A closer look at the relationship

of cognitive and metacognitive

strategy use to EFL reading
acheivement test performance
Aek Phakiti
Language Testing 2003 20 (1) 26–
56

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 I Introduction

‘Language testing (LT) research has tended to

concern itself with providing a model of language
ability.’
 describe/assess the language ability of an
individual
 describe/construct an extensive theory of
language test performance that
describes/explains test performance variation
 describe correspondence between test
performance and non-test language use.
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 Rationale:

 more research on different test-takers in different settings

needed
 ‘Few, if any, studies in the LT literature have looked at this
relationship (of cognitive and metacognitive strategy use)
in an EFL achievement context’
 ‘A Thai-government university setting may be of interest to
investigate such a relationship because the participants
may be different from those in other previous studies.’
 In this study they were the same age group, a small range
of English proficiency levels, share the same cultural and
educational context.

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 Three research questions:

 What is the nature of cognitive and metacognitive

strategies used in an EFL reading comprehension
test?
 What is their relationship to EFL reading
comprehension test performance?
 How do the highly successful, moderately
successful and unsuccessful test-takers differ in
the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies?

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 Method
Background and participants
 a major university in Thailand
 ‘fundamental English course’
 reading comprehension skills were emphasized in
the assessment of students’ achievement
 384 Thai students (173 males (45%)/211 females)
 studying English in Thailand for about 8 years
 75 (19.5%) highly successful: scoring 70%+
 256 (66.7%) mod. successful: scoring 46-69%
 53 (13.8%) unsuccessful: scoring 45%-

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 Measurement instruments

The following were research instruments in the study:

a. test: 85-item, 3 hour multiple-choice reading
comprehension achievement test
Section 1: two passages with 20-item gaps; two dialogue
passages with 25-item gaps
Section 2: four passages, ranging from 139 words to 657
words.
b. a cognitive–metacognitive questionnaire
c. retrospective interviews:
30-minute interviews conducted in Thai with 4 highly
successful and 4 unsuccessful test-takers

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 Interview Structure

 asked about attitudes towards learning/reading English

 asked to report on strategies they used when doing the
reading comprehension test (provided with the reading
comprehension test to help remind them)
 given 10 minutes to do a reading test (a short reading
comprehension passage and 6 mcqs) to simulate a test
situation (parallel and similar to that in the final achievement
test).
 asked about their strategy use when trying to comprehend
the reading passage and complete the questions.

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 Results

The results suggested that:

 (1) the use of cognitive and metacognitive
strategies had a positive relationship to the
reading test performance
 (2) highly successful test-takers reported
significantly higher metacognitive strategy use
than the moderately successful ones who in
turn reported higher use of these strategies
than the unsuccessful test takers.

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 Conclusions 1

 study aim: investigate nature of cognitive/metacognitive

strategies in relation to EFL reading test performance
 assumption: variability in language test performance can
be attributed to test-taker characteristics
 findings suggest that cognitive and metacognitive strategy
use could explain variation on language test performance
cognitive/metacognitive strategies across the achievement
groups differed quantitatively and qualitatively
relationship of cognitive/metacognitive strategies to EFL
reading performance could be more complicated than found
or implied

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 Conclusions 2

 drawbacks: study excluded other factors such as

affect
cognitive and metacognitive strategies might be
related to language test performance, and to the
way in which cognitive and metacognitive
strategies are used
types of cognitive and metacognitive strategies in
the study are only part of the possible strategies
the students may have used during the reading
test

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 L2 reading strategy research

successful L2 readers:
have an awareness and control of the
cognitive activities they engage in as they read
show significant examples of metacognitive
strategies involved in reading comprehension
differ from the less successful in the
quantity/quality of cognitive and metacognitive
strategy use
know how to use appropriate strategies to
enhance text comprehension

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 L2 reading strategy research

poor L2 readers
 lack effective metacognitive strategies
 have little awareness on how to approach
reading
 deficiencies in the use of metacognitive
strategies to monitor their understanding of
texts

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 L2 reading strategy research

Purpura (1997; 1998; 1999) who investigated the

relationship between test-takers’ cognitive and
metacognitive strategy use and performance on L2 tests

 results indicate that cognitive strategies are directly and

positively related to the test performance.
 metacognitive strategies have a significant, direct,
positive relationship to cognitive strategies and are
indirectly related to the test performance.
 metacognitive strategies exert an executive function
over cognitive strategies

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 Concepts

 Cognition: the process of knowing by thinking,

comprehending, analyzing, or evaluating.
 Strategy: in strategic competence regulatory
aspect of learning and using language.
 Metacognition: ‘regulation of cognitive functions,
including planning, checking, or monitoring, as
when one plans one's cognitive strategy [goal
setting]…, checks one's accuracy …, or monitors
one's comprehension while reading’

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 Metacognitive Strategies

 should thoughts metacognitive that have become

automatic still be called metacognitive?
 since people are likely to be aware only of the
products of non-conscious automatic processes
and not the processes themselves, it is difficult for
them to report on these cognitive processes.
 as metacognition involves an awareness of
oneself ...it may be reasonable to ‘reserve’ the
term metacognitive for conscious and deliberate
thoughts that have other thoughts as their
objects.
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 Cognition and Metacognition

 ‘cognitive – metacognitive goals seem

to form a continuum. This ambiguity
suggests a need to further investigate
underlying reasons why a particular
strategy is used, so that a theory of
cognitive–metacognitive distinction
could be rigorously produced.’

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 Defining Strategies 1

 Faerch and Kasper (1983) once learners have

developed strategies to the point that they
become automatic, those strategies may be
subconscious
 Oxford (1990) strategies are observable
 Schmidt (1994) Strategies can be stipulated
either within the focal attention of learners or
within their peripheral attention (i.e., learners
can identify when asked immediately).

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 Defining Strategies 2

 Ellis (1994) if strategies become so

automatic that the learners are no
longer conscious of employing them
and they cannot be accessible for
description, they lose their significance
as strategies
 Bachman and Palmer (1996) use
metacognitive strategies as the definition
of strategic competence

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 Defining Strategies 3

 Cohen (1998) If the learners cannot identify

any strategy associated with it as it is
unconscious, then the behavior would simply
be referred to as a common process, not a
strategy.
 Purpura (1999) both observable and
unobservable
 Purpura (1999) lack of observable behavior for
the researcher does not necessarily entail a lack
of mental processing

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 Use Strategies

 deliberate/conscious use to enhance

performance: e.g., to complete a language task,
to communicate with others in the target
language and to take a test
 situation specific
 in a test or target language use (TLU) situation,
strategy use is related to the retrieval of
declarative (knowing what), procedural (knowing
how) and conditional (knowing when) knowledge
in the long-term memory to solve task difficulty

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