The effect of teaching second language students a combination of metacognitive and cognitive strategies for reading and listening comprehension

Abstract

Students who study through the medium of a second language often have reading/listening comprehension and general study problems. This study focuses on particular aspects of these problems only, namely, identification of main ideas, summarisation and note-taking. The aim of this study was w determine the effect of teaching L2 students a combination of metacognitive and cognitive strategies for reading and listening comprehension (the main idea, summarising and note-taking by means of dictation). An intervention programme was designed in order to teach students these skills. There were ten students in both the experimental and the control groups. Both groups were assessed before and after the intervention programme. The findings reveal that the intervention was successful, with the experimental group showing greater improvement than the control group. The findings of this study have implications for second language tertiary learning and teaching theory and practice