T1 112009161 Full text

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT STUDENTS’ METACOGNITIVE
AWARENESS OF STRATEGIES USED IN READING ACADEMIC
JOURNALS

THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan

Devi Irnasari
112009161

LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
SALATIGA
2013
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ENGLISH DEPARTMENT STUDENTS’ METACOGNITIVE AWARENESS OF
STRATEGIES USED IN READING ACADEMIC JOURNALS

THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
Sarjana Pendidikan

Devi Irnasari
112009161

Approved by:

Anita Kurniawati H. M.Hum

Christian Rudianto, M.Appling.

Supervisor

Examiner

ii

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT

This thesis contains no such material as has been submitted for examination in any course or
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knowledge and my belief, this contains no material previously published or written by any
other person except where due reference is made in the text.

Copyright@ 2013. Devi Irnasari and Anita Kurniawati, M.Hum

All rights reserved. No part of this thesis may be reproduced by any means without the
permission of at least one of the copyright owners or the English Department, Faculty of
Language and Literature, Satya Wacana University, Salatiga.

Devi Irnasari:

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TABLE OF CONTENT
Cover Page……………………………………………………………………………….…….i
Approval Page………………………………………………………………………………....ii
Copyright Statement…………………………………………………………………….........iii
Publication agreement declaration............................................................................................iv
Table of Content …………………………………………………………………………..…..v
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………..1
Introduction………………………………………………………………………........1
Literature Review………………………………………………………………….......5
Definition of reading…………………………………………………………..5
Reading Academic Text……………………………………………………….6
Strategies to Help Reading Comprehension……………………………….......8
Metacognitive Awareness and Reading Strategies………………………......11
Methodology………………………………………………………………………....15

Context of the Study………………………………………………………….15
Participants………………………………………………………………...…16
Data Collection Tool………………………………………………………....16
Data Collection Procedure…………………………………………………....18
Data Analysis Procedure..................................................................................19
Data Analysis and Finding…………………………………………………...19
Overall Category Analysis and Finding……………………………...19
Global Category Analysis and Finding……………………………....22
Problem Solving Category Analysis and Finding…………………....25
Support Category Analysis and Finding……………………………..27
Conclusion………………………………………………………………..…..29
Acknowledgement...................................................................................................................32
References................................................................................................................................33
Appendix……………………………………………………………………..........................40
List of Figures
Figure 1………………………………………………………………………………19
Figure 2………………………………………………………………………………22
Figure 3………………………………………………………………………………25
Figure 4………………………………………………………………………………27
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ENGLISH DEPARTMENT STUDENTS’ METACOGNITIVE AWARENESS OF
STRATEGIES USED IN READING ACADEMIC JOURNALS
Devi Irnasari
112009161
Abstract
Many university students found reading academic journals for the first time is a
difficult task. They were burdened by the complex syntactic structures, unfamiliar vocabulary
and unfamiliar discourse. The general aim of this study was to present a picture of the
metacognitive awareness of reading strategy used when the students read academic journals.
A hundred of students in the middle of their third year were asked to complete the survey of
reading strategies (SORS) adapted from Moktari & Sheorey (2002). The overall result of the
study showed that the participants were medium users of strategies with problem solving
strategies as the most preferable strategy, followed by global and support strategies.
Key words: metacognitive awareness, reading strategies, academic reading, academic journal.
INTRODUCTION
There has been a negative assumption that English Department students who are
engaging with academic journal articles for the first time were having difficulties when
reading them. I also experienced it when I was taking academic writing class. In the course
that required the students to do literature research, I faced many difficulties. Even though I

used to compose essays in other courses before, in academic writing class I had to use
academic texts as the references which I had never done before. At least I needed two to three
textbooks and the rest were other reliable sources which mostly were academic journals or
scholar articles. Because most of the texts that I used as the literature review were scholar
articles, I got more problems from them. The unfamiliar structure of the texts, complex
syntactic structures, and many unfamiliar terms made me struggle to read them. The task
became more difficult even though I could choose my own topic. I did not master the topic I
chose because it has never been taught exclusively in any courses before the task given. After

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years studying with the help of teacher‟s explanation in class, it was very stressful to
complete this task. Hong-Nam & Leavell (2011) noted that shifting from teacher centered
study to be independent learners is a difficult skill for students. In addition, the assignment
was to make a ten-page-long argumentative academic essay which required me to have
enough understanding about the topic to enable me to think critically because I had to write
an argumentative essay. This condition frustrated me in completing the task.
Apparently, the difficulties I faced when reading academic journal articles for the first
time were also experienced by many of my friends. In other part of the world, it is also
reported that this phenomenon happened. Fujimoto, Hagel, Turner, Kattiyapornpong, and

