Online Metacognitive Reading Strategies Used by Postgraduate Esl Readers of Academic Texts

Online learning environment is becoming more popular among learners because of its multiple information representation. Many researchers are interested to investigate online reading strategies and their effects on reading comprehension. Despite the growing importance of online reading strategies among adult learners, little attention has been given to postgraduate EFL learners. This study is a quantitative research designed and aimed at investigating metacognitive reading strategies used by the Iranian postgraduate learners to read online academic texts. Purposive sampling method was used to select 39 Iranian postgraduate students who were studying in different Universities in Malaysia. The questionnaires used in this study were the MARSI questionnaire developed by Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002). Findings of this study emphasized on metacognitive reading strategies used by adult learners of various age groups and fields of study. The results revealed that adult learners use Computer, internet and Web-based Reading strategies in solving their academic problems. It was further revealed that ages and fields of study have meaningful changes on the use of metacognitive reading strategies. This means that metacognitive reading strategies used by the respondents depend on their ages and fields of study. The results of the study provide confirmation of earlier studies that adult learners have learning abilities, are more exposed to online academic texts and use different metacognitive online reading strategies to improve their understanding of academic texts.