Postgraduate English Students’ Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies and Their Reading Comprehension: A Comparative Study

A fundamental necessity at postgraduate level is a developed strategic reading skill that permits digesting tremendous amounts of technical academic content. The need is more paramount for EFL contexts and postgraduate students majoring in English Language Teaching (ELT) and English Literature (EL) most of whom will ultimately search a career in teaching.  The aim of the present ex-post facto study was to compare reading comprehension, overall metacognitive awareness of reading strategies (RSs) and awareness of Global, Problem-solving, and Support reading strategies of these prospective English teachers. To this end, a convenient sample of 60 ELT and 40 EL postgraduates were recruited from a pool of 130 students. The research data were collected using a reading comprehension test and the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategy Inventory (MARSI) (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002). The Independent Samples t-test analyses of the research data revealed that both groups were average in their reading comprehension and metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. MANOVA analysis of the MARSI components also indicated that although ELT postgraduates were significantly more aware of Global, Problem-solving, and Support RSs, both groups were at medium level. The findings highlight the need for strategic-based instruction in reading courses and offer a number of implications.