The Effect of Using Metacognition Reading Strategies on the Reading Comprehension of Arabic Texts

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of using metacognition reading strategies on the reading comprehension of Arabic texts of ninth grade female students. A random sample of (57) of ninth grade female students at Ma'an secondary school for girls in Ma'an Directorate of Education during the academic year 2009/2010, was distributed randomly into two groups: experimental and control groups. Two reading passages were taught to the experimental and control groups, the experimental group was taught the reading passages by metacognition reading strategies, whereas the control group was taught the reading passages by traditional method. To achieve the purpose of the study, a reading comprehension test was used before and after the treatment to measure the equivalence of the two groups with regard to their level of reading comprehension. T-test was used to find out if there was any statistically significant differences at ( = 0.05) in the students' reading comprehension. The results of the study showed that there were statistically significant differences at ( = 0.05) in the total reading comprehension, the literal reading comprehension, the analytic reading comprehension, and the evaluative reading comprehension. Those differences were attributed to the teaching method in favor of students in the experimental group who taught by metacognition reading strategies. Based on these results, the researcher recommended that there should be more emphasis on using metacognition reading strategies in teaching reading passages in order to improve the students' reading comprehension.