A Study On EFL Students' Metacognitive Awareness Of Reading Strategies In Universities For Nationalities

In the last two decades, researchers have attempted to discover the metacognitive knowledge and strategies that students need to be equipped with in order to gain metacognitive awareness and make metacognitive judgments and choices (Baker & Brown, 1984; Brown, 1978, 1987; Garner, 1988;). Metacognition has universally been regarded as one of the key links in reading activities by reading theorists(Goodman, 1976; Markman, 1981).Many empirical studies(Baker, 1979; Baker & Anderson, 1982) also proved the close relationship between reading effectiveness and metacognition. The introduction of the concept of metacognition has laid a stronger theoretical foundation for research in reading comprehension. Effective reading consists of the knowledge of using strategies and the control of one's reading activity, as well as decoding, comprehension and use of strategies. In the Chinese context, learners'metacognition of language learning had been documented by such authors as Goh (1997), Goh and Liu (1999) and Zhang (2001, 2002). As the key factor in using strategies, metacognitive awareness is of great importance in reading because readers will be able to reflect upon and monitor their cognitive activities, and further develop and employ compensatory and corrective strategies to review and regulate the activities if they are aware of their mental activities.In this study, the reported use of reading strategies in EFL reading were examined. Two instruments were used in the present study, one was the metacognition awareness questionnaire adapted from MARSI, and the other was an interview modified on the basis of Burke Reading Inventories, participants were college students studying in an ethnic minority students-centered university in northwest of China. At present, China has about 10 universities like this university, the main purpose of the establishment of these universities is to enroll ethnic minority students. The university chosen for this study is the first one to have been established among the other 10 universities for ethnic minority students, therefore it has some typical features of them. Results of the study revealed, first, students in ethnic minority students-centered university displayed a medium awareness of almost all of the strategies included in the survey. Secondly, there were some differences among the five ethnic groups chosen to be compared. Thirdly, females reported significantly higher frequency of strategy usage than male counterparts, while when it comes to the order of metacognitive strategies used, this gender effect is not obvious, female and male students showed more common points. Lastly, there seemed to be a close relationship between students'EFL learning period and reported use of metacognitive strategies .