I.

Beliefs about Reading, Metacognitive Reading Strategies and Text

Comprehension among college Students in a Private University
1. Mission of reading
complex linguistic, socio-cultural, physical, and cognitive activity that involves getting
meaning from and putting meaning to the printed text.
requires simultaneous application of skills and sub processes such as identifying authors
mood and purpose, identifying main ideas, context clues, analysis, evaluation, recognizing
and assigning meaning to words, constructing meanings at sentence and discourse levels, and
relating such meanings to the readers already existing knowledge

2. Mission of Writing
complex process of putting ideas in text whether print or nonprint. It is a non-linear,
exploratory, and generative process as writers discover ideas and reformulate them
transfer of writing skills happen in a bidirectional way, that is, from L1 to L2 and vice versa

3. Factors of Reading
Readers interest
topic familiarity
cultural background
decoding skills
linguistic knowledge
linguistic complexity
interest, motivation, text structure, and comprehension strategies
4. Factors of Writing
Anxiety
self- efficacy
topic familiarity
motivation
other affective and cognitive factors

5. Relationship between reading and writing

comparison between actual performance and self- report in both reading and writing skills
suggest the variable degree of difficulty associated with both skills
students consider writing to be more difficult than reading and that they do write less
effectively than read efficiently.
Reading is primarily a receptive skill and its nature as a cognitive activity involves getting
meaning from the text and putting meaning back to it. On the other hand, writing as a
productive skill involves the complex activity of discovering ideas and reformulating them

students consider writing to be more difficult than reading, and that this belief is
demonstrated in their actual reading and writing performance.
Learners receptive capacity for linguistic processing is always greater than their productive
capacity.
the positive correlations between actual performance in reading and in writing and the selfreports suggest the close association between actual performance in the skill and selfevaluation.
A very high positive correlation between writing performance and self-report in writing
shows the likelihood of association between how well students actually write and how well
they think they can write, at least for this group of participants
One possible explanation for the divergence between the two relationships (actual
performance and self-report in reading; actual performance-self-report in writing) is that
since writing processes and output are more observable than reading processes and output,
students became more aware and conscious of their abilities; hence, their self-report is more
accurate in writing than in their self-report in reading
positive self- evaluations encourage students to set higher goals and commit to tasks.
Negative self-evaluations, on the other hand, allow students to make excuses for performance
or set unrealistic goals in learning tasks

6. Self-Worth
strongly affects the degree to which the student becomes an effective learner in the

instructional setting
positive experiences contribute to the positive feeling that further builds up confidence and
motivation of the learners to pursue reading even the more challenging texts.

7. Self-efficacy

key to promoting students cognitive, behavioral, and motivational engagement which

demonstrates the importance of its role in the development of writing competence
self-evaluation has an indirect effect on achievement through self-efficacy
Higher self-efficacy translates into higher achievement
self-efficacy is a good predictor of success in any academic tasks including writing.

8. Self-Evaluation

positive self-evaluations encourage students to set higher goals and commit more personal
resources to learning tasks
negative self-evaluations lead students to embrace goal orientations that conflict with
learning, select personal goals that are unrealistic, adopt learning strategies which are
ineffective, exert low effort and make excuses for performance

II.

Investigating the relationship between college students self-perception and actual

performance in reading and writing

1. According to National Recording Panel

three important themes in the field of reading.

reading involves complex cognitive processes where both vocabulary development
and instruction are considered paramount.
comprehension of a text is an active process which often involves the tapping of ones
prior knowledge.
teachers should guide learners in using strategies that result in reading success.

2. Who is a Natural Skilled reader?

expert readers and highly skilled readers as those who use specific metacognitive strategies
before, during, and after reading

3. Different kinds of metacognitive Knowledge

Declarative knowledge
strategies that can be used for different tasks
Procedural knowledge
conditions under which strategies can be used
Conditional knowledge
extent to which the strategies are effective

4. 3 important points about reading

both successful and unsuccessful bilingual readers make use of strategies when they read;
successful ones, however, use better and more appropriate strategies, whereas the others tend to
rely on basic and decoding strategies behaviors that good readers use aid them in constructing
meaning while reading
readers employ different strategies when reading L1 and L2 texts.
gender may be a factor in determining the role of ones reading attitude to reading ability.

