Raising Students’ Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Helps Improve Their Reading Comprehension Performance

Your students can read their textbooks. But do they understand what they read? Research indicates that significant numbers of college students are often “unskilled and unaware.” The good news is that faculty can more easily help their students to become more effective readers and comprehenders once they understand the metacognitive skills and strategies involved in the process of reading comprehension. In this workshop, you will have an opportunity to (a) try a tool for assessing your students’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies, and (b) use insights gained to help them improve their reading comprehension performance

An examination of the metacognitive reading strategies used by native speakers of Arabic when reading in English and Arabic

This study examined the metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension strategies used by advanced proficiency ESL readers whose native language is Arabic. The study looked at the perceived use of reading strategies by Arabic native speakers in Arabic and English and their actual use of these strategies in reading academic texts in the two languages. The goal was to compare the reading strategy profiles of Arabic native speakers in English and Arabic through quantitative means using a self-report survey of strategy use (n=90), and qualitative means using a think-aloud protocol with a subset of the original sample (n=10). The topic and research questions are pertinent because they add to a relatively small database showing Arabic native speakers rely heavily on reading strategies in their L2 than when reading in their L1

Vocabulary and Syntactic Knowledge Factors in 5th Grade Students\u27 Reading Comprehension

In this study, we examined 5th grade students’ levels of vocabulary knowledge and syntactic awareness relative to their reading comprehension performance. The aim was to explore the contributions of vocabulary and syntactic awareness as potential sources of reading comprehension difficulty for these readers. Overall, we found that both vocabulary knowledge and syntactic awareness contributed in significant yet unique ways to students’ reading comprehension performance. Students who showed weaknesses in vocabulary and syntax also performed poorly on measures of reading comprehension. Additionally, we found that syntactic awareness explained a small amount of additional variance in reading comprehension beyond what was explained by vocabulary. The implications of these findings are discussed in light of research and practice addressing the relationships among syntax, vocabulary, and reading comprehension for more and less skilled readers

Assessing Metacognitive Skills Using Adaptive Neural Networks

The assessment of student\u27s levels of metacognitive knowledge and skills is critical in determining their ability to effectively perform complex cognitive tasks such as solving mathematics or reading comprehension problems. In this paper, we use an adaptive multiplayer perceptron model to categorize participants based on their metacognitive awareness and perceived use of reading strategies while reading. Eight hundred and sixty-five middle school students participated in the study. All participants completed a 30-item instrument- the Metacognitive Awareness-of-Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI). We used adaptive multi-layer perceptron models to classify participants into three groups based on their metacognitive strategy awareness levels using thirteen and nine attributes representing problem-solving and support reading strategies. The architecture for the neural network models is based on the input data. The number of units in the input layer is equal to the number of attributes and the number of units in the output layer is equal to the number of categories. We classified participants into three categories based on the level of awareness. The models are evaluated using the measures such as user\u27s efficiency and Kappa coefficient that are obtained from the error matrix. We obtained an overall efficiency of 86.92 and 81.89 percent with 13 and 9 input features, respectively. The results indicate that once the network is trained, it can be used to assess student\u27s metacognitive awareness and use of reading strategies with the help of observed attributes

The Influence of Drawing on Third Graders\u27 Writing Performance

This study compared the writing products of 60 third grade students who drew before writing a story on a self-selected topic (Experimental Group) with the writing products of 59 third grade students who simply wrote without drawing (Control Group). An analysis of the students\u27 writing products revealed two important findings. First, students who drew be fore writing tended to produce more words, more sentences, and more idea units, and their overall writing performance was higher than the students who wrote without drawing. Second, these results were consistent for boys and girls regardless of group membership. The findings indicate that the differences in writing performance were probably due to the integration of drawing and writing. Implications for writing research and instruction are discussed

The Contribution of Morphological Knowledge to 7th Grade Students’ Reading Comprehension Performance

In this study, we examined the role of morphology, an important yet largely understudied source of difficulty, in reading ability among 7th grade students in one junior high school in the southwestern United States. We sought to find out how much variance in reading ability is accounted for by these students’ morphological knowledge, and whether skilled readers do in fact have higher levels of morphological knowledge than less skilled student peers. We found that students’ sensitivity to the morphological structure of words accounted for 18% of the variance in these students’ reading performance. We further found that skilled readers had a significantly higher level of sensitivity to the structure of words than did less skilled readers. In light of these findings, we offer recommendations for interpreting and using the results obtained to better understand and scaffold students’ morphological knowledge, with the goal of helping promote students’ vocabulary growth and reading comprehension performance

