Researchers believe recognition and monitoring of ones understanding techniques are critically very important to skilled reading. Such consciousness and monitoring processes are often known as metacognition. Recent studies show that metacognitive strategies differentiate between effective and inadequate learners i. e. the more a student is aware of about how he learns, the better he will learn. This research was designed to investigate the relationship between metacognitive knowing of reading strategies and critical reading ability of the students. To the end, 113 third/forth year Iranian college students majoring in English translation/literature, aged around 21-36 were preferred to participate in this study. They required part in a Nelson test of effectiveness, and a critical reading comprehension test. They also completed a questionnaire, specifically Metacognitive Knowing of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI). Data research through Pearson Correlation Coefficient formula revealed that there surely is a significant romance between the students' metacognitive knowing of reading strategies and their critical reading ability. The studies can have implications for EFL learners and teachers in developing a geniune, interactive and learner- focused environment in their reading classes.
Key words: Learning strategies, Metacognition, Metacognitive knowing of reading strategies, Critical reading
1. Introduction
The recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in producing critical thinking skills of students in order to improve their thinking and learning capabilities and help them to succeed in their educational goals. Strengthening students' critical thinking skills will help students:
a) enhance their thinking about their course work
b) use sound thinking on tests, assignments, and tasks in their courses
c) hold the proper, analytical, problem dealing with, and decision-making skills they want when they are in college
d) hold the tactical, analytical, problem fixing, and decision-making skills they want when they proceed to the work place.
The term "critical thinking" when employed by educators has assorted meanings in various contexts-whether in formal reasoning courses, where it offers a precise interpretation; when put on quarrels or in everyday conversations in a faculty lounge about students' struggles to grasp the course content, where in fact the term is used more loosely to simply signify good thinking (Pierce, 2005). Before proceeding any more, an account will be provided as how critical thinking has been defined in literature:
As explained by Thomson (1996), the critical thinking traditions, which derives from both philosophy and education, originates in the USA. Some of its most important American proponents were John Dewey, Edward Glaser, and Steven Norris; in Britain, the name most tightly associated with critical thinking is that of Alec Fisher.
In Learning to Think: Disciplinary Perspectives (2002), Janet Donald (quoted in Keller 2008) reveals a number of approaches to pondering based on the task of different academics disciplines. She offers a "working style of thinking functions in higher education" in which she explains a point of view on different "methods of inquiry. " The working model offers a set of procedures followed by most disciplines, including: description, selection, representation, inference, synthesis, and verification. Under each theme on this inventory, then, she lists subtopics indicating their relation to the diverse inquiry methods she previously connected to academics areas. Inside a later summary of the "most significant thinking processes used generally across disciplines, " she lists independently "Identify the framework" and "State assumptions, " then reduces her past group of common procedures to people of selection, representation, and synthesis.
In Maclellan and Soden (2001, quoted in Keller 2008), we see the following group of critical thinking skills:
a) unpacking concepts-ability to unpack or breakdown ideas, principles or ideas;
b) recognizing contradictions-differentiating between viewpoints and counterarguments;
c) development-explaining a trend, joining ideas together to create lines of quarrels;
d) providing evidence-supporting or justifying assertions;
e) evaluating implications of evidence-generating hypotheses about results or evaluating the romantic relationships between key factors;
f) substitute interpretation-questioning or challenging an interpretation of the evidence and offering an alternative solution.
After the above review on what critical thinking is, now we turn to critical reading. A major concern in education today is the matter about students' potential to learn critically and also to evaluate the materials. Critical reading is taught as a sub-skill of understanding with appropriate exercises. Critical reading relishes several features which make it seem rooted in critical thinking. One of the features we can point out the followings detailed by "students counseling service" of Salisbury College or university:
a. previewing: Studying a words before really reading it.
b. contextualizing: Setting a text in its historical, biographical, and cultural contexts.
c. questioning to understand and remember: Asking questions about this content.
d. reflecting on problems to your values and principles: Examining your individual responses.
e. outlining and summarizing: Determining the key ideas and restating them in your own words.
f. evaluating an argument: Screening the logic of any text as well as its reliability and psychological impact.
g. comparing and contrasting related readings: Checking out likenesses and dissimilarities between texts to understand them better.