5. Good predictor of reading

active beliefs in reading

Metacognitive awareness because it leads to successful construction of meaning
metacognitive reading strategies were not a predictor of reading comprehension.

6. Different knowledge skills readers use

7. Active and passive reader

Passive
unable to select appropriate strategies and to monitor their reading have been
regarded as novice
students who hold passive beliefs about reading would tend to show limited
understanding of the nature and purposes of reading
Passive Beliefs are more or less consistent with the passive view of reading,

Active

extracting information from more than one text and then synthesizing and making a
representation of the texts message
Active Beliefs which are in accordance to the active view of reading

8. Who is an active reader?

extracting information from more than one text and then synthesizing and making a
representation of the texts message

III.

Inference Strategies to Improve reading comprehension of challenging text

1. Factors that contribute to text difficulty

Various elements within the text
Knowledge base of the individual reader
Context of interaction between the writer and the reader
Unknown vocabulary
Complicated sentence structure and organizational pattern

2. Different kinds of knowledge and how to differentiate each one from the other

To become a strategic reader, the person must possess:

Conditional Knowledge
Knowing when and why to apply cvarious actions
Declarative
Knowing that
Procedural
Knowing how

3. Different types of reading strategies and how to differentiate one from the other

Local Strategies to draw text-based inferences

Help the reader to determine the meaning of unfamiliar lexical items
To clarify ambiguity, usually between a sentence boundary
Helpful Strategies of Relying on Contextual Clues
Doing word analyses or consulting dictionaries are fundamental for vocabulary meaning.
Pre-planning and Monitoring strategies

 Resolving syntactic ambiguity resulting from cohesive ties such as pronoun references
and ellipses
Deal with a challenging text like reading research article under investigation

*Im not sure if the 3 points above are correct but down below are another types of strategies pero undefined if
it is reading and there are no definitions on the research paper for it.

Cognitive Strategies
Necessary for making inferences while reading.
Metacognitive
Social/Effective

4. What is SQ3R; why is it important and how relevant it is

Survey, Question, Read, Recite and Review

Importance of text engagement on the readers part as an integral component in the reading
process.
Objectives:
To activate relevant prior knowledge
To promote text interpretation and retention

5. 4 types of meaning according to nutall

Each word carries a Conceptual Meaning
Representing a certain idea or concept
Propositional Meaning
When words are put together to form a sentence
Contextual Meaning
Added to propositional meaning
Carries a contextual meaning that provides the force or functional value of a statement
Pragmatic Meaning
Added to Propositional Meaning
Meant to convey the writers attitudes
Suggesting the writer-reader interaction

6. Characteristics of complex text

Relationships
Interactions among ideas or characters in the text variable are subtle, involved or deeply
embedded
Richness
Text possesses a sizable amount of highly sophisticated information conveyed through
data or literary devices.
Structure
Text is organized in ways that are elaborate and sometimes unconventional

Style
Authors tone and use of language are often intricate
Vocabulary
Authors choice of words is demanding and highly context dependent
Purpose
Authors intent in writing the text is implicit and sometimes ambiguous

7. Guidelines on reading

First, reading the title

Abstract
Skimming through the report
Noting the main headings and subheadings to get the organization of the report as a whole
Reader has to read the report carefully and in detail
Noting the problem which was researched and the manner in which the data were collected and
interpreted
Finally, read the conclusions and relate them back to the research problem

8. Research questions and how was it answered

Inference skills must the reader employ in order to understand the journal article about the
impact of education on the economic growth?
attitudes of others toward the research findings

pronoun references

linkage of major ideas signaled through headings and implicitly suggested by research
article format of presentation.
Failed to analyze other aspects of writers attitudes
Main Ideas
3 components: central theme, thrust of argument, summary of a section in journal
article
Easily recognized central theme
Difficulty in inferring underlying argument
Two-thirds performed at satisfactory level in summarizing
Writing Style and Tone
Failed to analyze
Limited view of analyzing tone of article
Confused about writers purpose
Discourse
doubtful in dissecting sections
discourse structure
Lexicons
Many consulted dictionaries
Syntax
Use of pronoun reference: few had clear understanding of what idea the pronouns
stood for
Most indicated the general idea referred to but lacked key words to express it

IV.

