Comprehension Monitoring

1. Comprehension Monitoring Cheryl McLean, PhD Clinical Practicum in Reading Spring 2011

2. What is Comprehension Monitoring? • Comprehension monitoring describes a reader's metacognitive strategies for constructing a text’s meaning during the process of reading (Ruddell, 2006). Metacognition is a reader’s awareness of cognitive processes of comprehension during reading. Ruddell, R. B. (2006). Teaching children to read and write. Boston: Pearson Education.

3. Evaluation and regulation: • Comprehension monitoring works in two parts: the evaluation of ongoing comprehension, and the regulation of comprehension issues. • Evaluation and regulation are simultaneous actions that first evaluate a reader’s understanding of the text, and then attempt to regulate the comprehension failure by engaging cognitive strategies.

4. How comprehension monitoring works • Comprehension occurs when readers derive understanding from a text through constructing an internal representation of the text. • Comprehension is made up of many levels, including a verbal level with syntactical units, one with text propositions (semantic units), one containing world knowledge, one related to the overall gist of the text, and others. • Readers set goals before or during reading. Most often the goal is to identify the text’s main idea. Readers metacognitively evaluate their progress toward this goal during reading.

5. Evaluation • Readers monitor similarities and differences between their cognitive representation of a text and their metacognitive model of the text. • Similarities indicate that comprehension is occurring, and differences are a sign that comprehension has failed. • Readers can then exert control over texts to identify the difference and reestablish a representation of the text. The strategy that will be invoked depends upon the reader's metacognitive understanding of the source of the problem and the actions that can resolve it. • Finally, the reader must evaluate whether the problem has been resolved, or whether more strategies need to be utilized.

6. Clicks and clunks • One strategy for aiding a reader's comprehension of a text is the metacognitive strategy of “clicks and clunks.” • Teachers ask students to stop at the end of every passage and question whether the meaning of the passage clicks or clunks. A click happens when readers can clearly translate the meaning of the passage into their own words. A clunk happens when they cannot. • When a passage clunks, readers are encouraged to question why comprehension has not occurred. Often, further exploration of these questions can aid understanding.

7. Strategies for comprehension monitoring • Cognitive strategies (drawn upon by metacognitive cues) that can help rebuild comprehension fall into two categories: monitoring strategies and control strategies. • Monitoring strategies relate to a person’s prior knowledge, and involve re-reading the text, looking back to prior texts, predicting, and comparing texts. • Control strategies are text-oriented, such as summarizing texts, clarifying texts, or correcting texts.

8. SQ3R • One way to help readers improve their metacognitive interaction with a text is to scaffold their reading experience with SQ3R. SQ3R is a strategy in which readers Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review a text. • The steps are: • Survey: Preview a selection by reading titles, headings, and other highlighted information. • Question: Turn each title heading caption into a question. • Read: Read to answer these questions. • Recite: Close the text & orally summarize the reading. Then take notes. • Review: Read through notes.

9. Summary • Comprehension monitoring describes a reader's cognitive and metacognitive strategies for understanding texts. • Metacognitive evaluation calls upon cognitive strategies such as monitoring strategies and control strategies to aid in rebuilding comprehension.