Use of Meta-comprehensive Strategies to Strengthen Reading Comprehension in Second-Cycle Students from a Public School at Bogotá, Colombia

This research inquired about the effect of a classroom intervention in metacomprehension strategies, specifically self-questioning, on reading comprehension improvement in third and fourth - graders. Reading comprehension was understood as a process that relates content, text and inferences, and is facilitated by metacomprehension or metacognitive processes applied to reading comprehension. The participants were third- and fourth-grade students: the intervention group (which had an initial assessment, and were submitted to classroom intervention in metacomprehension using self-questioning—implemented by the first three authors—, and had a final assessment), and the control group (which had initial assessment, the usual classroom work with other teachers, and final assessment). The Comprensión Lingüística Progresiva (clp, Alliende, Condemarín & Milicic, 2004)—a reading comprehension test—and the students’ metacomprehensive strategies questionnaire were administered to students in both groups, in the initial and final assessments. This information was complemented with interview data from other teachers (different from the authors) in order to know their perspective on reading comprehension underlying their reading teaching practices. Results showed a rise in reading comprehension tests scores and diversification in the use of metacomprehensive strategies only in the intervention group, and different conceptions of reading comprehension in other teachers, which had nothing to do with metacomprehension strategies