What strategies are crucial to read the journal successfully?

Subjects broke down in to various peer-assisted discussion groups to share their
perspectives and ideas.
The subjects looked for other subjects who had the schemata about the subject to impart
what he/she knows to the others thus elucidating the rather unfamiliar subjects.
Preparation for the Exam
Subjects spent hours or even days reading and rereading the articles
Using dictionaries to familiarize unfamiliar words
Utilizing Bottom-Up Method
Due to the subjects lack of knowledge in the subject matter, they primarily based
all their finding from what they got from the text.
Relied heavily on deciphering the definitions using dictionaries and information
from friends (because some of the words are not found in the dictionary)
Words such as: K-12 Education and Rocket Scientists
Focused on looking for information on the research article that relates to the exam
question for they were not able to base their answers of what they knew, or
moreover, what they lacked knowing of.
did not employ: Global Strategies
Subjects failed to answer a question that did not need the schemata about the
subject of the article.
They failed to identify the major parts of the article

Bilingual Readers Metacognitive strategies as predictors of reading

comprehension

1. What is metacognitive strategy

Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI)
Instrument administered to the participants to assess their metacognitive awareness and
perceived used of reading strategies.

2. Metacognitive awareness

being conscious of ones own mental processes which includes having the ability to plan,
check, monitor, revise and evaluate ones unfolding comprehension.
Also called metacognition

3. Metacognitive knowledge

knowledge about cognition and its self-regulation that involves such skills as recognizing the
more important information in a text, adjusting reading rate, using context clues, skimming,
previewing, formulating questions, taking notes, and summarizing

4. Metacognitive regulation

divided into three groups of strategies: monitoring strategies, checking strategies, and repairing
or fix-up strategies

5. What prior knowledge testing

Four reading texts were used for the reading comprehension aspect of the study
Focused Listing test.
determine what each of them already knows about the topics of the reading materials
prior to their actual reading of the texts.
asked the students to individually list words and phrases that they associate with a
specific concept or idea

6. Who is a metacognitive reader?

one who employs all the necessary strategies that a reading task calls for, and not one who is
efficient in using only a particular type of strategy.

7. GRS, PRS, and SRS

Global Reading Strategies

metacognitive readers employ to get a general view of a text (I have a purpose in mind
when I read)

Problem-Solving Strategies
readers encounter difficulties while reading (I try to get back on track when I lose
concentration.)

Support Reading Strategies

aim to sustain comprehension (I summarize what I read to reflect on important
information in the text.)

8. Problems of the research paper

What metacognitive reading strategies do students at this age report to be using most frequently?
participants are frequently using all the three types of metacognitive reading strategies
they are metacognitive readers who use effective strategies when they read.
Is there a significant relationship among the participants selfreported use of metacognitive
strategies?
All the types of strategy also positively correlated with each other.
they interact with each other
Global reading and Support reading strategies had the strongest correlation even when
prior knowledge was controlled
Global strategies are mostly used before the actual reading
Support reading strategies are actually combinations of monitoring and checking
strategies which allow a reader to direct his or her own reading processes and to evaluate
his or her reading performance, the result seemed to imply that the participants employ
good strategies before, during, and after reading.

V.

Which strategy predicts the students reading comprehension ability more?

no single variable predicted the reading tests scores.
there are indeed motivational factors and metacognitive strategies that predict success in
reading comprehension.

