DOES TEACHING METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES AND COOPERATIVE LEARNING AFFECT READING COMPREHENSION ABILITY?

The present study is an attempt to investigate the comparative effect of teaching metacognitive strategies and cooperative learning on the reading comprehension of Iranian intermediate English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners. To fulfill the purpose of this study, a group of 90 male and female intermediate learners of Aryanpour School of Culture & Education in Tehran, Iran took a piloted sample Preliminary English Test (PET) as a proficiency test and 64 of them were selected as homogenous learners and were divided into two experimental groups. One experimental group received metacognitive strategies based on Chamot & OʹMalleyʹs "Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA)" (1994), and the other one cooperative learning based on "Cooperative Learning" Model by Novak, (1991). To make sure that the students were not significantly different in terms of their reading comprehension ability, they were given a piloted reading comprehension pretest. Both groups were instructed by the same teacher (one of the researchers) using the same material -American Headway. At the end of the training, 18 sessions, a piloted post-test of reading comprehension was administered to both groups. The analysis of the test scores using t-test revealed that the experimental group which received metacognitive strategy training did statistically better in their post-test, which means that an increase in studentsʹ performance in reading comprehension due to the effect of teaching metacognitive strategies was occurred. The implication is that metacognitive strategy training can be included in regular English reading courses. This result may help EFL teachers to bear in mind the beneficial of teaching strategies especially when dealing with reading comprehension.