Zutshi (2011) found that university students in Australia find difficulties when reading
scholarship journal to make an academic essay for the first time. They also found that
international students whose English was not their L1 got doubled difficulties because of the
incompatible English proficiency of the students with the reading texts. Berman & Cheng
(n.d) have investigated this problem in English Academic Purposes (EAP) survey that
confirmed a belief about non-native English inadequacy in language skills. In Japanese
situation, Hijikata, Nakatani, and Shimuzu (2013) also found that Japanese readers got
difficulties in understanding English academic journals because they have not been familiar
with its discourse.
Researchers identified this situation from several different points of view. Fujimoto et
al (2013) argue that this problem occurred because teacher often regard the „disciplinespecific literacy‟ as unproblematic, so that they do not consider the difficulties students face
when completing this task. This view supported by Devine (1998, p.260) who said that many
teachers do not see students‟ ability in target language as an important focus in successful
reading. Moreover, teachers lack of understanding about students‟ knowledge and experience
deficient toward academic journals discourse (Duff, 2007). The other researchers put the
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blame on the students‟ proficiency. Bean (n.d), a writing professor in Seattle University also
supported this argument; he said that university students nowadays are poor readers because
they are not able to deal with college books, bewildered by the bizarre of the references and

the unfamiliarity of the words. Moreover, the difficulty is increased when they lack of
background knowledge toward specific topic they chose. Cromley (n.d), a professor of
psychology wrote that readers can be on the level of frustration when they lack of
background knowledge. Hong-Nam & Leavell (2011) categorize students who face all of
these problems as „striving readers‟, while Shafie & Nayan (2011) called them, „struggling
readers‟ which all refer to the students who lack and are unable to read academic texts. These
are the terms that are used by some researchers which refer to the university students who
struggling reading academic text. Despite the fact that many researchers criticize the
students‟ proficiency, Easton (2011) identified that the problems with the academic text read
by students in the University level as it has high complexity in the vocabulary use and
employ remarkable technique in the writing.
Studying all the problems students face when reading scholarly journals: the lack of
exposures toward academic journals before the assignment given, teachers‟ assumption and
treatment toward students‟ literacy, incompatibility between students‟ proficiency with the
reading materials, and students‟ lack of background knowledge about the topic were resulted
in frustrating situation in completing the task because they hindered from reading
comprehension. Meanwhile, students need to understand the academic texts well. The writing
center of University of North Carrolina site stated that writing an argumentative essay,
students have to make interpretations of the readings and have a stand point besides provide
evidences (“Argument”, 2012). It is also noted there that critical reading plays an important

role. However, the problems students faced might hamper them to apply critical reading.