Connections between L1 and L2 readings. Readings used by 4 Chinese adult

readers

1. Difference between Logographic language and alphabetical language

Logographic Language
Imposes a heavier demand on visual discrimination and memory than learning an
alphabetic code
Independent (such as Chinese)
Alphabetical Language
certain connection between its written and spoken forms (such as English)

2. Which is more difficult; writing and reading in L1 or in L2?

Limited L2 proficiency prevents the transfer of the top-down approach in L1 reading to L2

reading and confines the reader to take the bottom-up approach using mostly word attacking
strategies.
higher level strategies developed in L1 reading can be transferred to a second language reading
situation and can operate alongside lower processing strategies
L2 readers simultaneously combine bottom-up strategies, constrained by limited L2 linguistic
knowledge, and top-down strategies developed in L1.
Thus the L2 reading process is bi-oriented or "interactive".
If the reading process is held as a bottom-up process, going through linear stages and decoding
from letters to words to sentences as depicted in the reading, L2 readers may not be able to
transfer higher level L1 strategies to L2 reading.
if the reading process is viewed as a psycholinguistic guessing game or as an interactive process,
one's knowledge in L1 reading would be an asset in L2 reading, rather than irrelevant.
A higher L2 proficiency may make it easier for the participants to transfer the higher level
cognitive and metacognitive knowledge across the tasks of reading the two languages.
A low L2 proficiency seem to hinder the participant from using the more top down strategies
even though they were exerted in L1 reading

3. Short Circuit Hypothesis

Limited control over the language short circuits the good readers system, causing him or her to
revert to poor reading strategies when confronted with a difficult or confusing task in the second
language.

4. Role of Background Knowledge of reading

Plays a big role in her active construction of meaning of the text

Good comprehends use cues from text to initiate appropriate schemata to form hypotheses.
Good comprehender was an interactive reader who constructed meaning from the text and
personal background knowledge and monitored comprehension, making inferences, using text
clues to confirm or abandon hypotheses.

5. Schema theory

Schemata based learning theory indicates that readers process meaning which has been presented
through by print by using prior knowledge of the world to produce representation of anticipated
meaning.
Apparently allowed access to language decoding

6. Effect of L1 knowledge in L2 learning

The considerable evidence of interdependence of literacy related academic skills across such that
the better developed childrens L1 conceptual foundation is, the more likely they are to develop
similarly high levels of conceptual abilities in L2.
Moderate to strong correlation between academic skills in L1 and L2 suggests that L1 and L2
abilities ware manifestations of a common underlying proficiency.
There was a common underlying proficiency that could be applied to both L1 and L2 though the
surface aspects (pronunciation, fluency, etc.) of the languages differ.

7. Text-initiated strategies and reader-initiated strategies

In reading the English text

Text-Initiated strategies
Problem solving skills which relied most on visual signs and focused more on the
available text.

Focusing on vocabulary
Used a variety of strategies to attack the unknown vocabulary terms
Option to use a dictionary
Tried hard in recalling the meaning from their memory
Using text Structure
Involved readers recognition of the organization of the text being read, including
their comments on the writing styles.
Some noticed the text structures and utilize them.
Summarizing
Stopped frequently to summarize what they have just read
Utilizing Pictures
Used pictures to help make sense

Reader initiated strategy

 Readers utilize ore information from within themselves rather than directly
obtainable from the visual text.

Invoking prior knowledge

Constantly made connections to their prior knowledge and reading experiences
Predicting
Make predictions in reading and read on to either confirm or disconfirm
Evaluating
Evaluating the authors point of view, either agreeing or disagreeing with them.
Monitoring
Demonstrated their knowledge of themselves as readers of the task of reading or
of the usefulness of different reading strategies.
Translating
Translate the text or sentences in order to really grasp their meaning.

In reading the Chinese text:

Text initiated strategies

Focusing on Vocabulary
"I don't know this word. Position or what? But I can guess its meaning".
Using text Structure
Participants all seemed to have a pretty good knowledge of the text structure and
also used it in understanding the author's point of view in general.
use that knowledge so naturally, comfortably and effortlessly
Summarizing
stopped after each paragraph to summarize the key point in it

Reader initiated strategies

Invoking Prior Knowledge
used both his own experiences and sometimes experiences of other people around
him to support or refute certain points made by the author in the text
Visualizing
could visualize
Predicting
made a clear prediction
Evaluating
critiquing the article, from its writing techniques to its ideas

8. Difference and similarities between Chinese and English

i.

whether the focus was on the words or the text as a whole

ii.

