The reliability of the questionnaire was examined with the use of SPSS. The Cronbach’s coefficient alpha was used to examine the reliability of all the items and the correlations between the items.
Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2007) noted the a concise guidelines for the Cronbach's alpha as mentioned below:
0.90 very highly reliable
0.80–0.90 highly reliable
0.70–0.79 reliable
0.60–0.69 marginally/minimally reliable
< 0.60 unacceptably low reliability.
(p. 506)
From the guidelines, the Cronbach’s coefficient alpha of all the items grouped into 6 groups of the questionnaire was examninedand displayed below:
57 4.3.1.1. Comprehending strategies
Table 4. 7 : Cronbach’s coefficient alpha for Comprehending strategies
The Cronbach’s alpha of all items belonging to comprehending strategies was 0.822. This indicated that all the items of this kind of strategy are highly reliable.
4.3.1.2. Memory strategies Reliability Statistics Cronbach's
Alpha N of Items
.847 8
Table 4.8: Cronbach’s coefficient alpha for Memory strategies
As for Memory strategies, there are 8 items of this kind of strategies. The Cronbach’s alpha of all the items was high. As seen from the table given above, the Cronbach’s alpha of memory strategies was 0.847 which suggested that all the items are highly reliable.
4.3.1.3. Retrieval strategies Reliability Statistics Cronbach's
Alpha N of Items
.790 7
Table 4.9: Cronbach’s coefficient alpha for Retrieval strategies
With respect to Retrieval strategies, the Cronbach’s alpha was 0.790 which is slightly lower than the ones of comprehending and memory strategies. However, this Cronbach’s alpha is still high and indicates that the items are reliable and could be used for the study.
Reliability Statistics Cronbach's
Alpha N of Items
.822 9
58 4.3.1.4. Planning strategies
Reliability Statistics Cronbach's
Alpha N of Items
.761 8
Table 4. 10: Cronbach’s coefficient alpha for Planning strategies
The Cronbach’s alpha of Retrieval strategies is 0.761 for a total of 8 items belonging to this type of strategies. The Cronbach alpha of Retrieval Strategies is not high, but it suggested that all the items of these strategies were usable to collect data.
4.3.1.5. Monitoring strategies Reliability Statistics Cronbach's
Alpha N of Items
,787 7
Table 4. 11: Cronbach’s coefficient alpha for Monitoring strategies
Compared to Retrieval Strategies, the Cronbach’s alpha of Monitoring Strategies is a little higher and set at 0.787. In the similar vein, all the items could be used for this thesis.
4.3.1.6. Evaluating Strategies
Table 4. 12: Cronbach’s coefficient alpha for Evaluating strategies
The Cronbach’s alpha of the last kind of strategy, Evaluating Strategies, was the highest of the six kind of strategies. The Cronbach’s alpha achieved from the software was found at 0.862, which indicates that all the 8 items were highly reliable for the thesis.
4.3.1.7 The Cronbach’s alpha of the questionnaire
One more step was taken to examine the Cronbach’s alpha of all the 6 types of strategies of the questionnaire. As the table of the Cronbach’s alpha of the 6 strategies shows, the
Reliability Statistics Cronbach's
Alpha N of Items
.862 8
59
Cronbach’s alpha achieved from the calculation of the 6 kinds is .909, this indicates that the reliability of this questionnaire was highly reliable. As a result, this questionnaire is appropriate for the purpose of the current thesis.
Reliability Statistics Cronbach's
Alpha N of Items
.909 6
Table 4. 13: Cronbach’s coefficient alpha for the questionnaire
This section described data gathered from students’ questionnaires administered at the end of training course to collect information about students’ use of both metacognitive and cognitive strategies in reading.
All the items of the questionnaires were rearranged and regrouped into 6 sub-categories (comprehending, memory, retrieval, planning, monitoring and evaluating strategies) belonging to 2 broader kinds, namely, metacognitive and cognitive strategies.
4.3.2 The analysis of students’ questionnaires
The data analysis of the questionnaires was mainly conducted through the analysis of frequency and percentage of each kind of strategy.
4.3.2.1 Comprehending strategies
It is obvious from the table that students showed a high frequency (37.5% and 43.75%) of using the techniques of identifying the structures of the texts in order to comprehend the text.
When students read a text, noticing the text structures is useful to the majority of them. At the same time, 6.25 % and 12.5% of the students showed a low level of using it. However, it is reported that no student confirmed they always used this strategy during their reading process.
