Metacognition

            Durkin (1989) describes metacognition as “knowing how we know or thinking about one’s own thinking” (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999). It allows a reader to be aware of and to have control over their reading comprehension. There are two elements of metacognition. The first element includes awareness of task requirements. Awareness of task requirements means that the reader needs to know and be aware of the skills, strategies, and resources needed to complete a task successfully. The second element of metacognition is the ability to use self-monitoring skills. Self-monitoring skills are the self-regulatory, thinking activities that allow a student to think about his or her thinking process. Monitoring comprehension is important for reading comprehension. “Checking the outcome of problem-solving attempts, planning and evaluating the effectiveness of any attempted actions, testing and reviewing strategies used in learning and taking remediation action to overcome difficulties encountered” (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999) are considered self-regulatory activities in self-monitoring.
            Generally, skilled readers understand that the purpose of reading is to gain meaning from text. When they do not understand something, they apply specific “fix-up” strategies to monitor their comprehension. Students who are not as skilled may not read for meaning; instead, they may define reading as decoding words. In the later elementary grades through high school, metacognitive skills become more important when the emphasis of reading is not on learning to read anymore but reading to learn (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999). This can be a difficult transition. Unskilled readers were reported by Sullivan (1978) to lack metacognitive awareness while reading and applying prior knowledge to text; they also saw reading as a decoding process.

                  

 
           
           
            Effective readers apply metacognition while they are reading and track themselves for comprehension breakdown. Examples of comprehension breakdowns can be seen in Figure 3.1. When a comprehension breakdown occurs, competent readers are able to apply appropriate reading strategies, or fix-up strategies. Baker and Brown’s research (1984) supports the idea that children who focus most of their attention to decoding skills and word meaning fail to read for meaning (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999). Wagner suggests in his studies (1984) that children who struggle in reading for meaning do not know how to apply metacognition strategies. Metacognition can be developed by practice and direct, explicit instruction.
            There have been very few studies that have been conducted that investigate the metacognitive abilities of deaf and hard of hearing students. Although there is limited research in deaf children’s metacognitive skills, Quigley (1976) inferred that the majority of deaf and severely hard of hearing children do not have effective metacognitive skills for reading. It is assumed that their lower metacognition is due to the lack of teaching metacognitive skills. Research done by Strassman (1997) shows that deaf and hard of hearing students tend to depend on the teacher for reading comprehension and generally are not aware of reading strategies that can repair their understanding of the text (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999). Studies done on deaf and hard of hearing children tend to be inconclusive because of their small population and their restricted design (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999). A common strategy used when there is a breakdown in understanding is rereading or the “lookback” strategy. In a residential school for the deaf, Davey (1987) found that instead of using lookback strategies, deaf students looked back to find an answer to the question.
            There is a basic checklist that has been developed by Taylor (1995) that encourages students to use metacognitive skills. Taylor recommends that this checklist is posted in the classroom or given to the students in a form of a reminder card. This checklist includes five components; they include getting ready to read, monitoring comprehension while reading, improving comprehension while reading, checking comprehension and study after reading, and helping the reader answer questions. An example of this can be seen in figure 3.2. Bernhart (1993) says that the evidence of metacognition, a developmental process, and self-monitoring strategies can be observed in written passages through question marks, blanks, and indirect or uncertain reports or information read (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999). Metacognition demands time, instruction and practice.

