Models of Metacognitive Reading Strategies Awareness of Liberal Arts Students at King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang

Abstract

Reading is one of the most essential skills for everyone. It is a very efficient, and powerful tool for anyone who seeks for dominant knowledge in every aspect. Regardless of educational levels or study fields, students apply this tool to search for either primary, or advanced knowledge and technologies to strive for their educational success. However, to achieve optimal success in any tertiary educational discipline: Arts or Science, students need to engage in utilize reading strategies efficiently and effectively. This study, therefore, aimed to (1) explore models of metacognitive reading strategies awareness of KMITL Liberal Arts students and (2) compare the models of metacognitive reading strategies awareness between students with different reading ability levels. The sample were 113 KMITL Liberal Arts fourth year English program students, but, at last, the overall sample   only 108 students who returned the completed questionnaire. The instrument was a questionnaire, having the framework of MARSI-R (the inventory of Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory-Revised), which consisted of three main components: Global Reading Strategies (GRS), Problem-Solving Strategies (PSS), and Support Reading Strategies or SRS (Mokhtari, Reichard & Dimitrov, 2013). Descriptive statistics was applied for analyzing this data. The finding revealed that metacognitive reading strategies awareness models of KMITL Liberal Arts students were at high level (  = 3.89). Surprisingly, for GRS, item 3 (Checking to see if content of the text fits the purpose of reading), the model was only at mid level (  = 3.41). Additionally, when comparing students with different reading abilities, it was found that metacognitive reading strategies awareness models of both high and mid reading ability students were at high level (  = 4.05, and 3.71 respectively). Interestingly, the models of both high and mid reading ability students for GRS, item 3, was still at mid level (  = 3.48, and 3.36 respectively). Moreover, various items of PSS and SRS that students with different reading ability levels had different awareness levels were discussed. Finally, recommendations were suggested.