Exploring EFL Reading as a Metacognitive Experience: Reader Awareness and Reading Performance

Lawrence Jun ZHANG

《Asian Journal of English Language Teaching》 12卷 (2002/12) Pp. 69-94

摘要

This paper reports on an exploratory study of 160 Mainland Chinese EFL learners' metacognitive awareness and reading. The researcher requested the subjects to answer a 36-item Likert-scale Metacognitive Awareness Questionnaire (MAQ). Interview protocols were collected from 20 of them to illuminate MAQ findings. As a partial replication of the Carrell (1989) study in terms of research method and objectives, this study generally corroborated what she had reported about L2 readers' metacognitive awareness and L2 reading, suggesting that Chinese EFL learners' metacognitive awareness had links to their EFL reading proficiency. The percentages of the subjects' responses to the four categories of the MAQ further indicated that they generally regarded ＂Confidence＂, ＂Effectiveness＂, ＂Repair＂ and ＂Difficulty＂ as pertinent to EFL reading. However, multiple regression analyses revealed that, of the four categories of strategies, ＂Difficulty＂ and ＂Effectiveness＂ were significant predictors. Implications for instruction and recommendations for further research are also explored.