) taking final test and making conclusions about the
effectiveness of the experiment by comparing the results of experimented students to
control group’s results.
The questionnaire carried out in the research indicated the fact that our local
students are not aware enough about metacognition which means they need to be
introduced with it and further trained. The article illustrates one of the experimental
teaching stating the fact that a number of similar training sessions have been organized for
the 3
rd
year bachelor’s students. Moreover, experimental classes have been designed
considering the most lacking skills in reading media texts.
As it is stated in the article, the goal of experiment is to let students be informed
about current issue and create an opportunity to develop metacognitive competence.
The research hypotheses, stating that successful implementation of metacognitive
strategy enable learners become conscious, effective and self-regulated readers, has found
its proof reflecting on the results of experimental group.
Three-step framework for skimming reading model presented was initially used
with students at linguistic universities and the results of this strategy training lesson for
reading generated a number of reactions. The comments from students who underwent
this metacognitive strategy training revealed that it had a major impact on their reading
behavior. Some students stated that the skimming strategy was very efficient and allowed
them to find the required information without having to read the whole newspaper article.
They also stated that learning to skim was more effective than traditional methods of
reading instruction.
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REFERENCES:
1.
Dhieb-Henia N. Applying Metacognitive Strategies to Skimming Research Articles
in an ESP Context. // English Teaching Forum Journal. V. 44, No1. – 2006. – PP. 2–7.
2.
Dhieb-Henia N. Evaluating the effectiveness of metacognitive strategy training for
reading research articles in an ESP context // English for Specific Purposes. V. 22, No 2. –
2003. – PP. 387–417.
3.
Mokhtari K. & Reichard C. Investigating the Strategic Reading Process of First and
Second Language Readers in Two Different Cultural Contexts. // System. V 32, No 6. –
2011. – PP. 379–394.
4.
PRESENT Curriculum Reform Project, Syllabus: Teaching and Integrating Skills. –
Toshkent. 2015. – PP. 1–4.
