Effects of Metacognitive Skills and Nonverbal Ability on Academic Achievement of High School Pupils

Two experiments were conducted with senior high school pupils in the North‐West Province of South Africa to examine relationships of metacognitive strategies and nonverbal reasoning ability to their performance in tests of mathematics and English comprehension. The analyses of data revealed that both metacognitive ability and nonverbal reasoning ability have significant positive association with mathematics and English achievement scores. Significant sex differences in mathematics performance were also found. The findings of the two experiments suggested that some intervention programmes to teach metacognitive strategies to students, who lack such skills, may improve their academic attainment