            A metacognitive strategy that works well with deaf and hard of hearing learners is called comprehension rating. There is a large population of readers who are deaf and hard of hearing that have not yet developed their metacognitive skills and do not monitor their comprehension while reading. No matter if they do or do not understand what they are reading, they continue to read. Generally, they also lack an adequate fix-up or repair strategy that can assist them in realizing when they do not understand the text. The comprehension rating strategy can improve comprehension monitoring skills and is comprised of four steps. It can be used with students who are 10-years-old and above with both expository and narrative texts.
            The first step of the comprehension rating strategy uses cloze passages, where the teacher allows the student to see that they do not have to read every word in a passage to comprehend its meaning. The teacher then teaches the students repair strategies they can use when they do not understand, including rereading or reading ahead. Reading aloud to the students is another way the teacher can model comprehension monitoring. An example of this would be, “I understood this paragraph, so I’ll continue to read” or “This paragraph doesn’t make sense to me, so I should probably read it again” (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999).
            The second step of the comprehension rating strategy focuses on meaning during silent reading. It involves comprehension rating tasks. Single sentences are given to the students to read and rate if the sentence makes sense or not. Some sentences contain nonsense words (The hoobler likes loober because it tastes suprono) and some are not logical (The fish ran on the white sand). The students can either work in small groups or independently, and they are directed to use a plus (+) for the sentences that make sense to them and minuses (-) for the sentences that do not. When the students rate all of the sentences, they discuss their reasons for rating them the way they did. When the students are successful at rating sentences, the students are given paragraphs to rate for comprehension. Like the sentences, some make sense and some do not. When they are finished, they discuss their reasons for their ratings.
            In the third step, students advance to a three-point comprehension rating scale and use real text. Again, the teachers have a choice in organizing the students in small groups or working individually. The students then rate sentences, paragraph, and longer text. In this process, the students rate the text using three ratings; the ratings include understanding well, understanding a little, and not understanding at all. After the students rate their comprehension, the teacher and students discuss their ratings and reasons for their ratings.           
            The fourth step is started when the students can succeed in the first three steps. This step focuses on fix-up strategies. Taylor, Harris, and Pearson (1988) suggested that word level and idea level should be considered while teaching the students fix-up strategies (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999). Each strategy is presented in mini-lessons, so that the students can apply them; these strategies are shown in figure 3.3. A list of fix-up strategies are given to the students and modeled by the teacher. The students then practice the fix-up strategies and are asked to use the strategies when they do not understand while they are actually reading. Where students use fix-up strategies, students mark their place in the text and make notes. Later, they explain the strategies that they used to their teacher. The student is guided towards which fix-up strategy would work best if the student cannot do it independently. Sometimes, teachers make non-sense word substitutions or incorrect substitutions to see if the student really comprehends the text; for example, instead of the sentence “The girl was swimming in the lake”, the teacher might substitute the word chocolate for lake, so the sentence would be “The girl was swimming in the chocolate” (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999).

LEARNING NEW VOCABULARY
        Vocabularies and rate of word acquisition of deaf and hard of hearing students tend to be significantly below their hearing peers. One of the reasons this occurs is a lack of incidental learning. For a hearing child, language is a constant; the child knows that there is a hum from the refrigerator, or what a refrigerator is. A deaf or hard of hearing child does not get this incidental learning and needs explicit instruction on each and every word and its meaning. Because of this, deaf and hard of hearing students also lack the skill of using context clues; context clues provide meaning for each and every word.
        Many barriers prevent language from developing. A major obstacle is the lack of communication between the deaf child and his/her hearing family. Because the link of language is not developed in the primary stages of language development, the barrier begins to widen as the child advances, thus proving difficult to connect language to print. When developing vocabularies, the goal is for the child to develop automaticity when reading printed words. Because much of the time word recognition is not automatic, a high demand is placed on working memory; this leads to information dropout between short-term and long-term memories.    
        Teaching vocabulary to deaf and hard of hearing children by using definitions of a dictionary is an ineffective strategy. The grammatical structures and language within a dictionary’s definition of the word prohibits students from gaining actual meaning of the word; this happens because they read word for word and do not understand what key words to look for within the definition. Because of this, frustration begins to build within the student. Dictionary definitions are not geared toward the reading and language levels in which the students are at. Depending on the mode of communication the student uses, dictionary definitions may not be in their primary language; as a result, the student is forced to interpret the definition into their primary language. When developing new vocabulary, it is essential that prior knowledge is accessed and connections are made within appropriate schema. 
        Hearing children in third grade and above learn approximately 3,000 new word meanings a year. Since deaf and hard of hearing students need direct instruction, students would be expected to learn 15 new words every school day. Without proper and frequent exposure to words in variety of print, comprehension is not guaranteed. Therefore, in order to keep up with hearing peers, deaf and hard of hearing students would need more than 24 hours of instruction a day. When there is lack of incidental learning and linking language to experiences, it is an impossible task for deaf and hard of hearing students to have the same vocabulary index as their hearing peers; vocabulary development needs to be emphasized and words need to be carefully selected by the teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing. Strategies that can be used to develop vocabulary are shown in figure 7.1.

Vocabulary Development Strategies

 Copyright © 2005, Danielle Thor. All Rights Reserved.
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Last updated: 04/04/08.