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Knot (n.d) wrote that in critical reading, reader has to construct judgment about texts‟
arguments. Whereas, setting-up judgments, comprehension must be achieved. Paris & Myers
(1981) reported that students could not understand the texts they read if they have no ability in
checking and managing their reading comprehension. However, this problem can be solved
by reading strategies. Some researchers claimed that the readers who are trained to use
strategies when reading performed significantly better than the readers who did not (Caverly,
Nicholson, Redcliffe, 2004). Other researchers also have observed that strategies use enhance
readers‟ reading maturity and literacy skill (Hong-Nam & Leavell, 2011; Kamran & Saeedeh,
2013).
Regarding to the need of strategies to help struggling readers understand the text,
many reading researchers and experts believe that strategies instruction should be done in
class (Hamdan, 2010; Anderson, 2002). To help students develop their reading strategies,
identifying what strategies already used by the students can be the first step (Ozek & Civelek,
2006; Zhang, 2001; Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002). Moreover, Hijikata et al (2009) reaffirmed
that the study about the series of actions taken during reading academic journals should be
done separately from reading in general. Negretti & Kuteeva (2011 as cited in Hijikata et al.,
2013) noted in their study that upgrading metacognitive skills will help to improve readers‟
ability to recognize and make use of the features of genre of a text properly.
Many studies have done to examine the strategies used by students in reading. Some
researchers suggested that strategy instructions help students comprehend academic text
(Easton, 2011; Hong-Nam & Leavel, 2011). Some also found that there is a relationship
between strategy use and reading achievement (Kamran & Saeedeh, 2013; Ilustre, 2011). The
others examined students‟ metacognitive awareness in reading academic material in order to
develop appropriate strategy instruction (Li, 2010; Alhaqbani & Riazi, 2012; Karbarlei, 2010;
Hamdan, Ghafar, Sihes, Atan, 2010; Zhang & Wu, 2009; Mokhtari & Alsheikh, 2011;
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Fotovatian & Shokrpour, 2007; Gyasi, Safdarian, Farsani, , 2011; Ozek & Civelek, 2006) and
metacognitive awareness of reading strategies in online reading (Anderson, 2003; Amer,
Barwani, Ibrahim, 2010; Ramli, Darus, Bakar, 2011). These researches confirmed the need of
strategies in reading in various contexts including in the context of university level with
academic texts.
Based on the notion that metacognitive awareness of strategies used in reading helps
to comprehend the texts and solve the problems faced by students in reading academic
journals, a research was done. The research was to answer the question: what are the types
and the frequency of strategies used by students when engaging with academic journal
for the first time? This study attempted to discover the variety and frequency of reading
strategies employed by English Department students who were assigned to read academic
journal excessively for the first time. Taking English Department of Satya Wacana Christian
University, this research hopefully shed a light theoretically toward the understanding of
reading strategies used by English Department students when reading academic journals for
the first time, and practicality in designing teaching methods, activities, and instructions in
order that reading academic journal difficulties can be decreased when they were given a
difficult assignment such as to compose a ten-page long academic argumentative essay with
the use of at least ten references. Mokhtari & Reichard (2002) believe, such a research help to
provide teachers with functional offers in giving struggle readers aids to develop their
awareness of reading strategies.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Definition of reading
A reading expert, Grabe sees reading as a combination of complex activities that
depends on its purpose. He claimed that reading is rapid, efficient, comprehending,
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interactive, strategic, flexible, evaluative, learning and linguistic process (Grabe, 2009, p.1415). While Goodman (1998, p.12) describe reading as a „psycholinguistic‟ process initiated
by basic linguistic symbol which created by the authors and interpreted by the reader. Despite
its complexity process, actually reading is a usual activity for adult. However, reading in L2
is different from reading in L1, Grabe (2009, p. 129) wrote “L2 reading is an ability that
combines L2 and L1 reading resources into a dual-language processing system.” Generally,
university students are literate enough in their L1. Especially for English major students,
English text is their daily tasks. However, reading international scholarly journals for the first
time is not an easy job, especially completing a reading task to write an argumentative
academic essay.
Reading academic text
To compose argumentative academic essays, students have to do an “active, complex
process of making meaning in which a reader draws information from several sources and
concurrently construct a representation of a texts‟ message” (McLoughlin, 1995, p.29 as
quoted in Fujimoto et al., 2011, p.1). For a beginner reader of international scholarly journals,
this assignment is inevitably tough enough.
Niseteo (2011) described scholarly journal as a kind of article written by scholars
from the specific subject whose purpose is to construct academic communication among
people in specific academic subject written in academic manner. Making a paper based on
library research, students need to read a great amount of international scholarship journals to
select which are the appropriate ones to support their topic essays. Thus being efficient and
effective in reading is very imperative in this task. Goodman reminded us that it is important
that readers are able to build meaning effectively which assimilated and put up with the level
of concurrence with the original message of the texts. Also, to become efficient in building

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meaning all through the process or in other words, the readers have to be able to find the
shortest path to meaning and use strategies, to use the right clues, and to use background
knowledge and also linguistic capability (Goodman, 1998, p. 12).
Regardless of the need to be effective and efficient in reading, Fujimoto et al (2011)
found that the students who is doing this kind of assignment for the first time faced „various
literacy challenges‟ such as: the maturity of universal „tertiary literacy‟ (Moloney, 2004;
McLoughlin, 1995 as cited in Fujimoto et al., 2011), or „academic literacy‟ (Mateos et al.,
2007 as cited in Fujimoto et al, 2011), familiarity with specific academic discourse
(Alexander et al., 2009; Street, 2004 as cited in Fujimoto et al., 2011) and growth of expert
literacy (Pinder, 2007 as cited in Fujimoto et al., 2011). All of these challenges are the lacks
of students‟ knowledge or literacy such as their incompatible proficiency to read scholarship
journals and unfamiliarity with this type of text.
The thing that makes academic journals difficult to read is because this kind of texts is
different from texts for general purposes. Texts which are used for reading in academic
purposes (EAP) have particular features that give difficulties for students to understand it, for
example: it is written with the assumption that the readers have background knowledge of it,
and it needs an understanding about specific features of language style (Hijikata et al., 2013).
Many researchers believe that reading academic English is hard for EFL and ESL (Hijikata et
al., 2013; Wasilawski, 2009), notably when they have not been familiar with its discourse and
have to read it for the first time for a difficult assignment such as compose academic essay
(Fujimoto et al., 2011). Tercanlioglu (2004) also confirmed that ESL students have high
anxiety and difficulty in reading academic text.
The lack of fluency in English is believed as the cause that makes the reading task
harder for them (Anderson, 1999, p.1; Carrel, 1998, p.1). Cummin claimed that it takes about

