Investigating Strategies in Reading Academic Text of EFL University Students

Abstract

Metacognitive reading strategies play a crucial role in enhancing students’ comprehension and critical thinking skills, particularly in second-language academic contexts. However, many university students still demonstrate inconsistent use of these strategies. This study aims to investigate the extent to which university students employ metacognitive reading strategies across the pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading stages. This study employed a quantitative descriptive design. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire administered to university students. The instrument measured the frequency of metacognitive strategy use, categorized into four levels: always, often, sometimes, and never. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics to identify patterns of strategy use. The findings indicate that students demonstrate moderate use of metacognitive reading strategies. In the pre-reading stage, goal setting is not consistently applied, although making predictions is relatively frequent. During the while-reading stage, students actively monitor comprehension and frequently guess meaning from context, indicating strong engagement in problem-solving strategies. However, higher-order analytical strategies, such as identifying main ideas and analyzing text structure, are less frequently used. In the post-reading stage, self-evaluation is moderately practiced, while translation is the most dominant strategy, suggesting a reliance on surface-level processing. Although students exhibit basic metacognitive awareness, their ability to regulate and apply higher-level strategies remains limited. Therefore, explicit instruction in metacognitive reading strategies is necessary to enhance students’ reading comprehension and critical thinking skills in academic contexts.