Furthermore, Burmeister (1986, qtd in Cherney 1986) identifies critical-creative reading and thinking as necessitating the abilities of evaluation, synthesis and analysis. He provides that such cognitive abilities require readers or thinkers to reason using techniques of formal reasoning or at least to be consciously aware of the thought techniques they are using. Analysis, relating to Burmeister, requires the examination of parts of the whole; synthesis is the action of combining or unifying elements into a coherent full and analysis requires the establishment of criteria and also a judgment as to the goodness of fit of the theory. Burmeister considers evaluation to be the best level of the cognitive domain name. (p. 256)
The researchers assume that metacognitive strategies are among the list of strategies which can foster critical pondering and therefore reading. However, it seems acceptable to ask why such a romantic relationship is felt. To answer this question an effort will be made to clarify metacognitive strategies.
Sheorey and Mokhtari (2001) state that many studies recognize the role of meta-cognitive recognition in reading comprehension, whether one is reading in the local language or another terms. Indeed, the consensus view is the fact that strategic awareness and monitoring of the comprehension process are critically important aspects of skilled reading. Such recognition and monitoring is often described in the books as 'meta-cognition, '' that can be regarded as the data of the readers' cognition relative to the reading process and the self-control mechanisms they use to screen and enhance comprehension. Auerbach and Paxton (1997) and Carrell et al. (1989), for example, consider meta-cognitive awareness-planning and consciously executing appropriate actions to achieve a particular goal-to be a critical element of proficient, tactical reading. Such meta-cognition, regarding to Auerbach and Paxton (1997), ''entails knowledge of strategies for processing texts, the capability to monitor understanding, and the ability to adapt strategies as needed'' (pp. 240-41).
Furthermore, Taylor (1999) defines meta-cognition as "an gratitude of what one already recognizes, together with the correct apprehension of the training activity and what knowledge and skills it needs, combined with the capacity to make right inferences about how precisely to use one's tactical knowledge to a specific situation, and also to do so effectively and reliably. " (p. 126)
To increase their metacognitive capabilities, students need to own and be alert to three sorts of content knowledge: declarative, procedural, and conditional. Declarative knowledge is the factual information that a person knows; it could be declared-spoken or written. An example is to know the solution for calculating momentum in a physics school (momentum = mass times speed). Procedural knowledge is knowledge of how to take action, of how to execute the steps in an activity; for example, knowing the mass of your object and its own rate of quickness and the way to do the computation. Conditional knowledge is knowledge about when to employ a treatment, skill, or strategy so when not to use it; why a procedure works and under what conditions; and why one procedure is better than another. For example, students need to recognize an exam word problem requires the computation of momentum within its solution. (Paris, Combination and Lipson, 1984. qtd. in Pressley 2002).
This idea of three varieties of knowledge pertains to learning strategies as well as course content. When they examine, students need the declarative knowledge that (1) all reading assignments are not equally; for example, a history textbook chapter handles factual information differs from female historical file, which differs from articles interpreting or studying that document. They have to know that experiences and novels change from arguments. Furthermore, they have to know that there are different sorts of take note taking strategies helpful for annotating these different types of texts. And (2) students need to know how to really write different kinds of notes (procedural knowledge), and (3) they have to know when to use these varieties of notes when they review (conditional knowledge). Knowledge of study strategies is one of the kinds of meta-cognitive knowledge, and it too requires awareness of all three sorts of knowledge (Pierce, 2003).
Many of the current studies realize the role of awareness in reading understanding. Reading strategies are of interest for just how readers use them to control their connection with the written wording and exactly how these strategies are related to text comprehension (Rigney, 1978).
Reading in second language reading suggests that strategies improve reading comprehension. Reading strategies indicate how readers get pregnant a task, that they seem sensible of what they read and what they do when reading understanding is difficult (Singhal, 2001).
Indeed researchers agree that strategic awareness and monitoring of the understanding process are critically important areas of skilled reading. Such awareness and monitoring is often described in the books as metacognition, which is used to screen and improve reading comprehension (Pressley and Afflerbach, 1995; Alexander and Jetton, 2000; Pressley, 2000).
Recent research workers (Cohen, 1998, Anderson, 2002, Santana, 2003) show that the strategies that make the true variations between effective and ineffective learners will be the metacognitive strategies. In spite of the fact that lots of of the previous studies have obtained information about learners' strategies and reading process, handful of them have evaluated readers' metacognitive awareness of reading strategies ( Singhal, 2001).
