This study investigated the hypothesis that insufficient metacomprehension is one possible cause underlying learning disabled adolescents' comprehension problems, and that training them to monitor their understanding of important textual elements fosters metacomprehension and, consequently, improves their comprehension performance. A total of 120 learning disabled eighth and ninth graders and normally achieving sixth graders participated in the study. Half the subjects were randomly assigned to receive a 5-step self-questioning training in which they learned to monitor their understanding of important textual units. The results clearly showed that training substantially increased learning disabled adolescents' awareness of important textual units, as well as their ability to formulate good questions involving those units. Moreover, training facilitated their comprehension performance. However, training did not substantially increase normally achieving sixth graders' metacomprehension or comprehension performance. The differential effects of training on the two groups of students underscore the inactive nature of the learning disabled adolescents' reading as opposed to the active nature of reading in normally achieving sixth graders.
A total of 38 problem learners comprising adolescents with learning disabilities and low achievers participated in this study. Of these, 20 were untrained control participants; the remainder were trained to plan, write, and revise opinion essays. Trainees were randomly divided into pairs and taught to collaboratively use interactive dialogues to plan and revise their essays (but they wrote their essays separately). The results from multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVAs) and effect sizes indicated that trainees improved significantly from pretest to posttest in clarity and cogency of written opinion essays, and maintained such gains. Additional analyses indicated that they surpassed the untrained control group. Questionnaire data indicated trainees improved in self-efficacy of writing only. The same finding held true in comparison with untrained participants. The discussion integrates the trainees' performance data with the questionnaire data and considers the research implications and limitations of the study.
Studies in self-questioning designed to improve students' prose processing are reviewed in the context of theoretical issues and instructional implications that stem from three theoretical perspectives: the active processing perspective, metacognitive theory, and schema theory. The review indicates that the effects of self-questioning training on students' prose processing are successful. Moreover, it indicates the need to consider the issue of constraints in self-questioning. The constraints of content knowledge and metacognitive deficiencies on self-questioning are illustrated. Subsequently, methodological problems underlying instructional failures in self-questioning research are examined. These include level of criterion in training, processing time allowed the subjects, explicitness in instruction, and maintenance and transfer tests. Last, potential directions of future research are discussed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.