As for the next item related to skimming, it can be seen from the table that no student reported that they sometimes or never used this strategy in reading. In general, they all showed high frequency of using this strategy (90%).
When asked about the strategy of using pictures and titles to help them comprehend the text, 37.5 % of the students agreed that this technique did not benefit them much in reading, which leaded to a low frequency of using it. Meanwhile, 31.25 % of the students confirmed that they often use pictures and title given in the text. 18.75% and 12.5 % of the students said that they usually and always used this strategy respectively.
60
Similar to skimming, translating was favored by a large number of the students. 18.75%
of the students reported that often used this to ease the difficulties occurring in their reading comprehension. 43.75% (usually) and 12.5 % (always) of the students reported a high degree of using translation to better comprehend the text. The remaining students reported they sometimes (25%) used it.
With inference to the next item related to building a map from main ideas to better comprehend the text, the result indicated that this is not a successful strategy. In fact, this strategy is rather new to students and demands great efforts to use this at a high level, which explains why 37.5% of the students refused to use this strategy and 43.75% sometimes used it. It is obvious from the table that they outnumbered the students who overcame the challenges and showed a high frequency of using this new strategy (31.75% (often), 12.5% (usually)). No student revealed that they always used this new strategy.
Another strategy that students expressed a high degree of use is reading the texts to check what they had guessed in advance were correct or not. 31.25% and 37.5 % of the participants answered that they showed a high frequency of using this strategy, leaving 25% and 6.5% of the students who sometimes and never used this respectively. Finding drawn from this item told readers that this strategy of guessing is quite successful.
Using comprehension questions given is likely to be useful for reading comprehension, which explained why a total of 81, 25 % of the students used this strategy at a high frequency.
The remains (18.75%) answered that they sometimes did this in their reading process. Likewise, underlining keywords of the text was favored by the majority of the students (81.25%) which means that paying attention to key words can help students construct the whole meaning of the text. Only 12.5 % of the students showed a lower frequency of using this. As for the last item of comprehending strategy, 25% (often) and 43.75 % (usually) of the students reported a high frequency of finding out the connections between titles and questions given to help them smooth their reading comprehension. As for the highest level of frequency, 18.75% of the students answered that they always used this strategy while 6.5% of the students sometimes employed such strategy.
In short, students generally showed a relative high frequency towards all the strategies belonged to comprehending strategy. The strategies that students showed high frequency of use are skimming, translating, reading questions to guess the main ideas, and building connections
61
between text titles and questions. These strategies share the same feature that students can find the resources given right in the text for using these strategies. As for the strategies that require students’ great amount of time and the whole understanding of the text, as in the case of building a map of ideas, students' frequency of using such strategy tended to drop down slightly.
Table 4. 14: Result of Comprehending strategies from students’ questionnaires
Summary
In general, there was a high frequency of all the students with respect to all the items belonging to comprehending strategies. Skimming is the strategy that is most favored by students. The number of students who had a high frequency of using comprehending strategies generally outnumbered the students with low frequency. A part from the strategy of building a map from main ideas, the remained items were highly used by the students. The strategy that students showed the highest frequency of use is the one related the use of a popular strategy,
6,25% 0,00% 0 0
37,50%
1 0 0 1
12,50%
0
37,50%
25,00%
43,75%
25,00%
18,75% 12,50% 1 37,50%
25,00%
31,25%
18,75%
31,25%
31,25%
31,25% 43,75%
25,00%
43,75%
50,00%
18,75%
43,75%
12,50%
37,50%
31,25% 31,25%
43,75%
0
25,00% 12,50% 12,50%
0
0
18,75% 6,25% 18,75%
0 5 10 15 20 25
Always Usually Often Sometimes Never
62
skimming. Other strategies such as identifying text structures, using pictures and titles to guess, translating, reading the text to check the answers, reading the questions to guess, underlying key words, and finding connections between title and questions item were also used frequently by the students.
4.3.2.2 Memory strategies
As for the first item related to making a note of what they can understand from the text, the number of students who showed a high frequency (62.75%) of using this strategy outnumbered those who had a lower frequency (37.5%) of using it. This informs that making notes is a useful strategy for the majority of the students. With inference to the next item of highlighting, no student showed the lowest level (never) of using this strategy. 6.5% percent of the students reported that they sometimes used this strategy in their reading, which was outnumbered by students who showed high frequency of using this strategies. In deed, 31.25 % and 37.5% of the students answered that they often and usually used this strategy respectively.