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seven to fifteen years for most learners who are immersed in the target language to acquire
academic language. He added that the duration depends on several factors, such as: their level
of literacy in their first language, the education experiences, and the amount of contact to
complex language the learners ever had (Cummin, as cited in Easton, 2011). Whereas reading
in university level, extensive and effective reading of academic texts is vital, and students
need to have firm proficiency to be successful (Carrell, 1998, p.1). Despite readers‟
proficiency, the readings itself indeed have several characteristic that make them hard to be
read. Cohen, Glasman, Rosenbaum-Cohen, Ferrara, and Fine (1998, p.153-154) identified the
characteristics of academic texts in a particular subject / English for special purposes as: it
contain „heavy noun phrase subject or object‟, „syntactic marker cohesion‟, and vocabulary in
technical text. They added that even students who master the technical term can be very
frustrated reading this text.
To add students‟ difficulties in reading, they face another challenging task for they
have to understand the academic texts to the level of comprehension in which they can justify
the ideas made by scholar to be able to develop argumentative essay. In fact, Karbarlei (2010)
claimed that, in reading readers are supposed to understand its implied ideas besides the
direct meaning. Nevertheless, for EFL and ESL readers who struggle in decoding academic
text, understanding the implied ideas must be difficult. Whereas, Anderson (1999, p.3) stated
that fluency in reading include both decoding and interpretation. Yet complex syntactic
structures, unfamiliar terms and unfamiliar discourse hindered EFL and ESL readers to
comprehend scholar journals.
Strategies to Help Reading Comprehension
Many researchers emphasized that strategies can help readers to comprehend text.
Anderson (1999, p.39) urges that meaning obtained if reader able to combine schemata,

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reading purpose, reading strategies, and the text itself. Grabe (2009, p.195) warned that to
build reading comprehension readers need: reading strategies and its integration into the
higher level processing, syntactic knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, and discourse
knowledge. Studying Grabe‟s statement, strategies seem to become the only aid when the
curriculum does not allow students to know the discourse of the academic journal earlier and
the students‟ proficiency have not met the need of academic articles. Cohen et al (1998,
p.165) also endorses this view; he does not deny that strategies help readers obtain meaning
from academic text.
Strategies are illustrated by Chamot et al (1999, p.2) as „procedures or techniques‟
used by learners in order to help them complete a specific language task. Adding more
description, Anderson (2002) asserts that strategies are „conscious actions‟, which
differentiate it with skill which is unconscious (Anderson, 2009, p.15-16 as cited in Grabe,
2009, p. 221). In other words, learners who are trained and get used to use strategies will be
skilled in a particular area of learning because they could overcome the problems. Grabe
reaffirmed, for beginner readers, even decoding text is utilized with intentional problem
solving process. He added, after becoming fluent readers, this basic language processing
becomes less necessary (Grabe, 2009, p.222).
There is a belief that the difficulties in reading are caused by readers‟ low
understanding of reading strategies (Tercanlioglu, 2004) and low strategies use (Pressley,
2000 as cited in Hong-Nam & Leavell, 2011). Thus, teacher should helps students to be
aware of reading strategies use in reading. Hong-Nam & Leavell (2010) insisted, striving
readers have to build up a repertoire of strategies that can be used selectively in various kinds
of reading text and assignment.

