Increasing Metacomprehension in Learning Disabled and Normally Achieving Students through Self-Questioning Training

Abstract

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.