Tap into Students’ Metacognitive Strategies Report via the Internet-Mediated Contextualized English for Domestic Tourism Lessons (InConMedt)

The objectives of this paper were to compare total and individual metacognitive strategies by four groups of university students from different majors in five different tourism situational lessons. The total of 34 students participated in this study, and they were categorized into four groups based on their major of study and English proficiency level. The research instruments were a web-based speaking test in English for Tourism (WBST-EFT), a strategy coding scheme and the Internet-mediated contextualized English for Domestic Tourism lessons (InConMedt). Mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed in the present study. The quantitative analysis included Kruskal Wallis, Mann-Whitney U test as well as Chi-square, mean rank, frequency and percentages. Qualitative content analysis from the verbal reports in the stimulated recall session on metacognitive strategies was employed in this study. The findings showed that four groups significantly and differently employed total metacognitive strategies in five lessons, 2(3, N = 34) = 10.00, p = .01. The significant difference was evident in the use of individual metacognitive strategies including goal setting and planning of the groups and in a particular lesson. The insights from the verbal report content analysis revealed significant information on how the high proficiency group effectively employed their metacognitive strategy in their speaking performances; whereas the information from the low proficiency group also shed more light in the instructional approach on how to train these students to improve their speaking ability using effective strategies.