Online Metacognitive and Interactional Strategy Use: Iranian Students' Internal Locus of Control

With the increasing use of the Internet by students especially at higher educational institutions worldwide, metacognitive strategy training should be recognized as a way to meet the current challenges and demands to propagate life-long reading among the students especially when reading online materials. Despite the importance of reading and technology, few studies to date have been carried out to examine the interactional metacognitive reading strategies employed by readers when using internal locus of control. This paper describes the interactional metacognitive strategy experience when reading texts online by internal locus of control students. Participants in this study were a selected group of Iranian postgraduate students with internal locus of control at one of the public universities in Malaysia. The instrument employed was the students' activities done through their online 'quick reply box'. These online activities gather three different types of information: Peer correction, Reference transferring, and Social cues in comfortable language use. The results of the study are discussed in terms of the students' strategy performance in an online reading environment. It is concluded, that interactional strategy is an effective approach that supports reading comprehension. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.