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Many researchers believe that strategies help readers in comprehending text.
Researchers who conducted observation on comprehension strategies between good and poor
students in primary school in reading found that good students use more strategies more than
poor students (Paris & Myers, 1981; Chamot & El-Dinary., n.d). They found that good
readers use more effective strategies than poor readers. Even though their study was done to
young students, Rao, Gu, Zhang, Hu (2005) noted that reading strategy use is „a stable
phenomenon‟. Thus it also can be generalized to the context of adult reading because the
same finding also was found in other study with adult participants. In the studies of adult
students Phakiti (2003), Kamran & Saeedeh (2013), and Carverly et al (2004) revealed the
positive correlation between the use of strategies and reading comprehension.
In reading, strategies should compensate with texts‟ difficulty and readers‟ aims
(Anderson, 1999, p.52). Oxford (1990, as cited in Anderson, 2002) suggested six categories
of strategies in language learning: cognitive, metacognitive, mnemonic or memory,
compensatory, affective, and social strategies. Conversely, there are just two kinds of
strategies that become popular discussion in helping reading process: cognitive and
metacognitive strategies. Grabe (2009, p.233) identified strategies that are associated with
cognitive strategies are guessing, noting, recognizing transition phrase, skipping words,
identifying a known part, forming a question, and identifying the main idea. While
metacognition is defined as the understanding and monitor over cognitive process (Grabe,
2009, p. 222)
Many studies have done to examine strategies used by ESL and EFL in comprehend
reading text. Ozek and Civelek examined the use of cognitive strategies in reading English
text by the first and fourth year ELT students in a university using questionnaire and think
aloud protocol. The finding showed that there were different preference of strategies used
between fourth year students and first year students (Ozek & Civelek, 2006). Another study
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has done by Rao, Gu, Zhang, & Hu in primary school context. Using think aloud protocol, it
was found that high proficient students use more deep-level processing strategies (e.g
guessing, questioning, etc), and low skilled learners use more surface-level processing (e.g
rereading, paraphrasin, etc) (Rao et al., 2005). Meanwhile, Chamot and El-Dinary in a study
of elementary school students revealed that successful readers and unsuccessful readers use
the same strategies, but different in the frequency use of strategies type. Successful students
use more background knowledge – related strategies, while unsuccessful students use more
decoding – related strategies (Chamot & El-Dinary, n.d). These studies revealed that there are
differences in strategies used between skilled and unskilled readers which imply suggestions
to teacher to encourage learners to use more strategies used by successful readers.
Other studies revealed the role of cognitive and metacognitive strategies in reading. A
study of EFL university students by Fotovation & Shokrpour (2007) revealed that high
proficient readers use more metacognitive strategies when reading text than low proficient
readers. While Phakiti (2003) study reported metacognitive strategies have positive
correlation with reading achievement and high proficient showed high use of these strategies
than the medium and low proficient learners. More, in the study of L1 and ESL readers in
United Kingdom, Tercanlioglu (2004) found that native speakers use more metacognitive
strategies than ESL students who prefer support strategies. These studies have shown the
importance of metacognitive strategies of high proficient readers during reading. Thus,
promoting and teaching metacognitive strategies toward students during reading text,
especially English text is necessary.
Metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension
That many researchers discussed metacognitive strategies and metacognitive
awareness as refers to similar acts, there is confusion for those two terms which appeared as

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if they are interchangeably. Following Grabe (2009, p.223) who decided that the term
metacognitive awareness is better to refers to the knowledge and the use of strategies rather
than metacognitive strategies, the writer decide to use metacognitive awareness as the term
used in this paper in the later discussion. Firstly, we will discuss the initial use of this term to
give a look that the term chosen is better used.
Even though metacognition defined as simply „thinking about thinking‟ with the
second „thinking‟ refers to cognition (Anderson, 1999, p. 82 Anderson, 2002), actually there
was more explanation about this. Flavell, the preliminary user of this term explained,
metacognition or „a model of cognitive monitoring‟ comprises of „metacognitive knowledge‟
and „metacognitive experience‟. He referred metacognitive knowledge to the knowledge
about aspects or actions that affects the cognitive tracks which were divided into three types:
person, task, and strategies. Referring to the strategy variable, he wrote that there is a
remarkable awareness that can be obtained related to the kind of strategies which possibly
effective to achieve goals in the cognitive executes (Flavell, 1979). Pierce (2003) added that
the metacognitive capability involved three types of knowledge: declarative (accurate
information established by the readers), technical (the understanding about the way
something is done), and provisional (the understanding of when, why and in what
circumstance certain strategy employed) which all concern with learning strategies.
To make it clearer, Livingston (1997) suggested the description of metacognition
process as “higher order thinking which involves active control over the cognitive processes
engaged in learning.” Several reading experts described the nature of metacognitive in similar
tone. Chamot, Barnhardt, El-Dinary, and Robbins (1999, p.10) viewing metacognitive
process as the control of planning, monitoring, problem solving and evaluating. While the
other came up with similar but shorter process, without problem solving acts (Hudson, 2007,
p.122; Livingston, 1997).
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The term metacognitive awareness is common in the discussion of reading activity.
Baker & Brown (1984, as cited in Li, 2010) referred metacognitive awareness as “knowledge
about ourselves, the task we face, and the strategies we employ”. For example, if students
think that they would forget an important theory if they do not take notes of what is
considered as important parts, then they will write it down. Reading academic text in second
language, students must face considerably many challenges to comprehend it. With all the
unfamiliar vocabulary, topic, discourse, terms, and syntactic structure, more efforts must be
taken into account in reading academic text. Grabe (2009, p.223) acknowledge, everything
being put on the text adds the amount of metacognitive awareness needed to comprehend the
text.
Many researchers believe that metacognition play important role in reading. Chamot
and his partners wrote that it is good in helping managing strategies. Regarding to the need to
read effectively when reading academic writing, they asserted that this process shows
practice of „effective reader‟ in working throughout many difficult language assessment
(Chamot et al., 1999, p.11). Supporting the previous statement, Anderson (2002) asserted
“learners who are metacognitively aware know what to do when they don‟t know what to do;
that is they have strategies to find out or figure out what they need to do”. In fact, that many
researchers have examined university students‟ metacognitive awareness of reading strategy
in academic reading has shown its importance in learning process.
Mokhtari and Alsheikh has examined the metacognitive awareness of university
students of Arabic native speaker when reading academic text in Arabic and English. Think
aloud protocol was used as the data collection tool which analyzed according to the three
distinction of strategies: global, problem solving and support strategies. The research
revealed that students use more strategies when reading English text than when reading
Arabic text and problem solving rate as the highest strategies used (Mokhtari & Alsheikh,
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2011). Other researchers use questionnaire to examine the use of strategy of undergraduate
students when reading academic text (Alhaqbani & Riazi, 2011; Karbarlei, 2010; Li, 2010;
Kamran & Saeedeh, 2013). These studies revealed that students use problem solving
strategies as the most preference strategies among global and support strategies.
Mokhtari and Reichard divided metacognitive awareness of reading strategies into
three: global strategies, problem solving strategies, and support strategies. Global strategies
are the on purpose, deliberate techniques by that employ to manage their reading. While
problem solving strategies are localized acts that employed by readers when problem appear
during working with the texts. And support strategies are strategies to raise comprehension
with the use of tools like dictionaries and others (Mokhtari, & Reichard, 2002, p.4).
In the study comparing ESL and EFL use of strategies when reading academic text,
Karbarlei found that ESL use more strategies than EFL. The study may show the more
proficient language learners use more strategies than less proficient language learners,
following the logic that ESL is more proficient than EFL (Karbarlei, 2010). While in the
discussion of study preferences, it was found native English speakers employ that global
strategies more than problem solving and support strategies (Hong-Nam & Leavell, 2011).
Different with the previous study, some studies in ESL and EFL context revealed that
problem solving rate as the highest strategies among the three categories (Ilustre, 2011;
Zhang & Wu, 2009; Ghyasi et al., 2011, Mokhtari & Alsheikh, 2011). Those two kinds of
finding seemingly made a distinction between native and nonnative speaker use of strategies
as well as EFL and ESL.
Sustaining the idea, Carrell (1989, as cited in Ilustre, 2011) revealed that highly
skilled ESL readers use more global strategy or top down. On the contrary, Ilustre (2011)
identified, problem solving strategies is the category of strategies that positively correlated

