Enhancing Reading Comprehension Through Metacognitive Readding Strategies For Business English Learners : The Case Of First Year Lmd Economic Sciences, Management & Commercial Sciences Students, At The University Of Hassiba Ben-bouali In Chlef

Résumé: This paper falls within the realm of LLS (language learning strategies). It attempts at shedding light on metacognitive reading strategies and their effectiveness in the enhancement of Business English students' ability to comprehend reading materials. The participants are 1st year LMD, Economic Sciences, Management and Commercial Sciences' students, who are concerned with a course in EGBP (English for General Business Purposes) as part of the curriculum. Participants, being randomly chosen, were, again randomly, divided into two groups. The first was assigned as the experimental group, while the second as the control one. The course was designed as an EGBP learning-centred one that targets mainly the reading skill. For the sake of this research, the course content was conceived in two versions; one that implies ametacognitive reading strategies training built on the CALLA model (Chamot & O'Malley,1994), and a second which does not imply any addition content. Participants in theexperimental group undertook the version of the course that implies the training, while those in the control group undertook the version that does not imply the training. Just before the course started, participants of both groups had taken a pretest that aimed at checking the homogeneity of their profiles in terms of reading comprehension ability. Soon after, they had been involved into an oral discussion about language learning strategies, in order to ensure that none of them had undertaken any strategy instruction beforehand. Just after that, those of the experimental group had been asked to fill in a reading strategies questionnaire that aimed at assessing the reading strategies they already use. At the course' exit, participants of the experimental group were asked to fill in a readingstrategies questionnaire, similar to the one given to them in the pre-course phase, so as to check improvement in terms of the use of the target strategies. Soon after, participants of both groups took a posttest, as the achievement test. The latter aimed at evaluating participants'ability to comprehend reading materials after having completed the course. Eventually, the data gathered throughout the process described above were submitted to analysis and study so as to answer the three questions of this research.

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