“From bricks to Click": Metacognitive Reading Skills of Students in the Pre and During Pandemic Era

Abstract

This paper addressed the emerging gap on the quality of reading instruction before and during the COVID 19 Pandemic onslaught. This study generally aimed to determine how EFL university students utilized metacognitive online reading methods before and after the Covid-19 outbreak. A study was conducted to investigate whether EFL university students' use of metacognitive reading methods had changed before and after the Covid-19 pandemic, and if so, what had changed. This study employed mixed-methods research utilizing quantitively and qualitative research designs.  Testing the significant difference on the reading strategies of the students using t-test, the result revealed there is a significant difference on the reading strategies of the students. This indicates that during COVID 19 the students were able to attain a very high level of reading strategies compared during the pre-pandemic era which is attributed to the adoption of online learning where the mode of instruction is taken virtually and reading references among the students were mostly taken thru online access. On the qualitative context utilizing exploratory sequential design, revealed that EFL students were able to better their metacognitive online reading strategies during the COVID 19 as reflected in four themes: easier access of reading materials, flexibility of time and space, characteristics of e-books, and issues on the disruption of reading concentration brought by online reading activities. As a result, there is a perceived need to improve EFL students' metacognitive understanding of online reading techniques and help them become better online English readers. Helping students develop their metacognitive awareness of online reading methods and helping them master their metacognitive reading strategy usage are two approaches to help EFL students better comprehend online texts.