Anikó Kelemen-Molitorisz: Metacognitive awareness of reading strategies in 9^th and 11^th grade vocational secondary education

This investigation focuses on 9th and 11th grade vocational secondary school students’ responses to Mokhtari and Reichard’s (2002) Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) questionnaire on metacognitive awareness of reading strategies, as well as data on their use of the school library. The MARSI questionnaire is comprised of five-point Likert-scale items and can be administered to adolescents and adults. Our research design enabled us to connect students’ awareness of different reading strategies to their library use and other background variables. The sample consisted of 412 students from two vocational secondary schools in Budapest, Hungary. The findings can be summarised as follows. (1) The questionnaire and its subscales proved to be of acceptable reliability. (2) The structure of the questionnaire partly evidenced the existence of the three theoretical subscales presented by Mokhtari and Reichard. (3) There were no significant differences between the two age-groups, indicating the lack of development in awareness of reading strategies between the ninth and the eleventh grades. (4) Support reading strategies appear to be the applied to a small degree. (5) Several background variables seem to have significant relations with the MARSI scores, including students’ gender, whether they talk about books, the frequency their parents used to read them tales in their childhood and the frequency of visiting the school library. The results suggest that the MARSI questionnaire is a useful tool to assess students’ awareness of reading strategies. The educational implications and consequences of the findings are discussed.

MAGYAR PEDAGÓGIA 109. Number 3. 287-313. (2009)

Levelezési cím / Address for correspondence: Kelemen-Molitorisz Anikó, Főpolgármesteri Hivatal, Oktatási Ügyosztály, H–1052 Budapest, Városház utca 9–11.

 
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