10.01.06
Beal, C. R., Garrod, A. C., & Bonitatibus, G. J. (1990). Fostering children’s revision skills through training in comprehension monitoring. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(2), 275-280.
Beal, C. R., Garrod, A. C., & Bonitatibus, G. J. (1990). Fostering children’s revision skills through training in comprehension monitoring. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(2), 275-280.
This article talked about two studies. The first compared sixth and third grade children. A group of children from each grade was taught a “self-questioning method” while a group from each grade (the control group) was not. Children were exposed to stories in two sessions. In the first session experimental group, children were exposed to problematic stories while controls were exposed to non-problematic stories. Children were usually able to solve problems in the text of the stories if they found them regardless of group or age (though older children did better). Children who were taught the “self-questioning method” did better than controls at finding errors in the text.
The second study was more complicated. In the first session one group of third graders was trained in the “self-questioning method” and presented with problematic stories, one group was trained in the “self-questioning method” and presented with clear stories, one group was presented with problematic stories without training, one group was presented with clear stories without training. Six problematic stories and one clear story were used for the second session for all participants. The instruction had a significant effect effect, participants were more likely to fix missing-sentence problems than contradictions, and participants in the “self-questioning method” problematic story condition did the best of all.
At first glance, this article seems straightforward though I’m sure we’re going to pick it apart in class. I would have liked to have seen a condition where the experimenters did not remind the children to use the method (or that the method existed) in the second session to see whether they would employ this tool naturally. In a classroom context, this would be more useful than having to review and reteach a procedure that may be very artificial for a young age group. I had poor experiences with a few facets of English teaching (non-educational grammatical busywork, etc) so the article made me think of that too. Though I think, there is the assumption at least in some parts of school (especially elementary) that you give kids things that are comprehensible to read. I think they tend to expect this in writing because children are often put in situations in and out of school that are nonsensical at first to them until they parse out the meaning from the elements of the situation.
Reading is something different.
