Metacognitive strategies in the development of reading competence of English academic texts in systems engineering students at a Public University

Abstract

English in Colombia continues getting low results. Engineering students at a public university, Tuluá location, are not the exception. Therefore, metacognition emerges as an alternative for education as a transformative element that join with renewed didactic strategies, fundamentally promotes teaching to learn. Then, the research of the incidence of using metacognition, intracognition and metareading as strategies through direct instruction and constant practice is proposed with the aims of optimizing reading comprehension in English, and finding other paths that lead to the acquisition of greater comprehension skills by students who enter the program and seek to complete successfully their undergraduate studies.    

This project was quasi-experimental research. Information was gathered by applying pre-test, post-test, MARSI test, SORS and a didactic intervention. The results obtained show that using metacognitive strategies generate better levels of English in reading texts comprehension. In addition, using metacognitive strategies promotes students to develop autonomous learning, self-regulation, and self-assessment skills. Analysis encourages discussion about the implementation of direct instruction in metacognition and its use at universities. Metacognitive strategies will result in a better reading capacity of the students, which should be the major goal of any activity that involves education in today's conditions and the challenges it demands.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.52783/rcp.86