Considering the important role of metacognitive reading strategies in reading comprehension with suspicious eyesight, this study is designed to investigate the partnership between metacognitive awareness reading strategies and critical reading ability also to view the notions of meta-cognitive recognition strategies and critical reading in the same horizon. For this function, we also need to have personal references to critical thinking because, as was mentioned above, critical reading roots in critical thinking.
1. 1. Assertion of the problem
For the improvement of critical reading, trainers should teach a number of strategies that research shows to be effective, like: creating questions and responding to them, writing summaries, writing elaborations and using managing strategies. The preceding strategies already seem to be to obtain been considered by Iranian instructors and learners.
However, a potential problem in making use of the mentioned strategies in reading comprehension can be the lack of meta-cognitive understanding about them. Hence, the researcher assumes a group of meta-cognitive strategies can fortify the above line of activity and foster the improvement of critical reading.
1. 2. Research Question
Is there any significant romantic relationship between metacognitive knowing of reading strategies and critical reading capacity?
3. Statement of the hypothesis
The null hypothesis root this proposal is the fact "there is no significant romantic relationship between meta-cognitive awareness of reading strategies and critical reading potential. "
2. Method
2. 1. Participants
A community sample of 130 male and feminine participated in this review in the next semester of 2010 majoring in English language books and translation in Qom Islamic Azad University or college. They were all in their third and forth calendar year. These students were asked if indeed they would volunteer to take part in the study. Out of 130 individuals who completed the questionnaires and exams, about 113 members were accepted to take part in the study.
2. 2. Solution and Procedure
The researchers went to the classes to manage one questionnaire and two assessments. A complete of 130 students were instructed to answer the effectiveness test in one session also to the critical reading ensure that you MARSI questionnaire at a later treatment. Students rated the items of MARSI, utilizing a 5-point likert-type range which range from 1 (I never do that) to 5 (I always do that). From this inhabitants, some students were taken away because that they had not properly completed their questionnaires.
The general skills test (Nelson test, 300 B) comprised 50 multiple-choice and vocabulary items. The full total rating of the test was 50 and one point was designated to each correct answer.
The critical reading comprehension test contains four passages with four or five 5 multiple-choice items for each and every passage. So the 20 items were obtained by one point for every correct answer. Then the score for everyone items were added and an ultimate score was calculated. The range of scores for this test was between 9 to 18.
For scoring the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory, the task proposed by Mokhtari & Richad (2002) was used. A rating was designated to each answer which ranged from 1 to 5: never or almost never=1, occasionally=2, sometimes=3, usually=4, always=5. Then the scores for all items were added up and an ultimate rating was calculated. The number of scores for this scale was between 46 to 146.
3. Data analysis
To carry out the statistical analysis of the study, several statistical techniques were implemented: to assess the consistency of the Nelson test, the Cronbach alpha (a) formulation was used.
In order to calculate the stability of the critical reading comprehension test, the Cronbach alpha (a) formula was utilized. Taking into consideration the point that the participants will be assigned interval results both because of their meta-cognitive understanding and critical reading ability, the statistical analysis was Pearson's product Point in time Coefficient of Relationship.
Also, the stability index of the translated version of MARSI was assessed by applying Cronbach alpha (a) method.
After administrating the equipment with the key subjects of the study and correcting the paperwork, the ultimate scores on critical reading understanding ensure that you MARSI were calculated and entered into SPSS.
3. Results
In order to be certain of the homogeneity of the participants of the analysis in terms of language proficiency, a general terms skills test (Nelson test) was utilized. The test was extracted from "Nelson English language studies" by W. S. Flower and Norman Goe (1976). It composed of 50 multiple choice sentence structure and vocabulary items. Throughout the pilot review, the trustworthiness of the Nelson test was estimated and the following effect was achieved:
Table of dependability statisticsof the Terms Skills Test (Nelson)
Cronbach's Alpha
N of Items
. 899
50
As it is noticed, the reliability of the Nelson test was believed as. 89 through the pilot review among 42 students, so the test savored the acceptable trustworthiness.
The present analysis, also used a new self report solution, the Meta cognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) (Mokhtari & Richard, 2002), which is designed to determine adolescent and adult readers' consciousness and perceived use of reading strategies while reading materials. According to the writer of MARSI, the major purposes of producing of the inventory were to devise an instrument that would allow one to assess the degree to which students is or is unaware of the many processes involved in reading and also to be able to learn about the goals and intentions she or he holds with coping with reading tasks.
As due to using this inventory, the next statistical procedure was to calculate the stability of the translated version of Metacognitive Knowing of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) given to the subject matter in the pilot research.