14

with reading comprehension. However, another study by Zhang & Wu (2009) contend the
previous study mentioned, they found that global reading strategies correlated with students
with high achievement. While Kamran & Saeedeh (2013) advocated the debate and asserted
that both Global and Problem solving strategies are correlated positively with the
comprehension beside support strategies. In fact, Mokhtari & Reichard (2002) have predicted
that high skillful readers use more global and problem solving strategies than less proficient
readers.
Having studied the framework of strategies in reading and reading academic journals
nature, I have done a study to examine students‟ metacognitive awareness of reading
strategies when reading academic journals.
METHODOLOGY
Regarding the framework written above about the EFL and ESL readers who are
struggling when reading international scholarly journal articles for the first time, and the
necessity of strategies used to overcome their problems, this research was designed to
examine the metacognitive awareness of strategies used by university students who were
majoring in English.
Context of the Study
This study attempted to give an overview about academic reading strategies used by
students who were majoring in English in Satya Wacana Chrisitan University when reading
international scholarship journals. This context was related to the background knowledge of
this research in which the participants experienced the struggle in reading academic journals
to compose argumentative academic essays. This study was done to give an overview about
how students employ strategies to improve comprehension, in order to give a view toward the

15

development of strategy instructions, teaching techniques, or activities. It is very demanding
that the students have enough metacognitive awareness in using strategies in academic
writing class, for they will read more academic journals in other course, especially in
proposal and thesis-making, they need to read a great amount of academic research journals.
Thus, a good skill in reading is needed to pass the courses successfully.
Participants
The participants were English Language Education Department students of Satya
Wacana Christian University. The participants were chosen based on the sample of
convenient, a sample that was chosen according to the researchers‟ convenience (Ross,
2005). It was decided because it was accessible for the writer to do it.
The participants of this research were a hundred English Language Education
Department students who were taking academic writing course in the first semester in the
period of 2010/2013. According to English Department of SWCU website, academic writing
is a bring-in academic discourse course. In this course participants had to choose a topic,
build up a thesis statement, construct outline and find relevant references to write a library
research based essay (Required Course, 2010).
I chose these participants as in this course they engage with a number of English
written international scholarly journals articles for the first time for the whole semester to
compose a ten-page long essay. I assumed that they have experienced trials and errors use of
strategies in their attempts to comprehend the task-related texts before they finally found the
best ways they think fit most. Relating this detail with my study, I want to give a picture of
students‟ use of reading strategies so that teachers could develop activities or strategies
instruction to promote the use of more appropriate strategies that the students might have not
employed yet.
16

