Intervention on strategy use and on motivation of Greek pupils' reading comprehension in English classes

Although less skilled learners may improve their abilities through training in strategies used by successful learners, only a few studies have addressed the question of metacognitive strategy training in contexts in which foreign language is learned. This study intended to investigate whether strategy instruction on semantic mapping would produce more successful comprehension in English as a Foreign Language if a boost to students' integrative motivation was included. A sample of 119 Greek students, 14 to 15 years old, of both sexes participated. Strategy training was provided to two experimental groups, with one of them having motivation boosting. One group received only integrative motivation boosting and the control group received no strategy training or boosting, but participated in pre- and posttesting. Results imply that only the students who received intervention, either in the form of metacognitive strategy training or a boost to their integrative motivation or as a combination of these, improved their performance in English reading comprehension in the posttest phase.