How to use a vareity of reading strategies for improving reading skills? This blog will give an introductory overview.
Teachers are not always aware of the importance to use reading strategies such as 'think alouds" when reading texts. Similar to reading strategies, metacognition strategies help provide an initial response to new and unclear material that s/he reads. An example of this: summarizing content. For an ESL slow reader, a metacognitive strategy could be remembering five vocabulary words from a story just read and explaining their importance in the story.
Metacognition is basically thinking about one's learning. Additional factors to take into account such as the respective ages of the learning, the type of task involved and how well metacognitive strategies have been used in the past.
How ultimately do metacognitive reading strategies help improve reading skills? Basically, the more knowledge a reader acquires, the more necessary it is to organize that information so that it can be processed more effectively. As a former ESL teacher, I repeatedly saw that when I used metacognitve strategies, it structured their learning, so that they weren't simply passive receptors of knowledge and they knew that I was looking to hold them accountable. Yet there is a fine difference between testing their knowledge and facilitating their intake of information.
