Enhancing Metacognitive Awareness in English Reading Through Collaborative Learning with Periodical Texts and Online Workspace

Abstract

The use of simplified text in English reading textbooks is crucial for teaching language features, building a sense of familiarity, and improving comprehension skills. However, exclusive dependence on such texts may encourage passive reading practices and engagement with content at a surface level, thus limiting the development of metacognitive awareness in reading. This study proposed the intervention of periodical texts within an online collaborative workspace to promote more active reading practices. Through this approach, this study examines its effects on learners’ metacognitive awareness. Adopting a mixed-methods quasi-experimental design and think-aloud protocol, the study involved foundation students at a public university in Malaysia. The experimental group demonstrated significant improvements in seven strategies namely declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, conditional knowledge, planning, comprehension monitoring, information management, and evaluation. The qualitative findings further revealed that students applied strategies such as task division, exchanging opinions, directing focus, pausing to think, rereading, relating to their own experience, and comparing understanding. Moving beyond text simplification as a dominant scaffold in reading, this study empirically demonstrates the value of enhancing metacognitive knowledge and regulation as a dynamic and socially responsive strategy. The proposed intervention is significant for pedagogical practice as it foregrounds constructivist, collaborative and reflective practice, promote learner-centered reading activity, and facilitates learner engagement. Dissemination of these findings is expected to offer evidence supporting the application of the intervention as part of reading development.