Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to discuss the effectiveness of teaching metacognitive strategies to improve the comprehension of written texts to primary school pupils. Reading metacognition refers both to knowledge abbot strategies (declarative, procedural, conditional) and to the ability to implement strategies (metacognitive control). Expert readers use metacognitive strategies before, during, and after reading the text, such as goal setting, activating prior knowledge, predicting, clarifying, visualizing, questioning, monitoring comprehension, identifying the structure of the texts or summarizing. Opinions about the introduction of these strategies in primary school are controversial, but empirical studies show that they improve comprehension of written texts even in young schoolchildren.
