Strategic Difficulties in Summarizing TextsThis study examined the possibility that some eighth-graders' difficulties with the task of summarization may be linked to deficits in strategic skills. A systematic examination was made of the students' introspective awareness of the summarization task, ability to identify important elements in the text, and ability to transform the text into its gist.Results indicated that most of the eighth graders were aware of the task demands of summarization. However, good and poor readers did differ in what they considered important, in what they included in their summaries, and in how they transformed the original text. Sensitivity to importance and efficient use of the transformations were significantly related to the ability to produce summaries. Sensitivity to importance was also significantly related to the ability to comprehend what had been read. The study suggests that when comprehension difficulties are encountered, teachers should assess the students' use of strategic skills and provide appropriate training if necessary.In the past few years researchers have begun to learn more about the higher-order comprehension problems that may contribute to some children's frustration with reading. The phrase "higher-order" refers to those problems that are not caused by inadequate decoding skills or problems in lexical access (Golinkoff, 1975-76). Recent research has emphasized a number of possible sources of such difficulties including those that may be related to differential language experiences, the lack of prior knowledge, or the lack of strategic skills (Collins & Haviland, 1979).It is the third possibility, a lack of strategic skills, which was the focus of this study.The purpose of this study was to systematically examine the strategy differences between good and poor readers as they summarized what they had read. Three aspects of the use of strategies were of particular interest:(a) the awareness of the task demands involved in producing summaries, (b) the ability to identify important elements in the text, and (c) the ability to transform and reduce the full meaning of a text into its gist.These aspects provided the basis for three experimental hypotheses about why poor readers might have difficulty in producing adequate summaries: 0l) Poor readers are not aware that the purpose of summarizing is to convey the important ideas in a concise manner.(2) Poor readers fail to identify the information which should, by adult standards, be included in a summary. (3)Poor readers fail to use, or use ineffectively, those transformations used by their more fluent peers. Abstract Strategic Difficulties Strategic DifficultiesFor each of these hypotheses there were three goals: (a) to identify and characterize possible strategy deficits evidenced by poor readers, (b) to examine the influence that such deficits might have on the ability to perform the task of summarizing, and (c) to examine the influence that such deficits might have on the ability to comprehend what has been read, in o...

Abstract. The purpose of this study was to examine the conditions which were likely to facilitate error detection. It was hypothesized that poor readers' comprehension monitoring abilities would improve if they were given assistance in selecting the appropriate schema for understanding a passage. In order to test the hypothesis, we used a standard paradigm: the error detection task. No evidence was found to support the notion that schema activation would significantly improve poor readers' error detection abilities. However, results did indicate that, while good readers were significantly better at this task than were poor readers, a surprising number of children failed to report some very blatant errors. Although these results are in agreement with earlier studies using the same task, we felt uneasy in drawing the conclusion that sixth graders are lacking in metacognitive abilities. Instead, we have expanded the discussion to include our thoughts on the limitations and difficulties in the use of the error detection paradigm itself. Five major concerns were identified and suggestions for improving future comprehension monitoring studies were made. Some alternative methodologies were also considered.This paper is concerned with metacognition and reading. More specifically, it is concerned with comprehension monitoring and one of the research paradigms currently in vogue, error detection. It is our contention, gained through hindsight, that there are some serious problems which may limit the usefulness of data that are collected by this method. Trie first part of this paper will review the original thoughts that led to our attempt to use the error detection paradigm. Then the study itself will be described. The last section will cover the issues and difficulties that forced us to reconsider methodologies.

Metacognition fosters independent learning by providing personal insight into one's own thinking. Such awareness can lead to flexible and confident problem solving as well as feelings of self-efficacy and pride. This is especially important for students who encounter difficulty in school because they do not understand how to appraise and manage their own resources for learning. Too often, students develop debilitating expectations and behavior that undermine learning in school and inhibit transfer of effective learning strategies. We describe four general kinds of instruction that help students learn to think: metacognitive explanation, scaffolded instruction, cognitive coaching, and cooperative learning. Teachers can adapt and combine these methods to teach students how to think as they read, write, and compute in classrooms.In teaching me independence of thought, they had given me the greatest gift an adult can give to a child besides love, and they had given me that also. (Courtenay, 1989, p 326) T HIS ARTICLE is about metacognition and academic learning. The central message is that students can enhance their learning by becoming aware of their own thinking as they read, write, and solve problems. Teachers can directly promote this awareness by informing students about effective problem-solving strategies and discussing cognitive and motivational characteristics of thinking. The twin benefits of this "consciousnessraising" are that (a) it transfers responsibility for monitoring learning from teachers to students themselves and (b) it promotes positive self-perceptions, affect, and motivation among students. In this manner, metacognition provides personal insight into one's own thinking and fosters independent learning. Self-regulation is critical for children with special needs, disabilities, and talents, because traditional classroom instruction is often frustrating for them (Wong, 1987).A great deal of research supports the importance of metacognition in cognitive development and academic learning (Brown, Bransford). In the first part of this article we describe two aspects of metacognition-selfappraisal and self-management-and discuss how motivation and metacognition are intertwined. The second half of the article illustrates how instructional interactions can promote metacognition and facilitate selfregulated learning. Our point is not to establish metacognition as a curriculum objective, but rather to show how students' understanding of their own thinking can be enhanced by teachers. Remedial and Special Education 7Cognitive Self-Appraisal and Self-Management Flavell (1978), in his pioneering work, chose to emphasize the learner's knowledge about variables related to the person, task, and strategy in order to compartmentalize metacognitive knowledge that might be germane to remembering. Brown (1978) reviewed the same early research on metacognition but emphasized aspects of executive cognition, such as planning, monitoring, and revising one's thinking. These approaches capture two essential features o...

This paper examines the notion that many of the problems evidenced by poor readers are related to their passive response to the interactive task of reading. An integrative review of research in metacognition, attribution theory, and other related fields supports this notion by emphasizing the roles that appropriate goal-directed intentionality and active participation play in effective reading. Implications for reading instruction are examined and areas in need of research are identified.Determining why some children have particular difficulty in learning to read has been one of the most intractable research problems since the first published case study of reading failure appeared almost 90 years ago (Morgan, 1896). Since then, a wide variety of reading difficulties has been described, and an equally wide variety of contributing factors has been implicated. It is our thesis that many of the problems evidenced by poor readers stem from, or are compounded by, the fact that they are passive, helpless participants in what is fundamentally an interactive process-reading. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the current understanding of reading failure by reviewing and integrating relevant literature from a variety of different domains. First, we will describe the characteristics of passive failure-what it looks like. Second, we will examine why passive failure might occur in reading. Next, we will focus on 279