Metacognitive and Cognitive Learning Strategies; teaching Online

Reading Prepared by:Ammar Elhassan elMerhbiCaroline CoyleFiona Quinn Bailie

Metacognition-a definition

• O’Malley explained metacognitive as thinking about the learning process, planning for learning, monitoring of comprehension or production while it is taking place, and self-evaluation of learning after the language activity is completed (O’Malley et al. 1985)

• Chamot and O’Malley(1997) explain metacognitive strategies as how to approach or attack a learning task..how successfully a learning task is proceeding or has proceeded.

Their list of learning strategies are summarized below• Advance organisation -skimming, using headings, subheadings and pictures for

prediction• Organisational planning -planning the parts, sequence, main ideas, or language

functions• Selective attention -scanning, looking for key words, discourse markers• Self –monitoring -checking one’s comprehension while learning is taking place Self-evaluation -judging how well task has been done on completion

Cognitive strategies

• Strategies which can be applied directly to the tasks of understanding and learning. • These strategies may be mental (forming images) or physical (note taking)

(Chamot and O’Malley 1987)

• Their list of learning strategies is summarized below• Resourcing -using target language reference material such as dictionaries, library materials• Grouping -classifying words or concepts to increase understanding of content material• Note-taking -writing key concepts, part of organisational planning and selective attention• Summarizing -making a mental or written summary, can be part of grouping, following note-taking• Deduction/induction -applying rules already learnt or formulating rules based on evidence• Imagery -using visual images, graphs, diagrams to understand and remember new information• Auditory representation -playing back a sound or phrase in your head• Elaboration -relating new information to prior knowledge by resourcing or expanding ideas• Transfer -using previous linguistic knowledge to deal with new or different learning task• Inferencing -using information to guess meanings, predict outcomes or complete missing parts•

Oxford(1990) has a similar list of learning strategies including note taking, Summarizing, Inferencing, using prior knowledge, predicting, analyzing and using context clues

Reading strategies/approaches

We will look at 4 main reading approaches that focus on strategy (Lawrence 2007)

• Experience-text-relationship (ETR)• Reciprocal teaching approach (RTA)• Cognitive academic Language learning

approach (CALLA)• Sheltered Instruction observation protocol

(SIOP)

Experience-text-relationship

• To summarize the three stages in the ETR approach:• 1. pre reading-the teacher’s role is to activate the

student’s prior knowledge or experiences by inviting the students to discuss an aspect of the reading text prompted by their teacher’s questions. This also facilitates a motivational reading environment

• 2. throughout the reading students are questioned by the teacher to ensure comprehension is monitored throughout

• 3. The teacher relates what was discussed in the pre reading stage with the input from the reading text

Reciprocal Teaching Approach• RTA is based on a cognitive-constructivist philosophy of reading• Reading is seen as a meaning-making process in which the reader

uses his prior knowledge to gain understanding• Scaffolding is at the heart of the RTA and generally the teacher

models four reading strategies including: generating questions, clarifying issues, summarizing and making

predictions• Gradually the responsibility is transferred to the students. • The students are divided into groups, and the text is read silently

and orally by one of the students or the teacher depending on the language level of the group.

• The leader of the group initiates the discussion by summarising the text, asking questions, clarifying misunderstandings and generating predictions

Results of using ETR and RTA

• Students were found to use metacognitive strategies such as activating prior knowledge, summarising more frequently and finding the main idea more often

• Students also used more cognitive strategies such as monitoring their comprehension and alternating plans

Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach(CALLA)

• Originally developed by Anna Chamot and Michael O’Malley in 1987 • Based upon cognitive learning , students apply prior knowledge and other strategies such as

making inferences and monitoring comprehension to content area subjects.• Strategies are broken down into

1. Cognitive2. Metacognitive3. Social/affective - strategies through which the learner somehow enlists the support or assistance of other people (eg peers, teachers) or establishes an emotional or attitudinal state of mind

The FORESEE approach (Communication Cognitive Academic Language Development and Content Instruction in the classroom) designed by Kidd and Marquardson is an extension of CALLA. They describe an approach to content based ESL as a triangle with emphasis on the language, content and learning strategies as mutually supportive components.

Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol

• Developed by Deborah Short and Jane Echevarria in 1999• Similar to CALLA in that its purpose is to enable students to develop their

language skills within content area subjects while implementing effective strategies.

• Effective content teaching of second language students needs to incorporate both content and language objectives, provide strategy instruction and practice; provide opportunities for interaction and assessment.

• Key vocabulary is introduced, written, repeated and highlighted within the reading.

• After the reading and lesson, students further review the vocabulary. • Students are also given many opportunities to use strategies such as predicting,

organizing, summarizing, categorizing, evaluating and self-monitoring; they are given times to self-evaluate their strategy use.

Metacognitive Skills and Reading• Flavell (1978) defined metacognition as "knowledge that takes as its object or

regulates any aspect of any cognitive endeavor." Two (not necessarily independent) clusters of activities are included in that statement: knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition.' (p353)

To conclude

• be conscious of the skills required to perform effectively, which also includes an awareness of any shortcomings you might have as a learner, and how difficult/challenging the task at hand is, and

• be able to check your progress during a task, plan what to do next, be aware of how effective your work is, and ultimately to evaluate your own learning

strategies.

