Self-monitoring strategies in English reading comprehension

Abstract

The main objective of this research work was to confirm how meta-cognitive strategies (self-monitoring) influence in the improvement of English reading comprehension. To determine the effectiveness of these strategies a Cambridge 2007 pre-test and post-test were applied in two groups of students from the first year of secondary education at Unidad Educativa del Milenio “11 de Noviembre” in the city of Machachi. The first A of secondary education (25 students) was established as the control group, while the first B of secondary education (22 students) was considered as the experimental group. Four self-monitoring strategies were chosen: "Look, Think and Predict Strategy", "Guided Retelling Strategy", "Response Journal Strategy" and "Thinking Along Strategy", all of them were implemented in the experimental group. Hence, to verify the hypothesis in this study, Cambridge reading tests (2007) results were analyzed statistically. As consequence, they indicated that the students who worked with the self-monitoring strategies remarkably improved their reading comprehension skills, while the control group increased it in a significant scale. Therefore, it is important to suggest the implementation of self-monitoring strategies through the use of a strategy manual that promotes the development of high-thinking skills (Bloom, 1993) for reading comprehension; this manual aims to help teacher to promote the use of effective strategies for reading comprehension according to the needs and interests of students.