Metacognitive Critical Reading

What is metacognition? Metacognition is, very literally, “thinking about our thinking.” But what does that mean? And why does it matter?

We are metacognitive readers when we work to understand by actively summarizing content as we go along, making connections with what we already know, asking questions about what we don’t understand, making predictions about an author’s main points, and noticing and adjusting our approach to pay closer attention to the text: “As students become more skilled at using metacognitive strategies, they gain confidence and become more independent as learners” (EAL Center).

Here are some words we might associate with metacognition:

• Self-perceptive,
• Self-regulating,
• Self-understanding,
• Self-assessing, and
• Self-correcting.

METACOGNITIVE ACTIVITIES

The following table presents easy steps to metacognitive strategies to your reading and study habits in this course and beyond.

Strategy: Preview Reading Assignments

Previewing reading assignments helps you think about your purpose for reading before you start to read. It also helps you connect new content to what you already know, making it easier to stay interested and focused on the reading.

Here’s a list of questions to ask yourself before you start to read:

• Why did my professor assign this? What does she want me to get out of this?
• What do I need to do with this information after I read it?
• What’s this text about?
• What do I already know about it?
• What questions do I have that this text might answer?

Strategy: Talk to the Text

You also might have heard this called “annotating,” which is just a fancy way of saying that you take notes. We encourage you to use a pen or pencil instead of a highlighter if you’re marking on a hardcopy page. You can underline, place a star, write a question mark, summarize difficult ideas, or ask questions in the margins. Many PDF readers allow you to do similar work, as well. Reading actively in this way is metacognitive because as you read you’re constantly interacting with the text and checking your understanding.

Strategy: Asking Questions

Asking questions is a really important way to interact with a text. We can ask questions about a reading before we read, while we’re reading, and after we read. Each has its own benefits.

Before reading, when previewing text, use questions to help you connect to prior knowledge or pique your curiosity about the text.

• What ideas here am I already familiar with?
• What doesn’t seem familiar that I want to know more about?
• What do I know about this genre (newspaper article, journal article, chapter in a book, blog posting, etc.)?
• What expectations do I have about this? Why?

While reading, use questions to check your understanding of the text.

• What did that paragraph just say?
• What have I found difficult about this section, and why?
• What am I reading that’s pointing me toward new information or ideas that are unfamiliar?
• What key words are repeated or stand out?
• What passages are standing out to me as important, interesting, or confusing?

After reading, consider what you still want to know or need to review.

• What am I still not understanding that I might want to come back to?
• Can I identify the thesis or main point of what I just read?
• What was the most difficult section (if any)?
• How would I summarize the text in just one word? One sentence?

Strategy: Double-Entry Notes

Double-Entry Notes allow the reader to consider a text (whether an essay, a poem, a short story, a video, a newspaper article, or whatever) from two different perspectives. One way to do this is with an E-I Notetaker, focusing on evidence and interpretation.

In the evidence column, you put facts: what quotes, data, information, ideas from the text are interesting or important?

In the interpretation column, you put your thoughts on the evidence: what is important, relevant, significant, confusing, or difficult about the text?

Double-Entry Notes work really well when the text has an audio function to it, so podcast episodes, movies, videos, newscasts, or even lectures! Then it might look like this.

For difficult texts, your instructor might have you do your double-entry notes more like this example. They might even ask you to find specific aspects of the text like when the author uses an emotional appeal or integrates their own outside sources.

The vocabulary might look a little different, but all of these double-entry notes approaches help you read more deeply and more critically and prepare you for intellectual work like analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Strategy: STC Method

In the STC Method, readers use metacognitive strategies to acknowledge what they already know and then build on that to process new information. This strategy can be used as an annotation-only approach or as a combination annotation and note-taking strategy. It is deceptively simple because it is extremely easy to use but speaks to deep transactional reading activity.

Square = “This squares with what I already know.”

Triangle = “This points to new information.”

Circle = “I have a question about this, and I’d like to process it more before I circle back around to it.”

To use as an annotation strategy: Simply use a writing utensil of some kind to draw squares ロ, triangles △, and circles ০ in the margins as they relate to how you process what you’re reading.

To use as a note-taking strategy: Add in a table like this to reflect on the annotations.

Strategy: KWL-Q

The KWL-Q method asks you to build on previous knowledge, check your understanding, and ask questions. The letters represent these questions:

What do you already KNOW about the topic?

What do you WANT to know about the topic?

What have you LEARNED about the topic?

What QUESTIONS do you still have about the topic?

The first two questions are answered before reading a text; the second two, after. The table below can be used to help students walk through and visualize the process.

KWL-Q is metacognitive because it requires readers to self-regulate their understanding by tracing a line from what they already know to what they still want to learn. There are no right or wrong answers, but the interactions are based on your personal interaction with the text.

As you go through this semester in this class, future semesters, and other classes, you will discover which strategies work best for you or best in which kinds of classes or for particular kinds of texts. The bottom line is that reading something so deeply that you’ll remember it and be able to use it later is really difficult, but it’s also absolutely essential to your success in college. As you practice more, it will feel more natural and come more easily to you.

If you’d like to know more about the science of critical reading and how to make it work for you, check out David Handel's “How to Read Academic Content Once and Remember it Forever.”