Similarities

The ones that they used in reading both scripts were the strategies of a) using text
structure, b) invoking prior knowledge, and c) evaluating what they read.

most often used one was prior knowledge utilizing their knowledge of the text
structure and the knowledge of themselves, as well as their prior content knowledge in
figuring out the authors' points of view in both texts.
Differences
Chinese
verbalized more strategy use in reading English than in reading Chinese.
vocabulary did not seem to pose any problem for the readers.
Except for one reader reporting one unusual combination of characters, nobody
else seemed to utilize specific strategies to deal with the vocabulary in the
Chinese text.
Understanding of the vocabulary had become so automatic that no specific effort
was needed in processing the meaning of the vocabulary.
they had already mastered almost all of the most frequently used characters
after the beginning stage of learning the characters, vocabulary is usually not an
issue in reading, except for very rare words
While in reading English, their target and developing language, vocabulary was
obviously a big obstacle in comprehension
they spent more time and demonstrated more strategy use in working out the
meanings of the words
English is usually taught following a bottom-up model.

comfort level or confidence in oneself that readers exerted in the reading.

Chinese
readers felt more at ease in reading and more confident at what they believed they
got from the text
English
they were less certain about what they got and had to recheck it

3 Factors that may affect Chineses self-confidence in reading their native language
a. their linguistic knowledge of the English language was much limited compared with their
knowledge of the Chinese language.
b. lack of knowledge of how the language was practiced in its cultural community, a lack of
understanding of the language in use.
c. differences in how ideas were presented between L1 and L2 scripts

VI.

The Key for Successful Reader-writer Interaction: factors affecting reading

Comprehension inL2 Revisited

1. Internal or external

Internal
called reader variable
everything related to the reader such as his/her cognitive abilities and strategies,
background knowledge, and affective characteristics.
External
text variable
includes such elements as text modality and text-characteristics (lexical
density, structural complexity, etc.)
context variable
all situational elements such as the time of reading and the place of reading, as
well as the larger socio-economic context.
writer variable
text-producer
refer to all factors external to the reader

2. Difference between a Qualitative and a Quantitative type of Background knowledge

Qualitative
inappropriate background knowledge leading to a completely inappropriate model of
text meaning
Quantitative
refers to a readers lack of related background knowledge (e.g., a rural student
reading about city metros).

3. 3 types of schema

content schema
ones background or world knowledge
formal schema
known as textual schema
ones knowledge about a texts organizational and rhetorical structure
language or linguistic schema
knowledge of lexicon, syntax, and semantics

4. Different Discourse level knowledge

text organization

 cohesion
text types
associated conventions
as metalinguistic knowledge

5. Sub-Variables under writer, reader, text or context

Writer
he/she contributes the most to the reading act, indirectly though.
kind of interaction that the reader has with the writer may not be similar to the kind of
interaction he/she has with the text, or the kind of communication a listener has with a
speaker, as in both these latter cases both of the communication or interaction parties
are present
reader and the writer can be supposed to have some abstract form of
interaction/communication
while reading a text, the reader intuitively constructs a picture of who the writer had
in mind; and the more the reader is familiar with the writers style and purposes, the
more successful he/she will be in getting his/her message, which in turn leads to a
successful communication between the two.
writers assumptions about the reader will not always come true
there always is a mismatch of some kind between the writers and the readers
background and expectations

Text
text characteristics in affecting comprehension include lexical density, syntactic
complexity, and semantic abstractness.
Semantic abstractness refers to the notion of whether ideas expressed in the text are
easy enough for the reader to understand, an issue also connected to the readers
background knowledge.
Text type, topic, genre and writers style have also been recognized as factors
affecting reading comprehension
five text types: descriptive, narrative, expository, argumentative, and instructive
factor important for comprehension is coherence and cohesion