Revising the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) and testing for factorial invariance

In this study, we revised the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI), a self-report instrument designed to assess students’ awareness of reading strategies when reading school-related materials. We collected evidence of structural, generalizability, and external aspects of validity for the revised inventory (MARSI-R). We first conducted a confirmatory factor analysis of the MARSI instrument, which resulted in the reduction of the number of strategy statements from 30 to 15. We then tested MARSI-R for factorial invariance across gender and ethnic groups and found that there is a uniformity in student interpretation of the reading strategy statements across these groups, thus allowing for their comparison on levels of metacognitive processing skills. We found evidence of the external validity aspect of MARSI-R data through correlations of such data with a measure of the students’ perceived reading ability. Given that this journal is oriented to second language learning and teaching, our article also includes comments on the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS), which was based on the original MARSI and was designed to assess adolescents’ and adults’ metacognitive awareness and perceived use of ESL reading strategies. We provide a copy of the MARSI-R instrument and discuss the implications of the study’s findings in light of new and emerging insights relative to assessing students’ metacognitive awareness and perceived use of reading strategies

Revising the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) and Testing for Factorial Invariance

In this study, we revised the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI), a self-report instrument designed to assess students’ awareness of reading strategies when reading school-related materials. We collected evidence of structural, generalizability, and external aspects of validity for the revised inventory (MARSI-R). We first conducted a confirmatory factor analysis of the MARSI instrument, which resulted in the reduction of the number of strategy statements from 30 to 15. We then tested MARSI-R for factorial invariance across gender and ethnic groups and found that there is a uniformity in student interpretation of the reading strategy statements across these groups, thus allowing for their comparison on levels of metacognitive processing skills. We found evidence of the external validity aspect of MARSI-R data through correlations of such data with a measure of the students’ perceived reading ability. Given that this journal is oriented to second language learning and teaching, our article also includes comments on the Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS), which was based on the original MARSI and was designed to assess adolescents’ and adults’ metacognitive awareness and perceived use of ESL reading strategies. We provide a copy of the MARSI-R instrument and discuss the implications of the study’s findings in light of new and emerging insights relative to assessing students’ metacognitive awareness and perceived use of reading strategies

Numerical analysis of the elastic-plastic behavior of a tubular structure in FGM under pressure and defect presence

Given the field of application and the many advantages, the use of FGM (Functionally Graded Materials) materials has recently been extended in several components and more particularly in cylindrical structures, which have been the subject of several recent studies. Our work aims to use the finite element method to analyze a cylindrical structure in FGM with properties gradated in the direction of the radius (Thickness) solicited purely in internal pressure by the implementation of a UMAT subroutine in the calculation code ABAQUS. The elasto-plastic behavior of the FGM is described by the flow theory represented by the equivalent stress of Von Mises and an incremental hardening variable. The TTO model (Tamura-Tomota-Ozawa) was used only to determine the elastic-plastic properties of the FGM material. The radial, tangential and axial stresses according to the thickness were evaluated in the first part of our work. In the second part, these stresses are evaluated under the same conditions but with the presence of a micro-cavity. The results obtained show clearly that these stresses are in direct relation not only with the thickness and properties of the FGM tube but also with the presence of the cavity

Assessing the Promise of a Supplemental Reading Intervention for At-Risk First Grade Students in a Public School Setting

In this exploratory quasi-experimental case study, we assessed the promise of a yearlong supplemental reading intervention with a small pilot group of at-risk first grade readers in an elementary school setting. Using standardized measures of reading proficiency, we found that after 47 hours of one-on-one tutoring instruction, students read significantly more proficiently than did non-tutored students in a matched group of first grade peers in the same school. These results are encouraging in light of literacy research documenting the impact of one-on-one tutoring by qualified tutors of at-risk early grade readers. We used lessons learned from this pilot study to help inform and direct the necessary revisions and refinements of future reading interventions with the goal of building the school’s capacity to support the literacy development of at-risk readers so that they can catch up with their typically developing peers