Table of dependability statistics of the translated version of MARSI
Cronbach's Alpha
N of Items
. 799
30
According to stand 4. 2. , the consistency index of the students' answers to the MARSI, assessed by applying the Cronbach alpha (a) formula, was 0. 79.
In order to evaluate the participant's capability in reading critically, a test of reading understanding, extracted from a model TOEFL, was applied. The consistency of the test given to the subjects in the pilot study was estimated to be:
Table of dependability figures of critical reading understanding test
Cronbach's Alpha
N of Items
. 748
18
It is necessary to include that to be able to validate the critical reading understanding test, essentially four steps were considered such as examining this content validity, face validity, criterion related validity, and build validity. The procedure for every step can be found in the following in details.
The test was put together according to the advice of Alderson and Urquhart (1984). Four different texts were selected. The texts were found from one of the materials advised for prep of terminology learners for TOEFL test. Obviously it was evident that not any passage could qualify: the passages had to be of an independent entity and understandable with out a larger framework. However, the main principle in text message selection was to find words types that Iranian students of English were more likely to read critically. I also consulted my supervisor to ensure the content validity of the passages and also to get assured that the questions cannot be clarified without reading the passages critically. The texts found were also sent to my advisor to make sure if there were any specific issues to be reconsidered. By the end of each passage, four or five questions were asked. Answering to the questions would be almost impossible without reading the test critically. The text chosen represented the next text types:
a scientific text from a field highly relevant to Chemistry;
a text containing materials about body gestures and communication;
a passage about the sinking of the luxurious dispatch, Titanic ;
a biographical passing about an influential resident of america, John Muir.
In addition to enhancing the test items through item analysis (item service, item discrimination and choice distribution), the facial skin validity of the test was evaluated in qualitative terms. The students in the pilot study were asked to state their reasons for estimating the reading test to be critical or not. The commentary (40 students) were alternatively divided. Some disliked the test but most of them liked it. Those who liked it wrote so it required imagination, and cleverness and some compared taking the reading test with doing philosophical reasoning. Those that disliked the test mainly argued which it required to test other skills besides language effectiveness (e. g. creativeness). Some complained that the test was too difficult and that they could mainly perceive the structure of the phrases. For criterion related validity, the researcher adopted the same process as Assar (2008). By using the Nelson language proficiency test and by running relationship between these ratings and those from the improved reading test, among 32 students who participated in the pilot research, the concurrent validity of the test was established with an index of 0. 71.
Finally the critical reading test was construct-validated. To this end, the researcher had taken a process focused approach following picture depicted by Hirano (2008) and devised a questionnaire based on the discussed issues found in the literature on critical thinking and reading. The questionnaire was piloted among 40 students. First, they took the critical reading comprehension test, and immediately after they were asked to answer the questions in the questionnaire. Through a frequency matter, it was uncovered that the test had led to a critical reading effectively.
The following desk shows the result of the students' answers to the fifteen questions in the devised questionnaire by the researcher based on the discussed issues found in the literature on critical thinking and reading. The results the "Mean" column show the average score for each of the fifteen questions calculated based on a liker scale for each question which range from 0 to 3.
Table of stability reports for the stability of critical reading questionnaire
Cronbach's Alpha
N of Items
. 624
15
It is necessary to mention that following the consistency of the questionnaire for process validation of the reading comprehension test was computed, the researcher attempted to revise a few of the questions. It really is, therefore, hoped that further studies through the modified questionnaire will provide more reliable results.
Finally we come to the research question, which was concerned with marriage between metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and critical reading ability of the students. To investigate this question, the Pearson product relationship coefficient was run. The consequence of statistics is provided in the next table:
According to the above mentioned table, correlation is significant at the 0. 01 level. Through the use of Pearson product correlation coefficient formula, the correlation between your two variables was predicted as. 70. That's, there is a significant romance between metacognitive awareness of reading strategies (MARSI) and critical reading capacity. The results have been illustrated in the next scatter plot graph:
Graph/Scatter story for Relationship coefficient between critical reading potential and meta-cognitive knowing of reading strategies
The above scatter plot illustrates the correlation coefficient between critical reading potential and meta-cognitive awareness of reading strategies including 113 topics. Adjustable 1 (Y axis) relates to meta-cognitive knowing of reading strategies within an interval size up to 130; changing 2 (X axis) is related to critical reading capability in an interval scale from zero up to 20.
