Effect of Metacognitive Instructional Strategies on Student’s Achievement and Retention in English Language Vocabulary: Implication for Technical Colleges

Abstract

The study sought to find out the effect of metacognitive instructional strategies on student’s achievement and retention in English language vocabulary. The study which adopted the pre-test post-test control group design through an instruction programme that lasted for 6 weeks was guided by two research questions and two hypothesis. The research sample was drawn from four out of the 21 junior secondary schools in Ikorodu Education zone of Lagos State, Nigeria. A total of 162 students in four intact classes were used. The instrument for data collection was a 50 item multiple English Vocabulary Achievement Test (ELVAT) based on the basic education curriculum and textbooks. The instrument was face and content validated and used for the collection of data which was analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions while ANOVA was used to test the hypothesis. Findings of the study revealed that meta-cognitive instructional strategy results in an improvement of student’s achievement in English vocabulary. The study also showed that there is a significant difference between the mean and retention scores of students taught English language vocabulary with meta-cognitive instructional strategy and those taught with the conventional method.