More interestingly, 25% of the students showed the highest level of using it. With respect to building connections of main ideas in their minds, the students who highly used this strategy excelled those who sometimes (12.5%) used it in terms of frequency. Though this strategy is hard to observe, a large number of students reported a high frequency of using it. In a similar vein, the number of students who never and sometimes spent more time on difficult questions was outnumbered by those who had a higher frequency of doing such. 50% of the students reported they often spent more time on difficult items while 25% of the students usually took the same course of action. 6.25% of the students always used this in their reading process.
Reorganizing the text once more time in their own ways can help students better comprehend the text, which explained 75 % of the students favored this strategy and used it at a high frequency, leaving 25% of the students sometimes used this strategy.
The most successful strategy that students all agreed is using text context to guess the meaning of the new words. All students answered that they used had a high frequency of using this strategy.
With respect to the next items of repeating the main ideas of the text in their mind, a small percent of students (18.75%) answered that they sometimes and never did this. Meanwhile, 31.25% and 50% of the students confirmed that they sometimes and usually repeated the main ideas of the text in their minds to help them better comprehend the text.
63
As for the next item, it is hard to decide whether marking the parts that students completely understood is an effective strategy or not in this study as the percent of the students who had low frequency (50%) equals the percent of the students who had high frequency of using this strategy (50%).
Table 4. 15: Result of Memory strategies from students’ questionnaires
In short, students generally showed a high frequency of using nearly all the strategies belonging to memory strategy. Among them, highlighting main ideas, building connections of main ideas in the mind, spending more time on difficult question are successful strategies. Using contexts to guess meaning of the new words is the most successful strategy. As for the strategy of using marking, more research is needed to investigate this.
4.3.2.3 Retrieval strategies
Using cognates, knowledge of English patterns and structures of the text comprehend a text was not used by 6.25% (never) of the students. 18.75% of the students reported that they sometimes used this strategies to ease their reading process. Meanwhile, 37.5 % of the students answered that they often employed these factors to comprehend a text. 31.25 % of the students
18,75%
0 0 1
0 0 1
18,75%
18,75%
6,25% 12,50%
12,50% 25,00%
0
12,50%
31,25%
31,25%
31,25%
50,00%
50,00% 43,75%
43,75%
31,25%
1 25,00%
37,50%
25,00%
25,00% 31,25%
43,75%
50,00% 43,75%
6,25%
25,00%
12,50% 6,25% 0
12,50%
0 0
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Always Usually Often Sometimes Never
64
reported that they usually emloyed this strategy and 6.25 % of the students answered that they always did this.
Aksing questions about the authors happened to be an unsuccessful strategy for the students. As can be seen from the table, 37.5% of the students answered that they never raised questions related to the authors of the text in order to comprehend the text. This was followed by 31.25% of the students who sometimes used this strategy. Meanwhile, 12.5% of the students answered that they often used this strategy to help them in reading. As for the level of usually, 18.75% of the students reported the level of usually in using this strategy. 12.5% of the students voiced that they often used this stategy while 18.75% of the students showed a higher level of using this strategy. `
Building connections between several parts of the text to comprehend a text was sometimes used by 18.75% of the students. As the main ideas of a text can be connected in a logical way to help studnents comprehend the text, 18.75% (often) of the students found it useful to boost their reading comprension and this figure was outnumbered by the percent of the students who usually employed such strategy (43.75%). It seems that this strategy was favored by 18.75% of the students who always used this strategy to help comprehend the text.
Using one's background knoweldge to comprehend a text is a favorible strategy which was highly used by the students. As can be seen from the chart, there was a high frequency of using this strategy reported by the students. 25% of the studens ofen took advantage of their background knowledge to comprehend the text. 50% of the students reported that they usually used their background knowedge to comprehend the text. 25% of the students answered they always put their background knowledge in good use to comprehend the text.
With respect to the strategy of selecting the main ideas to comprehend the text, the same percent of students who never and sometimes used this strategy was founded at 6.25%. 12.5% of the students reported a higher percentage of using this strategy ( often). More interestingly, more than a half (56.25%) ofthe students stated that they usually used this strategy, leaving 18.75% of the students who always employed this strategy.
