Awareness of Metacognitive Reading Strategies Employed by University Japanese Learners of English

Metacognitive strategies play an important role in reading comprehension. Being aware of one’s reading strategies can help learners improve their comprehension, particularly for academic materials. The awareness of metacognitive reading strategies can be the key to successful second language or foreign language reading. The present study investigated the awareness of metacognitive reading strategies among university Japanese learners of English (JLEs) to identify differences in awareness between the two different levels of groups. In search of this research issue, the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS) was conducted to examine the learners’ Global, Problem-Solving, and Support reading strategies used in academic reading. A total of 38 university Japanese learners of English divided into two classes, upper-intermediate and lower-intermediate, participated in the survey. The results indicate that the participants in the upper-intermediate class reported a higher level of awareness and strategy use for Global Reading Strategies (GLOB) than did those who were in lower-intermediate class. The findings show that skilled learners seem to use more of the monitoring strategies as compared to those of less skilled learners. Furthermore, the findings of the study suggest that there is a link between the awareness of metacognitive reading strategies and the proficiency while reading academic texts.