This article reports on an empirical study that investigated the influence of
explicit metacognitive strategy instruction on reading comprehension and self-efficacy in
English as a foreign language (EFL) among university students in Iran. A randomized pretest
posttest control group design was employed. The quantitative data were collected by the
Survey of Reading Strategies, Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire, and a reading
comprehension test. The results of ANCOVA revealed that students in the experimental
group showed greater achievement both in reading comprehension and self-efficacy than
students in the control group.