Reader
he/she is now considered an active participant in a reading activity
reader contributes more than the visual symbols on the page
non-visual information, or what the brain imposes upon the eye has generally been
known as background knowledge. This knowledge, also referred to as content
schemata, refers to ones knowledge of the world, the culture, and the language.
cultural knowledge is responsible for distortions in reading comprehension as a result
of a mismatch in L1 and L2 cultural schemata
gains importance when a reader reads a text with cultural elements with which
he/she is less familiar.

 knowledge of language, or linguistic knowledge includes phonological,

orthographic, morphological, syntactic, and semantic information and discourse
level knowledge, including ... text organization and cohesion, text types and
associated conventions, as well as metalinguistic knowledge.

Context
Context refers to something beyond the text itself, and therefore, is not to be mistaken
with textual context or co-text.
Context refers to something beyond the text itself, and therefore, is not to be mistaken
with textual context or co-text
social setting in which the act of reading takes place.

6. Difference between coherence and cohesion

Text related context, or co-text, has been shown to facilitate comprehension, recall, and
reading speed. Text meaningfulness is usually conveyed through local coherence, or
cohesion, and global coherence, simply called coherence. The existence of logical relation
markers or discourse markers, such as conjunctions has been reported to facilitate reading
comprehension. Coherence has been recognized as more crucial than cohesion because, as
Nuttall points out, a text which is not coherent will be nonsense, although it may be cohesive.

7. Pragmatic comprehession

kind of comprehension gained through the interaction between the text and the context
indicates how differences in situational contexts can result in different understandings, and are,
therefore, a potential source of miscomprehension if the reader does not attend to contextual
elements.

8. Give the similarities and differences between L1 and L2

Similarities
pointed out that although there are many similarities in the process of reading in L1 and in L2
and virtually in any other language
there are certain dimensions to reading which are unique to a second language
Goodman argues that reading is much the same for all languages implying that a good
reader in L1 will also be a good reader in L2
Such a similarity between L1 and L2 not only in terms of reading but also other language
skills and mainly spoken skills has been proposed by second-language acquisition
researchers
similarity between L1 and L2 reading in terms of the speed of reading.
His longitudinal study with one subject who read a variety of texts in L1 and L2 showed that
she read all passages at nearly the same speed and that she exhibited minimal flexibility in
her reading rate across the passages
L1 and L2 readers used similar reading strategies and comprehension-monitoring processes,
his claim that effective readers in L1 and L2 use both top-down and bottom-up processes

 the non-natives depended more on bottom up processing ... than on top down processing.

Differences
differences between L1 and L2 reading are less clear, many other researchers have pointed
out differences and explained the reasons for these differences.
L1 readers are mainly involved in higher-level processing such as generating inferences, L2
readers pay more attention to lower-level processes.
while L1 readers are already proficient enough in the spoken language, having acquired
5,000 to 7,000 words and a working knowledge of the grammar by the time they start
reading, L2 readers only start learning these aspects of the target language at the time they
start reading.
L2 readers L1 can help or disturb his/her reading depending on the similarities or differences
in orthographic, lexical, syntactic and discourse systems between the two languages
while L1 readers mainly relied on connectives, L2 readers relied both on connectives and
syntactically redundant elements in comprehending cloze passages.
while L2 reading problems are attributed to L2 language problems, L1 reading problems are
attributed to problems within reading itself.

Differences between L1 and L2

1. L2 learners are cognitively mature;
2. L2 learners already know at least one other language;
3. L2 learners have different kinds of motivation for reading in L2 than L1 learners have for L1 (L2
learners are motivated both instrumentally and interactively
4. L1 readers already have a big vocabulary repertoire and know grammar when beginning to read, while
L2 readers begin from scratch;
5. Older L2 readers have a more well-developed conceptual sense of the world;
6. L2 readers make elaborate logical inferences from the text;
7. L2 readers make more use of meta-cognitive strategies
8. L2 learners draw upon strategies of first-language learning, knowledge of likely language systems, and
knowledge of how language operates socially;
9. L2 readers operate in a different linguistic context (use different vocabulary and grammar