Now that we know how to set reading goals, predict, highlight, and retain information from a text, it is time to learn how to monitor our progress and make deeper connections with the information we've gathered to the text's main idea. You will learn to ask yourself questions such as:
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Why are the words I've highlighted important?
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How does this passage/poem make me feel? Why?
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What conclusions can I make from these details?
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Why did I choose these answers?
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What is the main idea of this poem?
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Do I have any previous experiences that relate to the central message of this poem?
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The cognitive reading strategies we will be looking at are inferencing, self-reflection, and elaboration.
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Terms to Know
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Monitoring: In monitoring, you are observing your own performance simultaneously while preforming a task (Malone, 2020). Questions that assist with monitoring are: how well did I understand this? What did I feel or think about as I read it? What images came to my mind? Why did I choose this answer?
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Inferencing: Inferencing is best defined as an assumption or conclusion made based on reasoning and evidence. Think of the details you highlighted earlier like a spring board. Inferencing is the leap you make from those details that land you closer to the main idea of a text.
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Self Reflection: Self-reflection refers to the thoughts surrounding your motives, reasons, and actions. You will need to learn to question yourself as you read in order to develop metacognitive reading awareness.
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Procedural Knowledge: You gain procedural knowledge by building your knowledge of cognitive strategies. The knowledge refers to "the knowledge of how to perform a specific skill or task" (Training Industry, 2017). The more you move through this program, the more techniques you will learn.
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Elaboration: Elaboration is when we take new knowledge and connect it to our prior knowledge. (Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013). In elaboration, one should strive to answer: What do I already know about this idea? How do my experiences with this idea predispose my opinions towards this idea? Where have I seen this idea before?
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Recommended tutorial on elaboration: ​
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Tone:
The speaker in a poem often has a tone, or attitude, with which he is speaking. All reading passages have a tone. It is important to pick up on the tone as often this helps us decipher the purpose of a passage. For instance, if an author's tone is objective, this means that the text may be trying to see both sides of an issue. If the tone is critical, then we can infer the author may be unhappy with the subject or topic of a text.
Word Choice:
The words an author or speaker use to convey meaning are critical. Word choice helps us decipher tone. For instance, if an author says about a motel room: "the grotesque sheets lay crumpled about the bed," the strong words such as "grotesque" reveal a melodramatic attitude where as if he were to simply say "dirty," we could assume the author was more objective in his assessment of the room.
Shifts​
A shift occurs when speakers or writers alter their style or tone in a piece. It is often accompanied by a shift in focus. The author or speaker may introduce one idea only to refute with another idea that follows words such as "But" or "However." Slighter shifts may occur when the author is concluding his support and entering his main idea. These shifts can be indicated by words such as "Therefore" and "In conclusion."
Visualization​
Visualization is a cognitive learning strategy use to help a learner visualize information in order to make it more meaningful and, therefore, memorable (Taylor, 2019). When reading a text, you may want to visualize what is happening in the text to boost comprehension and recall before, during, and after reading. This is a proven, worthwhile technique, especially if you struggle with attention difficulties.
Tutorial for Level 2
Step 1: Monitoring
Let's return to the poem "The Road Not Taken" and build upon the practice we have already done with that text.
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Now that we've set our goal, highlighted our important words and phrases, retained the important details, and summarized the poem on a literal level, let's dive into it's deeper/figurative meaning.
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Like Level 1 quizzes, Level 2 quizzes also have a "Prep Phase" where you will first be asked a series of monitoring questions that will be subjective and pointless. These questions can look like:
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On a scale of 1-10, how well did I understand this poem?
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What words and phrases stuck out to me and why?
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What images came to my mind as I read this poem?
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What confused me about this poem? Why were these things confusing?
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Level 2 Tutorial Quizzes
Follow-up quizzes to the ones found in the Level 1 Tutorial.