Metacognition+in+Reading

**__Metacognitive Skills and Reading__**
The following ideas are taken from a chapter entitled 'Metacognitive Skills and Reading' by Linda Baker and Ann L. Brown (pp. 353-394), which can be found in the //Handbook of Reading Research//, by P. David Pearson, Rebecca Barr, Michael L. Kamil, Peter B. (1984) You can preview this book in the public domain at: http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=jigL8xjo2nkC&oi=fnd&pg=PA353&dq=cognitive+metacognitive+reading&ots=Aswc4E_bDI&sig=Ik4FolMtM69AWxuYxLhzn8XtKtg#PPA355,M1 This chapter is looking at L1 readers, especially focusing on children. However, I feel that many of the point raised are important and relevant for L2 readers. 'Flavell (1978) defined metacognition as "knowledge that takes as its object or regulates any aspect of any cognitive endeavor." Two (not necessarily independent) clusters of activities are included in that statement: knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition.' (p353)

These two points mentioned seem to be saying that you need to both:
 * be conscious of the skills required to perform effectively, which also includes an awareness of any shortcomings you might have as a learner, and how difficult/challenging the task at hand is, and
 * be able to check your progress during a task, plan what to do next, be aware of how effective your work is, and ultimately to evaluate your own learning strategies.

** An important point made here (which I want to bear in mind with my EFL classes) is that: 'Learners of any age are more likely to take active control of their own cognitive endeavors when they are faced with tasks of intermediate difficulty (since if the task is too easy, they need not bother; if the task is too hard, they give up.)' (p354)

Metacognition is extremely important for reading. Baker and Brown provide us with a list which details some of the skills involved:
 * clarifying the purposes of reading, that is, understanding both the explicit and implicit task demands
 * identifying the important aspects of a message
 * focusing attention on the major content rather than trivia
 * monitoring ongoing activities to determine whether goals are being achieved
 * taking corrective action when failures in comparison are detected. (Brown, 1980) (p354)

They go on to look at reading here is looked at in two ways: Some of the metacognitive processes identified here (p355) are:
 * reading for meaning (comprehension)
 * reading for remembering (studying)
 * Reading for meaning || Comprehension monitoring: ||
 * || keeping track of your success ||
 * || ensuring that the process continues smoothly ||
 * || taking remedial action if/where necessary ||
 * Reading for remembering || identifying important ideas ||
 * || testing one's mastery of the material ||
 * || developing effective study strategies ||
 * || allocating study time appropriately ||

Reading for meaning From the number of authors who have been researching this topic, it seems that three main areas have been identified which can result in comprehension failure(p356): An important point mentioned here is one which Baker and Brown attribute to Flavell: that when our understanding of a text is proceeding smoothly, very few //conscious// metacognitive strategies are employed. It is generally only when we encounter difficulties that they are consciously activated.
 * 1) the reader lacks a sufficient amount of pre-existing knowledge about the topic to be able to try and interpret the text. (schemata can not be activated, as it is not available)
 * 2) the author of the material has not been able to activate the reader's pre-existing knowledge/schemata as there are not enough clues in the text to make his/her intention clear
 * 3) the reader thinks that they are understanding the text, but are in fact misunderstanding the author's intentions; they are interpreting what they are reading differently to how the author intended.

Baker and Brown also suggest that a good way to assess comprehension monitoring is to see how confident a reader is that they have answered a comprehension question right. If they are level of confidence does not match the correctness of their answer(s), then they are not considered to be good at monitoring their own comprehension. (For example, if they are sure that their answer is right or wrong, and it proves to be so, they are good comprehension monitors.) Using clozes and self-reporting during reading are other ways of measuring this.

__Reading for retention__ 'Self-interrogation' during reading is a considered to be one way to aid learning from a text. Generating your own questions from important points in the text is considered to be much more beneficial that just reading or rereading it. Student-generated questions aid both comprehension and retention, as the questions are produced in reaction to the text, and the answers can be found through comprehension or rereading. This is useful when it comes to developing monitoring skills. The nature of reading is very much an active one.

A good indicator of how well readers think they can remember information is to see how ready they feel to be tested on it!

Having reviewed the recent literature, Baker and Brown argue that there should be three main factors included in any cognitive skills training program(p381): They believe that students need to understand why these skills are important, aswell as when and how to use them, in order to appreciate and apply them.
 * 1) 'training and practice in the use of task-specific strategies (skills training)
 * 2) instruction in the orchestration, overseeing, and monitoring of these skills (self-regulation training)
 * 3) information concerning the significance and outcome of these activities and their range of utility (awareness training)'