Unveiling the Causal Link Between Monitoring Strategies Instruction and Efl Reading Comprehension Outcomes Among Moroccan English Department University Students: A Metacognitive Perspective

The current study, being part and parcel of my unpublished doctoral dissertation which is entitled “Moroccan EFL Students’ Learning of Cognitive and Metacognitive Reading Strategies: Rabat FLHS Semester One Students as a Case Study” (defended in 2015), is intended to unravel the conceived impact of comprehension-monitoring strategies instruction (self-monitoring, self-questioning, and rereading) on the first-semester English Department learners’ reading comprehension scores. It is a manifestation of the extended depth and scope of the conducted explicit training in monitoring strategies, as high-order metacognitive heuristics, in the promotion of the learners’ text-processing mode and reading performance in English (L3). With a view to achieving this stated goal, 113 first-semester university students (Control Group: N= 50; Experimental Group: N= 63) undertaking their studies in the English Department took part in this quasi-experimental study. The data were gathered through the implementation of the strategy training, a select range of ‘experimental’ reading comprehension texts (i.e., narrative, expository), and narrative and expository reading tests (pre-tests and post-tests). The research findings reveal that instruction in L3 comprehension monitoring strategies resulted in positive reading achievement gains at post-testing among the experimental group. As to the control group, it did not exhibit any developmental progress at the level of the reading scores across the pre-post-test continuum. Thus, some action-oriented recommendations and implications relative to the undertaken research study, as well as a few limitations, are plausibly brought forth. Article visualizations: