The Comparison of Metacognitive Reading Strategies Used by High Achiever and Low Achiever Students in EFL Context

Abstract

As one of the receptive skills, reading is an important ability for students to master when learning English. It is important because reading skill is required for students to understand not only meaning but also the ideas from the written materials. Meanwhile to have good reading comprehension, students need to have good strategy. Strategy such metacognitive strategy is proved to have significant impact to students’ reading comprehension. This research aims to compare the use of metacognitive reading strategy between low and high achiever EFL students in University of Islam Malang. Moreover, this research also investigates which types of metacognitive reading strategy are the most frequently used by high and low achiever students. This research applied a quantitative approach in the form of a comparative research design. Overall populations were 102 students of Reading IV Course. The researcher proposed purposive sampling technique with 41 students were identified as high achiever students and 10 students were identified as low achiever students. The Reading IV final test scores data were obtained from the lecturers and data about the metacognitive reading strategy were obtained from MARSI questionnaire. The research finding indicated that there was no significant difference in the use of metacognitive reading strategy by high and low achiever students. Moreover the research found out that Problem-Solving Strategies were used the most by high achiever students and Global Strategies proposed the most by low achiever students. In conclusion, though the finding did not indicate the differences of the use of metacognitive reading strategy between high and low achiever students, the researcher suggests this strategy as one of the variations of strategy that can be used during reading so that it can help students comprehend the reading materials better. The researcher also suggests future researchers to investigate another factor that maybe affecting the use of metacognitive reading strategy such as gender and prior knowledge of the students. Keywords: Reading, Metacognitive Reading Strategy, High Achiever, Low Achiever