The Analysis of Proficient and Less Proficient Learners’ Metacognitive Reading Strategies : A Case Study of EFL Learners at English Language Studies Program

This study is an attempt to identify the metacognitive awareness level of ELS students of FIB in reading expository texts in the EFL context and to find out the most dominant category of the proficient and less proficient learners’ metacognitive reading strategy.
The present study adopted a quantitative method requiring data collection method through the questionnaire and the instrument used in this study was the standardized research instrument by Mochtary and Reichard (2015), a form of questionnaire called MARSI questionnaire that had been used in many context of learning. The samples for the study were 15 ELS students who had been chosen using the random sampling technique. From the samples, 8 respondents were chosen to fill in the offline questionnaires because they were accessible on campus and the rest using the online questionnaires because they were beyond the reach of the researcher. Two weeks’ time was spent to obtain the questionnaires delivered by the samples. The data were analyzed by means of the descriptive statistics using SPPSS version 15.
The findings indicated a high level of metacognitive awareness namely, Global, Support and Problem Solving Strategies for the whole samples. The results indicate that the three important categories of strategies prevail in adult EFL learners with different levels based on the mean score, high (3.5 to 5.0) and medium (2.5 to 3.4). This finding in turn will add to the existing corpus of knowledge in the field of language learning strategy in EFL context. The finding reaffirms the need for the design of strategy training focusing on raising learners’ awareness and use of effective metacognitive and cognitive strategies to improve their reading performance.