Klára Tarkó: The Connection Between Reading and Metacognition in School Years

Students have to cope with many problems when reading, mainly due to their failures in processing written texts. The main aim of this paper is to summarize how metacognition, the conscious control of one's own knowledge, may be cure a to these problems. Metacognition plays an important part in reading through the application of appropriate strategies to gain knowledge from, and understanding of, texts, and through phonemic awareness in the process of decoding. After reviewing the most important literature in the field of metacognition and theories about reading, the author gives an overview of the metacognitive abilities and skills that are considered important when reading. Besides abilities, age is also considered. Research results in the field show that individuals who are older, skilful and successful readers are more ready to apply metacognitive strategies. Younger and weaker readers, however, tend to forget about the conscious control of their text processing. The paper lists the metacognitive skills and strategies that can and should be improved to help weak readers, and discusses how these can be taught to them as well as to what extent these are successful.

MAGYAR PEDAGÓGIA 99. Number 2. 175-191. (1999)

Levelezési cím / Address for correspondence: Tarkó Klára, Juhász Gyula Tanárképző Főiskola, Alkalmazott Egészségtudományi Tanszék, H–6722 Szeged, Boldogasszony sgt. 6. E-mail: tarko@jgytf.u-szeged.hu

 
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