Utilising Explicit Teaching of Metacognitive Strategies in Honing Reading Skills among ESL and EFL Learners: A Review

Abstract

Reading has always been considered challenging by language learners. In line with this notion, many studies suggest that effective instructional approaches should be utilised to help these learners to improve their reading skills. Past studies have shown that one such potential instructional approach is the explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies in pursuit of aiding language learners to improve their reading skills. However, there are limited reviews that depicts the present studies which portrays the effectiveness of explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies for reading skills especially in ESL and EFL context. Therefore, this paper sought to fill in the gap by presenting a review of related published studies that researched on explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies to hone ESL and EFL learners' reading skills. 23 research studies were analysed in this review. The studies researched on explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies to English as a Second Language (ESL) learners and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners between the year 2016 to 2022 were selected from two different online databases, Google Scholar, and Educational Resources Information Centre (ERIC). The findings derived from the review outlined the effectiveness of utilising the teaching of metacognitive strategies explicitly that are higher achievement in reading tasks, self-regulated learning, active participation in reading tasks and motivation in reading. Furthermore, this review also revealed that the teaching of planning before reading, monitoring while reading and evaluating before reading should be supplemented as metacognitive strategies in reading lessons. This study proposes that further research should be carried out to investigate the challenges that are encountered by educators in teaching metacognitive strategies to ESL and EFL learners and as well as the challenges faced by these learners in absorbing the knowledge of metacognitive strategies taught to them.