STRATEGIES AND METACOGNITIVE SKILL

The Summary and Responds

Afif Ikhwanul M

INTRODUCTION

Strategies are action selected deliberately to achieve particular goals. (Paris et al. 1996 in Hudson, 2011:108). Skills refer to information-processing techniques that are automatic, whether at the level of recognizing phoneme-grapheme correspondence or summarizing story. Learning strategies are mental process that students can consciously control when they have a learning goal. (Chamot in Richard-Amato, Snow, 2005:93). 3 categories of learning strategies: metacognitive, cognitive, and social/effect. (Chamot in Richard-Amato, Snow, 2005:93). Metacognitive model describes the learning process by examine the types of strategies that are useful before engaging in a task (Planning Strategies), during engagement in the task (Monitoring and Problem-Solving Strategies), and after completing the task (Evaluating Strategies). (Chamot in Richard-Amato, Snow, 2005:94)

·          Planning Strategies

a.       Goal-setting and Selective attention; focus on specific ideas or key word as they prepare to listen or read,

b.      Organizational planning; engage in a variety of pre-writing activities (brainstorming, quick-writing, and the like) to plan the content and sequence of their composition.

c.       Making prediction make logical guesses about what will happen and Background or Prior knowledge, think about and use what you already know to help you do the task. (Chamot in Richard-Amato, Snow, 2005:94)

·         Monitoring strategies focus primarily on sense-making and awareness of whether they are communicating their ideas successfully.

a.       Prior knowledge; make associations and compere it with incoming new information to better comprehend the meaning.

b.      Selective attention; focus on important information (structure, key words, phrases, or ideas) and not become distracted by new words that are not essential to the main ideas of passage.

c.       Imagery (Visualization), to imagine the people or events in the reading or listening text. (Chamot in Richard-Amato, Snow, 2005:94)

·         Problem-Solving Strategies

a.       Making inference, use context and what you know to figure out the meanings of new words

b.      Substituting a similar word when the exact word is unknown or cannot be remembered.

c.       Cooperating with others to find solutions, build confidence, and give and receive feedback.

d.      Taking notes, write down important words and ideas and using resources such as reference materials and technology-accessed information. (Chamot in Richard-Amato, Snow, 2005:94)

Evaluating Strategies help students not only revise and improve the final product, but also engage in reflection and self-evaluation.

a.       Summarizing, after reading a paragraph or text, a student might try to make a mental summary in order to evaluate his or her comprehension.

b.      Self-Evaluation, identify what they know and can do as a result of engaging in a particular learning task. (Chamot in Richard-Amato, Snow, 2005:94)

In applying metacognitive strategies the readers relies on what has been learned in the past about achieving cognitive goals. Metacognitive model of strategic learning is a recursive model. It means that at any time during a learning task, a student may go back to a previous stage. For example, while monitoring the progress of a task, a student might feel some uncertainty about whether he or she is on the right track. By returning to the planning stage, this student can check on the task’s goal and requirement and adjust any misconceptions. (Chamot in Richard-Amato, Snow, 2005:95)

Metacognition has come to the fore in identify how to improve students learning. Metacognition means that students understand their own learning, how they learn best, how they learn less effectively, i.e. a process of self-evaluation of their learning strategies and successes. Deep learning promotes metacognition, as do higher order thinking and collaborative learning. Metacognition can be deliberately developed through  a variety of means: require students to reflect on their own learning, work through problem visually/graphically. conduct debriefing, use co-operative learning and feed back from, and to, students, introduce, and build on, cognitive conflict (a puzzling experience which contradicts others) and constructive disagreement, and have students considered:

1.      Examining aims, goals, and objectives

2.      Examining all sides of an issue/argument

3.      The plus, minus and interesting points in a situation

4.      The consequences of and sequel to, a situation (Cohen, Manion, dan Morrison, 2004:176)

Learners must first become aware of structure of text, as well as knowledge of the task, possible strategies, and their own characteristics. Metacognitive knowledge

a.       Knowledge of person

Successful students tend to relate information in texts to previous knowledge, where less successful students show little tendency to use their knowledge to clarify the text at hand.

b.      Knowledge of task

It includes two categories:

1.      Understand the nature of the information, relates to how familiar one is with the information.

2.      Comprehending the inherent demands of the task, e.g. comprehend two passages.

c.       Knowledge of strategies, involve such activities as looking for text structure within the passage. It is for monitoring an individual’s cognitive progress and how to remedy comprehension failure.

While reading, good readers will reread particular passage for clarification meanwhile poor readers will not reread the problematic section of the text. Brown (1987 in Hudson, 2011:115) explain that an activity such as looking for the main idea in reading comprehension can be seen as a cognitive strategy when it serves the goal of reading comprehension, or as metacognitive when it is used to self-evaluate comprehension.

RESPONDS

            Reading somehow complicated skill which many students argue as the harder skill to achieve than listening and speaking, especially for ESP students who are lack of vocabularies and some of them are not satisfy with thier proposed study. As my experience, giving understanding of the activating students metacognitives helps students in reading. I do agree with what has been explained by Chamot in Richard-Amato, Snow (2005:94) which in teaching of reading three things must be employed with students’ metacognitive existence : planning, monitoring, and problem-solving activity. In planning, lecturer guides students to aware what goal will they achieve in their study. In monitoring, students aware to analyze thier works based on thier experience. In problem-solving, students are able to syntesize inference from material they read based on persuation by the lecturer.