The Effects of Cognitive Strategies in the Reading and Writing Skills of EFL Students

Abstract

During the learning process of English, reading and writing are two essential skills that students need to communicate written ideas. Consequently, it is important to consider any difficulty that the students could have at the moment of teaching and learning these skills. There exist plenty of ways to help learners with their difficulties. Cognitive strategies are one way to help students. This study analyzes the effects of cognitive strategies on the reading and writing skills of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students as well as which are the most frequent cognitive strategy used by EFL learners in the classroom. For this research, 20 studies were taken into account for the analysis. The findings revealed that cognitive strategies present benefits for the students at the moment of reading and writing. Moreover, these strategies enhanced the overall reading and writing performance of EFL learners. Furthermore, the results revealed that the most frequent cognitive strategies were summarizing and brainstorming for reading and writing respectively. It is concluded that cognitive strategies are recommended to be used in the classroom when helping students to overcome their difficulties in reading and writing skills. Finally, it is suggested that future studies should focus on investigating these issues in the Ecuadorian context.