4. Discussion
This research was an attempt to investigate the relationship between metacognitive knowing of reading strategies (MARSI) and critical reading potential of Iranian students majoring in domains of English translation and books. The statistical results proven that there is a significant romantic relationship between the two parameters of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and critical reading capacity.
So the present study has found evidence that good and poor students are significantly different in their understanding and recognized use of metacognitive strategies. That's, the more a student knows about how he learns, the better learner he will be. Therefore, assisting students to be more alert to their metacognitive reading strategies plays an important role in not only developing their critical reading capability but also in their general reading comprehension capacity.
The results of this analysis can be compared and contrasted with those of other experts. For instance, studies of the present study are in congruity with the study conducted by Parson (2002) whose major purpose of his research was to investigate the effectiveness of the relationship between the use of metacognitive strategies and critical reading capability of the students. It had been conducted, specifically, to test the potency of a teaching technique made to improve critical reading capability by training students in metacognintive strategies. He found out that the students who had been instructed with this metacognitive training bundle (questioning, summarizing, predicting and speculating on the author's expected tone and purpose) should become more aware of their own mental operations and will illustrate not only increased critical reading potential, but also increased basic comprehension potential. Also, qualitative improvement mentioned in subject matter' strategy use provided sufficient facts for further research into the effectiveness of this training treatment.
Furthermore, the studies could indirectly support Icmez's (2009) conclusions who shows that in a crucial reading course, developing a competence in critical reading skills evokes interest and the novelty needed for students with high degrees of proficiency.
Finally, we can conclude our findings here's in line with what Ajideh (2009) implies, that poor visitors in general lack effective metacognitive strategies and also have little awareness how to approach to reading. There is also deficiencies in the use of metacognitive ways of monitor because of their understanding of texts. On the other hand, successful L2 readers learn how to use appropriate ways of enhance text comprehension.
5. Conclusion
As mentioned previously, among the various tools that students use to learn another language, learning strategies have been given a crucial role in every academic studies. Terminology learning strategies have been known as one factor that differentiates successful terms learning from unsuccessful vocabulary learning. In recent years, there has been an increasing awareness of the necessity to examine human personality and discover answers to the perplexing problems in terminology learning. It really is evident a student uses dialect learning strategies while he's consuming many linguistic, cognitive, and affective factors. Thus, such an intertwined network can offer a remedy to the extensive individual dissimilarities within the class.
Also, the capability to critically evaluate written materials has long been named being imperative to the educational process.
In this review, it's been tried out to explore the partnership between metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and critical reading capability of the students. With regards to the research question, it was discovered that when the students show more metacognitive awareness of strategies, they can read more critically and for that reason it is more probable that they credit score higher on reading understanding test.
Based on the results, it could be concluded that there is a meaningful relationship between your students' metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and their performance on critical reading understanding test. Therefore, metacognitive strategies could provide the missing link between cognitive functions and critical reading capacity. Metacognition refers to one's awareness of and control over his/her own mental procedures (Dark brown, 2007).
Consequently, it will probably be worth mentioning that the partnership demonstrated here is merely part of your sophisticated picture, which unveils just some of the factors operating in mind of our students that warrant investigation. It ought to be mentioned that words learners' strategies and their effect along the way of learning is a highly complex issue. Therefore, metacognitive strategy consciousness may well not be just the only aspect of this achievement in learning; somewhat, we have to investigate other styles of dialect learning strategies and appearance at what helps the students to increase their ability in reaching the best results.
6. Implications
The present analysis has found proof which supports previous research findings that proven that good and poor students are significantly different in their consciousness and recognized use of metacognitive strategies. That is, the more students knows about how precisely he learns, the better learner he'll be. Therefore, assisting students to be more aware of their metacognitive reading strategies plays an important role in not only developing their critical reading potential but also in their standard reading comprehension ability.
So predicated on these results, the finding of the study can have implications for instructors in reading classes. To become more specific, training good viewers means more than simply improving their knowledge about language framework and general analysis skills, and it requires raising their knowing of metacognitive approaches for critical reading.
Also the results this analysis may have implications for reading comprehension assessment. As stated before, critical reading skills are crucial for the students with higher level of proficiency. That is the higher the level of proficiency, the bigger the ability for critical reading. Therefore, one of the factors to be included in the assessment of words proficiency could possibly be the ability to learn critically especially at higher-level of effectiveness.