With respect to the next strategy, 6.25% of the students reported that they sometimes used the key words given in the text to help them comprehend the text. Meanwhile, using key words is an effective strategy for others students. 37.5% of the students answered that they often employed the key words to help them comprehend the text. 31.25% of the students voiced that
65
the also usuually used this strategy. More importantly, 25% of the students voiced that they always used this strategy to comprehend the text.
As for the last item, repeating key words can be considered as a succesful strategy.
18.75% of the students reported they sometimes repeated the difficult parts to comprehend the text. 37.5 % of the students voiced that they often employed this strategy to better comprehend the text. Up to 18.75 % of the students confirmed that they usually did repetitions of difiicult sections of the text so as to comprehend them easier. It seems that such repetition is useful which helps explain why 25 % of the students always chose to use this strategy.
Table 4. 16: Result of Retrieval strategies from students’ questionnaires Summary
It can be seen from the table that strategies such as building connections between different parts, using background knowledge, key words and repetitions to help students make
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
6.25%
37.50%
0.00% 0.00%
6.25%
0.00% 0.00%
18.75%
31.25%
18.75%
0.00%
6.25% 6.25%
18.75%
37.50%
12.50%
18.75%
25.00%
12.50%
37.50% 37.50%
31.25%
18.75%
43.75%
50.00%
56.25%
31.25%
18.75%
6.25%
0.00%
18.75%
25.00%
18.75%
25.00% 25.00%
Never Sometimes Often Usually Always
66
good retrievals back to their reading comprehension were all used by the students in the group.
Among them, the most successful strategy is using students' background knowledge to comprehend the text. Other successful strategies are building connections between several parts, selecting main ideas, using key words of the text to comprehend and repeating difficult parts.
The strategy of asking questions about the author was not favored by the participants as students probably cannot find much glues from just the name of the text author, especially the name new to them.
4.3.2.4 Planning strategies
Planning the ways they read and following what they had planned in advance are not easy tasks. This helped explain why the percent of students who had a higher frequency of doing this slightly outnumbered those who had lower frequency of using it.
Likewise, as for the items of drawing out as much information as possible from the titles and pictures of the texts, the students had higher frequency (62.25% from 37.5 % (often) and 25% (usually) of taking such course of action slightly passed the students possessed a lower frequency (37.5%) from the total levels of never (6.25%) and often (31.2%%) of using it.
With respect to the next items of using the knowledge to guess, 18.75 % of the students reported that the sometimes did this. Meanwhile, 43.75 % of the students answered that they took advantage of their background knowledge to guess. 31.25% of the students reported they usually used this strategy in their reading process. The highest frequency was 6.25 % of the students who always used this strategy.
As for next item, finding out the requirements of the text before reading, 6.25% of the students answered that they never did this before reading a text. 12.5 % of the students answered that they sometimes found the requirements of the texts before embarking on reading. It was seen in this strategy that there was a high frequency of using this strategy for the remains of the students. 31.25% of the students voiced that they often used this strategy while 37.5% of the students reported a higher level of use (usually). As for the highest level (always), 12.5% of the students reported that always looked up for the requirements of the text before embarking on reading.
Concerning the next item, all of the students answered that the know what to do before reading the text with different levels of use. No student reported that they never experienced the state of not knowing what to do in their reading process. The percent of students who sometimes
67
experienced this state was found at 25%. The high level of this strategy frequency of use was 56.25% and 18.75% for the students with the level of often and usually respectively.
Setting up targets before reading is not an easy task, which explained 6.25% of the students never did this. 18.75% of the students reported they sometimes established their targets before reading. The percent of using this strategy was 43.75% (often) and 25% (usually) for the students. 6.25 % of the students reported a highest degree (always) of setting up strategies before reading.
6.25% of the students stated that they never thought of using the strategies to use before reading. They just read the text and continue this without resourcing to any strategy. Meanwhile, 37.5 % of the students reported they sometimes thought of which strategies to use beforehand and this amount was excelled by the students who had a higher frequency of using this. 12.5% of the students voiced that they usually looked into their resources of strategies to use before reading.
When asked about noticing the structures of the text before reading, 6.25% of the students reported they never noticed this. 37.5% of the students answered that they sometimes paid their attention to the structures of the text while 31.25% of the students reported a higher frequency of use (often). 18.75% of the students answered that they usually used this strategy before reading. 6.25 % of the students reported a highest degree (always) of noticing the structure of the text before reading.