Data Collection Tool
The data was collected by a questionnaire adapted from the Survey of Reading
Strategies (SORS) by Mokhtari & Sheorey (2002). The reason of choosing this questionnaire
was because it was considerated as a suitable and dependable questionnaire which was made
to rate the matacognitive awareness of teenage and adult English learners in which English is
their second language when reading academic texts such as textbook and academic journal
articles by many researchers. A number of researchers have made use of this instrument
(Karbarlei, 2010; Ilustre, 2011; Li, 2010; Kamran & Saeedeh, 2013, Wu & Zhang, 2009).
Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002) developed it from MARSI (Metacognitive Awareness of
Reading Strategies) which was created because the previous questionnaire was applicable for
native readers only. Mokhtari and Reichard believe that it is very imperative to investigate
students‟ awareness about the cognitive, motivational manner, and the acts the employ in
order to monitor comprehension when reading academic text. Moreover, they suggested this
instrument to help students improve understanding about their students‟ needs (Mokhtari &
Reichard, 2002).
Regarding to the context of the study which was actually EFL, this questionnaire can
be used with consideration that students in this department are studying English and all the
course‟s instructions and activities delivered with English which put them in almost similar
condition with ESL context. Thus, this instrument fit with my context of study.
There are thirty items measuring three categories of reading strategies:
Global reading strategies (GLOB): are strategies which are deliberately and cautiously
planned. Learners use these strategies to examine and control their reading. The examples of
the strategies are: to activate background knowledge, set purposes, and preview texts‟

17

structure (Mokhtary & Sheorey, 2002). Many of the strategies in this category are pre-reading
acts. In the questionnaire this strategy contain of thirteen items.
Problem Solving Strategies (PROB): The act and process reader use when reading the
academic texts. It is confined and concentrated on the way they act in solving problems in
understanding the texts. The examples of this strategy are: such as alter the reading pace and
guessing the unfamiliar words. In the questionnaire this strategy contain of eight items.
Support Strategies (SUP): The fundamental reinforcement to help reader to
understand the text with the use of additional tools, for example by using dictionary, take
notes, and highlight the text. This strategy is consisting of nine items in the questionnaire.
According to Mokhtari & Reichard (2002) the three categories of strategies above
shown a consistent reliability coefficient that determined by Cronbach‟ Alpha. The result of
the Global category was .92, problem solving category .79, and support strategy category was
.87, and the reliability of overall strategy was .93. The result indicated that this questionnaire
reliable in identifying students‟ metacognitive strategies‟ awareness. A five point Likert scale
following each item indicates the frequency of strategy use ranging from 1 (Never do) to 5
(Always do). The three categories also arranged randomly in order to confuse students
(Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002).
Data Collection Procedure
The data was collected randomly within two months in December 2012 and February
2013. The data collection was done this way because researcher did not have a chance to
collect the data directly from each class because when researcher was ready to take the data,
the classes had no meeting anymore. With the help of the copies of students‟ list given by

18

several teachers from the academic writing classes; the researcher could spread the
questionnaire directly to the participants one by one.
Data Analysis Procedure
The data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel to find the mean of each strategy, the
mean of strategies after grouping into three categories, and overall mean of the entire
strategies used. Before coding the data, the researcher chose 100 questionnaires from 112
which were suitable with this study. Those were the questionnaires which were filled by the
students who just took academic writing course for the first time. After coding the entire
questionnaire, the data divided into three categories: Global strategies, Problem Solving
strategies, and Support strategies. The mean of each strategy and each category were
identified as high, medium, and low according to the streak recommended by Oxford &
Burry-Stock (1995, as cited in Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002). A strategy considered as high use
of strategy if the mean is 3,5 or higher, and it considered as medium if the mean is 2,5 – 3,4,
then it is considered as low if the mean is 2,4 or lower.

19

DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDING
Strategies preference shows that participant were moderately high proficient readers
Figure 1. Overall mean of reading strategies

Overall Strategies
3,67
3,7
3,6
3,5
3,4
3,3
3,2
3,1
3

3,33

Global Strategies

3,28

Problem Solving
Strategies

Support Strategies

The chart above is the overall result of data counting of this study. The finding shows
that the participants were medium users of strategies with mean 3,33. With reference to the
three categories, problem solving strategies posits as the highest strategy use (mean: 3,63),
followed by global strategies (mean: 3,32), and support strategies (mean 3,26). According to
the scale, problem solving strategies rate the high use in reading academic journals by the
participants. While global and support strategies rate the medium use in that activity.
Moreover, none of the strategy on the survey is regarded as low rate; they were on the
medium and high rate in use.
This sequence of the strategies use preference is similar with the finding of
Alhaqbani & Riazi (2012) in reading academic Arabic texts study of university students,
Ghyasi et al (2011) with Iranian EFL learners, Hamdan et al (2010) with EFL Malaysian
university students, Zhang & Wu (2009) of EFL Chinese high school students, Li (2010) of
Chinese EFL middle school students, Kamran & Saeedeh (2012) with language institute
20

