What is "metacognitive skills" and "metacognitive knowledge? Define them on your own words with examples from the chapter.
Metacognitive knowledge of how you make use of your own cognitive system in reading. In other words, if you are aware of your cognitive strategies, you may understand downsides as well as upsides of it. This kind of information is the key to successful reading because readers can change their weaknesses based on the knowledge. In addition, experts normally divide metacognitive knowledge into three different categories; knowledge of persons, tasks, and strategies. knowledge of persons support readers to comprehend their characteristics affect language processing. Regarding the second one, readers might understand what skills work well for the reading tasks. The final one is of what process readers have and how they make up for their weak points.
1. Knowledge of persons; reader’s characteristics such as background knowledge, interest, skills, self-efficacy, and deficits.
2. Knowledge of tasks; understanding the nature of the information that is encountered; and comprehending the inherent demands of the task.
3. Knowledge of strategies; self-regulation of the reader’s reading process.
3. Knowledge of strategies; self-regulation of the reader’s reading process.
On the other hand, metacognitive skills are in more practical and actual area than the knowledge of it. They are what readers do to understand what process is working on in their mind. Understanding, analyzing, monitoring, and revising cognitive process are all of metacognition. What’s more, for the reading task, readers may distribute or concentrate attention, separate critical part from less significant text. In other word, metacognitive skills are adopted to control whole cognitive process. According to the textbook, analyzing the problem at hand, understanding explicit and implicit task demands, and revising, modifying or terminating activities strategically can exemplify metacognitive skills.
How is matacognition (comprehension-monitoring or control or metacognitive skills) is related to reading (or readers)? Find some of research findings and underline them in the chapter.
◎ Lovett and Flavell(1990) showed that awareness of strategies in in part a funcion of age and experience.
◎ Zinar(2000); the general effectivenesas of comprehension-monitoring behavior explains a significant amount of variability in reading comprehension.
◎ Hackers(1998); reading failures due to metacognitive comprehension monitoring or control
What are the key findings in strategies and metacognition in L2? Skim and scan page 136-148 for key results.
◎ Hosenfeld(1977); strategic reading and successful and unsuccessful second language reading
Successful reader
1. Kept the meaning of the passage in mind during readings.
2. Read in ‘broad phrases
3. Skipped words viewed as unimportant to total phrase meaning
4. Had a positive self-concept as a reader.
Unsuccessful reades
1. Forgot the meaning of sentences as soon as they decoded them
2. Read in short phrases
3. Seldom skipped words as unimportant
4. Had a negative self concept as a reader
◎ Devine(1984); readers approach a text with a history of how they have dealt with text in the past. Internal default. Sound-/word-/or meaning-oriented readers.
◎ Knight, Padron, and Waxman(1985); L1 strategies transferred to the L2 or new one? It depends on language proficiency, languages known, or lack of training in the particular strategies.
◎ Block(1986); the strategies used by non-proficient readers.
More successful readers have
1. Integration
2. Recognition of aspects of text structure
3. Use of general knowledge
4. Response in extensive vs. Reflexive modes.
◎ Shoerey and Mokhtari(2001); high-ability native speakers of English and ESL students showed highter reported usage of cognitive and metcognitive strategies than did the lower-ability readers of each group.
◎ Sarig(1987); the different move types function across task performance in almost identical ways in Hebrew and English; almost identical ways.
Reading moves were unique to the particular learners and the number of strategies used by each reader.(Technical-aid moves, Clarification and simplification moves, Coherence-detecting moves, and Monitoring moves); readers transfer some aspects of reading from L1 to L2.
◎ Calero-Breckeimer and Goetz(1993); relative strategy use by bilinguals in their L1 and L2. How different?; there was no significant difference between languages on the multiple-choice comprehension measure or on the gist recall measure.
◎ Padron and Wazman(1988); Zhang (2001); positive and negative strategies related to reading achievement; there is a relationship between L2 reading proficiency and the types of reading strategies that are used, though whether or not they are causal in not clear.
◎ Carrell(1989); a relationship between the type of strategies used and L2 reading proficiency; metacognitive awareness and comprehension in L1 and L2 reading; the better readers in both groups did not focus on local or bottom-up processing while the lower-level students did focus more on bottom-up processing.
◎ Block(1992); the proficient native readers used the process the most completely and effeciently.
◎ Kern(1997); there are good and bad uses of the same strategy, and it depends of the context, how the strategies are used, and how they interact with other strategies. “Operationalized”
◎ Jimenez et al(1996); bilinguals’ strategies; the successful readers were more determined to understand what they read.
◎ Schoonen, Hulstigin, and Bossers(1998); subcomponents of metacognitive knowledge; metacognitive knowledge is a significant predictor on its own.
Discuss pedagogic implications of L2 reading stratagies? How should the language teachers train the students for better reading?
Reading strategies encourage students to understand not only comprehensive picture but also specific detail that task needs. In order to help learners be strategic readers, teachers should 1) carefully tech the nature and aim of the strategy, 2) model the strategy through both reading and thinking aloud, 3) offer enough practice and feedback for the learners. Also, students can understand the benefits of strategy use by the instruction and have opportunities to apply it in authentic purposes. Those things aren’t about all. Instructional time for direct-strategy instruction and modeling can have a strong influence on learners. The strategy that will be taught mustn’t so difficult for learners and the classes should be well-designed in its style and time. Also, enough time for practicing the strategy is important for learners to internalize it and adopt it in other situations automatically. “Think-aloud” process is also strongly recommended by experts in the field. According to Duffy and Roehler(1989), it begins with the educator as model and gradually turns responsibility over to the students.
Now, how should the language teachers train the students for better reading? According to several researches in the textbook, it’s evident that strategy training is definitely consistent with learners’ ability to use strategies effectively in reading. However, such strategy training would differ in efficacy depending on L2 ability and the depth of the training.
