An investigation of the relationship between reading strategies and English reading comprehension performance among IIUM engineering students

Abstract

The study outlined in this dissertation describes the use of reading strategies among IIUM engineering students. It also investigates the relationship between reading strategies and reading comprehension performance among IIUM engineering students. The respondents were 162 students from various departments in the Kulliyyah of Engineering at the International Islamic University Malaysia. In collecting the research data, the researcher used an adopted reading comprehension test (Intaraprasert, 2000) and an adopted Likert scale questionnaire (Kas1mi, 2012). The reading comprehension test was used to measure the students' ability to comprehend texts, while the Likert scale questionnaire was used to obtain information about reading strategies used by students in understanding the texts. Data collection of the comprehension test results and reading strategies used are collected in the span of five days. Research data were described and analyzed by using descriptive analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. The results of the study revealed that the students' levels of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies are high. This indicates that they are high strategy users in both cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies. The research findings also showed that there is no significant relationship between reading strategies and reading comprehension performance among IIUM engineering students. The results of the multiple linear regression analysis showed that the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies has no contribution to the students' reading comprehension performance. These findings contribute to the current body of literature specifically on the studies of reading strategies and reading comprehension among engineering majors as well as significant for professionals such as practitioners, curriculum developers and designers, and the field of teaching reading to L2 learners of English at tertiary institutions. Keywords: cognitive strategies; metacognitive strategies; reading comprehension; engineering students.