Metacognition in Reading• Baker and Brown list the skills involved in reading

-clarifying the purposes of reading-understanding both the explicit and implicit task demands -identifying the important aspects of a message -focusing attention on the major content rather than trivia -monitoring ongoing activities to determine whether goals are being achieved -taking corrective action when failures in comparison are detected. (Brown, 1980) (p354)

Baker and Brown argue that there should be three main factors included in any cognitive skills training program(p381):-training and practice in the use of task-specific strategies (skills training) -instruction in the orchestration, overseeing, and monitoring of these skills (self-regulation training)-information concerning the significance and outcome of these activities and their range of utility (awareness training)' They believe that students need to understand why these skills are important, as well as when and how to use them, in order to appreciate and apply them.

Reading electronicallyNotes from Elizabeth Hanson-Smith

Multimedia enhancements are intended to motivate and ensure a more memorable experience

– Vocabulary games give language exposure and practice in order to build the automatic recognition needed to read fluently.

– Cloze passages to predict words – Timed reading to increase speed– reading vocabulary

grammar acquisition concordancing,– Skimming and scanning– Extensive reading in web quests– Chaos management in audio, video and text chat

• Teachers using website design can alleviate some of the problems of the vast confusing array of materials presented on the internet

• Very early on in her paper, Kasper(2000) makes the important point that:'...succeeding in a digital, information-oriented society demands multiliteracies, that is, competence in an even more diverse set of functional, academic, critical, and electronic skills.' (p.105)

As so much information is available online, she draws our attention to the fact that:'Further, they must become critically literate, defined here as the ability to evaluate the validity and reliability of informational sources so that they may draw appropriate conclusions from their research efforts. Finally, in our digital age of information, students must become electronically literate, able "to select and use electronic tool for communication, construction, research, and autonomous learning”

Kasper talks about some research which she did, using the New London Group's (NLG) four point pedagogy of how to become multiliterate (p110-111):

1-Situated Practice - 'facilitates literacy development through an authentic learning environment that provides direct experience with tasks students value and intellectual stimulation from teachers and peers who ask thoughtful questions and provide supportive coaching.'

2- Overt Instruction - 'the goal of overt instruction is to enable the learner to gain "conscious awareness of and control over what is being learned," and meeting this goal requires and interaction between students and teacher that allows learners "to accomplish a task more complex than they could accomplish on their own" (NLG, 1996, p. 86)'

3- Critical Framing - 'encourages learners to evaluate what they have learned, to constructively critique that learning, and to creatively extend and apply it to new contexts (NLG, 1996, p. 87)‘ 4- Transformed Practice - 'to help students simultaneously apply and revise what they have learned and then to put this understanding to work in reaching their own goals and fulfilling their own values (NLG, 1996, p. 87)'

Personal learning

One point seems evident which Kasper(2000) makes, and we feel is not only relevant to ESL students' development, but also to how we ourselves have progressed on our three week webquest:

'The focus discipline group offered ESL students the opportunity to become part of a diverse community of learners, who worked together to construct knowledge. In the study described here, students began by researching topics on their own and then joining with the group to summarize and evaluate each of the sources found.

The learning environment created through collaborative focus discipline research encouraged students to view their peers as additional knowledge resources, each who brought his or her own unique perspective on the issues and topics studied (as well as his or her own personal reason for studying them). Multiliteracies were developed as students engaged in social and academic discourse with focus discipline group members, elaborating and reflecting on both their own ideas and those of their peers.' (p113)

• Whilst reading the research we took notes beside each paragraph about how this relates to our own teaching situation-this is activating prior knowledge and assisting comprehension, (applying Baker and Brown’s skills set–see reading for retention) This could be a strategy that we use in the classroom as detailed in the ETR approach

• As we were summarizing we had to go back and make headings and look back at the ‘big picture’. This is a writing/planning strategy which could be used to ‘rein students in ‘when their work loses focus.

References:•Baker, L & Brown, A. 'Metacognitive Skills and Reading', in Handbook of Reading Research, Pearson, P, Barr, R, Kamil, M, (1984)

•Chun, D and Plass, J, Facilitating Reading Comprehension with Multimedia, System, Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 503-519, 1996

•Chun, D and Plass, M Facilitating Reading Comprehension with Multimedia, System, Vol. 24, No. 4. pp503-519, 1996

•Coiro, J. (2003). Reading comprehension on the Internet: Expanding our understanding of reading comprehension to encompass new literacies. The Reading Teacher, 56(6). [Available online] http://www.readingonline.org/electronic/elec_index.asp?HREF=/electronic/RT/203_column/index.html

•DILLENBOURG, P., BAKER, M., BLAYE, A. & O'MALLEY, C.(1996) The evolution of research on collaborative learning.In E. Spada & P. Reiman (Eds) Learning in Humans and Machine: Towards an interdisciplinary learning science. (Pp. 189-211). Oxford: Elsevier

•Hanson-Smith, E. (2003) Reading Electronically: Challenges and Responses to the Reading Puzzle in Technologically-Enhanced Environments The Reading Matrix Vol 3, No.3, November 2003 [online] http://www.readingmatrix.com/archives.html

•J. MICHAEL O’MALLEY;ANNA UHL CHAMOT; GLORIA STEWNER-MANZANARES; ROCCO P. RUSSO; LISA KÜPPER(1985). Learing Strategy Applications with Students of English as a Second Language. TESOL Quarterly. 19:3•Kasper, L, New Technologies, New Literacies: Focus Discipline Research and ESL Learning Communities,Language Learning & Technology, Vol. 4, No. 2, (2000) pp. 105-128

•Lawerence L. (2007). Cognition and metacognition Reading Strategies Revisited: Implications for Instructions. The Reading Matrix. 7:1 pp 55 •Oxford, R & Nyikos, M (1989), Variables Affecting Choice of Language Learning Strategies by University Students