Gender Differences in the Use of Metacognition-driven Reading Strategy Clusters and Chains

This study aims to investigate the mean differences in the use of metacognition-driven reading strategy clusters and chains reported by both male and female Korean EFL university students. The participants were 68 male and 93 female university students. They responded to a questionnaire asking which reading strategies they used simultaneously along with or after using a metacognitive reading strategy. The results revealed that female students reported higher use of overall metacognition-driven reading strategy clusters and chains. Furthermore, female students turned out to use more planning, monitoring and evaluation metacognition-driven clusters and planning and monitoring chains. In terms of individual metacognition-driven clusters and chains, female students reported using them much more- (11 out of 16 clusters and 11 out of 16 chains) than males. The mean differences, however, were not significant for all individual use of clusters and chains, and for the use of overall, planning, monitoring and evaluative metacognition-driven reading strategy clusters and chains between female and male students. Therefore, pedagogically, when considering gender differences in language learning, second language reading teachers should be mindful of the genders' different use of strategy clusters and chains.