Paper short abstract:

This study examines the role of collaborative learning and extensive reading in developing students' metacognitive ability and autonomy. Undergraduate overseas students in Japan were required to prepare a report on their own reading challenges.

Paper long abstract:

This study examines the role of collaborative learning and extensive reading in developing students' metacognitive ability and autonomy. In this study, the term 'intercultural competence' is used to refer to students' metacognitive ability for Japanese language and culture in a broad sense. Byram (2008) indicated that foreign language education should be reconstructed not only to focus on the function of language competence and how to use it but also on the intercultural competence to equip students with the necessary skills required to interact with other cultural citizens in this global society.

To develop their metacognitive ability, undergraduate overseas students in Japan were required to prepare a report on their own reading challenges, link it with their experiences and tackle the challenges through extensive reading and collaborative learning. This study involved 27 students from East Asia who had enrolled for the Japanese communication course and were in their fourth semester (15 weeks). Every class had a 60-minutes lecture and a 30-minute collaborative learning session. The students read two introductory textbooks for Japanese linguistics and culture. Moreover, every week, students read a book and filled a reading sheet outside school hours, and in class, they discussed the book together with their reading sheets. After the discussion, they wrote a short book review, and at the end of the semester, they wrote a report on the theme of their book.

The teacher assessed the reports in which the students had expressed their own opinions and other opinions and categorised the reports into three levels, namely, high, middle and low evaluation levels. Out of the 27 reports, 16 were marked as high-level reports (about 60%), 6 were marked as middle-level reports (about 20%) and 5 were marked as low-level reports (about 20%). In contrast to these results, the results of the other six course subjects without peer reading can be stated in the following manner: 17% were marked as high-level reports, 31% were marked as middle-level reports and 51% were marked as low-level reports. These results are a clear indication that reading a book with peers promotes students' metacognitive ability.

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