Harvey and Goudvis describe met cognition as monitoring the inner conversation. Good readers engage actively with text, employing met cognitive comprehension strategies seamlessly.
Less proficient readers tend to be passive, detached recipients of text. Harvey and Goudvis illustrate this experience by asking students, "How many of you have ever found yourself reading something but thinking about something else?” This occurrence, with which even proficient readers can identify, provides a foundation for introducing met cognitive strategies (thinking about our thinking). Or, thinking about in the case of comprehension strategies, our reading.
Harvey and Goudvis list the following specific comprehension strategies:
1. Making Connections
2. Questioning
3. Visualizing and Inferring
4. Determining Importance
5. Summarizing and Synthesizing
To improve comprehension, each of these strategies should be taught explicitly and assessed for understanding. That is, teachers must first introduce the strategy. Good readers engage actively with text, employing meta-cognitive comprehension strategies seamlessly. Less proficient readers tend to be passive, detached recipients of text of "Making Connections" by modeling that approach to a text.
The complexity of connections made will vary depending on the level of the learner and the difficulty of text. In addition, teachers can use a variety of instructional tools (such as graphic organizers) to facilitate the process of making connections. An example of one such tool, a "double entry journal," is provided in Figure 1.
Using the gradual release of responsibility framework, teachers introduce the strategy (by modeling) and provide the tools for the students to begin to practice the comprehension strategy "Making Connections." Students then practice, individually and collaboratively, under the teacher's supervision. During this process, teachers assess both the use of the comprehension strategy (in this case, the students' ability to make meaningful connections to texts) as well as the students' understanding of the text itself. In this way, teaching the comprehension strategy reinforces the teaching of content; it is a productive use of instructional time, not an "add-on" that squanders precious class minutes.
The importance of teaching comprehension strategies cannot be overemphasized. To interact effectively with texts, students must be able to make connections to their background knowledge. Making connections is the first of the comprehension strategies promoted by Harvey and Goud-vis. The others, which are discussed thoroughly in their text, are equally important; however, in the interest of space, they are simply listed here (in bold type).
Students must learn how to pose meaningful questions that stimulate their thinking and predict answers to those questions. The ability to visualize has been linked to effective vocabulary comprehension and retention. Moreover, to create visual representations from texts, students must transform knowledge, a process that signifies deep understanding.
Inferring is a skill that is difficult for many students to grasp. English teachers often ask questions that require students to make inferences, but we may not always explicate the thinking processes that underlie this skill. For students to become proficient at inferring, teachers must provide direct instruction of this skill and then assess its application.
It is common for less proficient readers to have difficulty determining importance, particularly with expository texts. These students tend to highlight or underline entire paragraphs, unable to decide which sections of text are most significant. Teachers can model how to determine importance by revealing textual cues and using graphic organizers to analyze text structure. As students practice, they will become more proficient and, thus, more independent at determining importance. Each of the previous strategies facilitates students' ability to summarize and synthesize—perhaps the two most complex of the met cognitive strategies.
