The Mediating Role of Students’ Metacognitive Awareness between Teachers’ Reading Strategies and Students’ Reading Performance

Abstract

This study focused on the impact of teachers’ reading strategies on students’ reading performance, with a specific emphasis on the role of TOEFL reading instructors in training institutions. The primary objective was to investigate how the reading strategies employed by TOEFL teachers influence students’ reading performance, and to determine the mediating effect of students’ metacognitive awareness. The participants were teachers and students from TOEFL training institutions in Henan, China. A cross-sectional research design was adopted, and data were collected through questionnaires. The findings indicated that students’ metacognitive awareness plays a significant mediating role between teachers’ reading strategies and students’ reading performance. However, this mediating effect was found to be negative, suggesting that teachers’ reading strategies did not enhance students’ metacognitive awareness. On the contrary, these strategies may have inadvertently hindered its development, thereby exerting an indirect negative impact on students’ reading performance. These results carry important implications not only for improving TOEFL preparation but also for advancing the broader practice of English reading instruction.