Iraqi EFL Learners' Cognitive Strategy Use and their Reading Comprehension Performance: A correlational Study

Abstract

The research paper investigates the use of cognitive strategies employed by Iraqi secondary school sixth grade students and how they correlates with their reading performance. The study sample are (100) students at the sixth grade  preparatory. The study makes use of the Strategy Inventory For Language Learning (SILL) of Oxford (1989) , a Likert scale questionnaire, to probe the cognitive strategies used by the participants. Also, the second tool is a reading comprehension test which is administered to have an insight into the reflection of the cognitive strategies on the reading performance of the sample subjects. Data collection of the comprehension test results and understanding strategy data are performed sequentially over the same day. Research data are described and analyzed by product moment correlation technique.

The research found that students' scores in cloze tests ranged from A to D. This score indicates that students have varying abilities in reading comprehension. The research findings also showed that students used various cognitive strategies in understanding text reading. The results of the correlation analysis did not find a negative correlation; it found varying strengths of positive correlations