Metacognitive Strategies Used in Comprehending Reading Academic Texts for Doctoral Students

The importance of metacognitive strategies in achieving proficiency in second or foreign language reading is widely acknowledged. There is a growing interest in the reading of specialized academic literature in a second language. The objective of this study was to examine qualitatively the metacognitive strategies employed by students majoring in English Education during academic reading. Participants involved in this study was seven students in second-year of the Doctoral Program of Makassar State University. The metacognitive strategies employed by the participants were determined through the collection of data integrating journal entries. The results revealed the overall metacognitive strategies used in comprehending academic reading of doctoral students were activated prior knowledge, relating the text to their own experiences, determining the meaning of unfamiliar words, summarizing the information, determining the most important information and what is worth remembering. Only the strategies that were frequently cited by the participants were established or changed by them are addressed in the rest of the study, based on the theory of Flavell (1976).