students, Ilustre (2011) with Philippine university students, Mokhtari & Alseikh (2011) with
ESL readers whose native language were Arabic, Amer, Barwani, & Ibrahim (2010) in
reading online situation of EFL university students, and Monos (n.d) with Hungarian EFL
university students. At least five of the researches mentioned were in the same context with
this study. Their studies were in the university context of EFL & ESL learners when reading
academic text. Thus, we can infer that these kinds of findings were more likely occur in this
context.
It is also revealed that the finding of the other context of the studies were different
with my finding. The data of this study is inconsistent with the finding of Ramli et al (2011)
who examine the strategies used by EFL students when reading online articles, and HongNam & Leavell (2011) who examined the use of metacognitive strategies of native English.
Their studies proved that global strategies posited as the highest strategies use followed by
problem solving and support strategies. Regarding to the preference of global strategies as the
highest use strategies in several different contexts of studies, Alhaqbani & Riazi (2012) found
that students from Africa (ESL) used more global strategies, while Asian students (EFL) used
more problem solving strategies. Their study supports Carrell (1989, as cited in Ilustre, 2011)
who said that ESL readers used more Global strategies. These studies might show the
difference between native and nonnative readers‟ as well as EFL and ESL readers‟ way of
reading.
Nonetheless, Ilustre (2010) argued that only problem solving related strategies that are
positively related to reading comprehension with the evidence that students who used these
strategies got high reading comprehension scores. On the contrary, Kamran & Saeeder (2013)
argueed, only global and problem solving strategies correlated positively with reading
comprehension. A part from the debate about which strategy is more likely to be preferred in
any context, Zhang & Wu (2009) reported that the high proficiency group used more global
21

and problem solving strategies than low proficiency group. Their study confirmed Mokhtari
& Reichard (2002) prediction that the high proficient group was high users of global and
problem solving strategies. That study also showed that there was no difference between ESL
and EFL readers.
Others studies also proved this objective. Mokhtari & Alsheikh (2011), Anderson
(2003) and Karbarlei (2010) reported that ESL showed the use of problem solving strategies
as the highest strategies preferred. Anderson (2003) assumed that the distinction between
ESL and EFL lose its ground because of increased English exposures opportunities received
by EFL learners by media such as television, radio and internet, and also the accessibility of
good learning materials. This argument is seemingly true with regard of easy access of
English learning-helper media nowadays which also occurs in the context of my study.
In sum, the findings of other studies showed that more proficient readers used more
strategies or had higher metacognitive awareness. Thus, because of the participant of this
study were medium users of strategies, then it can be inferred that they have quite high
proficiency. Another point that can be highlighted from this study is that the participants may
get more advantages especially from problem solving strategies regarded to the high rate of it
than from the global and support strategies which rate as medium use.

22

Participants demonstrate their understanding of the nature of academic journals in their
strategies use

Figure 2. Global Reading Strategies Subscale

Global Strategies
4
3,5
3
2,5
2
1,5
1
0,5
0

3,57

3,68

3,37

3,57
3,05

3,31

3,23

3,34

Q17

Q20

3,5

3,61

Q23

Q24

3,09

3,34

2,73

Q1

Q3

Q4

Q6

Q8

Q12

Q15

Q21

Q27

The awareness of monitoring their reading or Global strategy is in the medium scale
which means the participants were aware enough of these strategies. The figure two shows
the use of global reading strategies which is the evidences for learners monitor and manage in
reading by having some planned techniques or pre-reading actions. Rated in the medium used
from total thirteen strategies, the data showed that the highest three rates are in high use.
Using background knowledge (mean = 3,68) is rated as the highest strategy use. It is good
that the participants were aware of the background knowledge activation, background
knowledge is regarded as the vital aspect in whichever comprehension premise (Grabe, 2009,
p.80). They also show the attempt to be efficient readers, as Goodman (1998) stated that
background knowledge activation is one of the aspects to built comprehension and also as
successful readers (Chamot & El-Dinary, n.d).
Guessing the context of the text when reading (mean = 3,61) rates the second highest.
The third high rate of global strategies is having purposes in mind when reading (mean =

23

3,57) and think if the texts being read fit with their reading purpose (mean = 3,57). These
three strategies are very imperative and normally happened in the context of this study where
the students read the text to write academic essay. Looking at the rates, we know that the
participants were aware of the characteristic of reading academic journals for writing
academic essay where they had to be efficient in time. They were having purpose in mind
before reading, thinking if the text fit their topics, and guessing texts‟ context because they
did not want to read too deeply articles which will not give any significa