UNRAVELING THE USE OF COGNITIVE AND METACOGNITIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES AMONG MOROCCAN EFL FIRST-SEMESTER UNIVERSITY LEARNERS

This study, drawing on the theory of metacognition as a lively research area in the field of educational psychology, is intended to explore the cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies (CMLSs) tapped by the English department first-semester university students in their learning practices. It is an attempt to evaluate the extent to which EFL learners resort to these ‘high-level’ heuristics for executing a diversity of learning-related tasks. To achieve this stated objective, this exploratory study targeted 63 Moroccan English department students. The data were gathered through the use of a ‘self-report questionnaire’ that addressed the learners’ recourse to (meta) cognitive learning strategies (CMLSs) along the continuum of their academic studies at the first-semester level. The outcomes reached manifestly exhibit that heavy reliance on cognitive strategies (CSs) and reduced dependency on metacognitive strategies (MSs) prototypically characterized the learners’ adopted processing modes in tackling differing learning tasks relatable to studying English as a foreign language (EFL). Hence, some actionable recommendations as well as a few limitations encountered in conducting this study are explicitly put forward.  Article visualizations: