Metacognition

Metacognition is a student’s self-awareness of his/her own learning – his/her learning progress and learning strategies. It means thinking about what we know, and self-monitoring how we learn. More successful students employ metacogntion, in that they are aware of their learning and learning processes, and they monitor themselves to evaluate and adjust their study skills for more effective studying.

1 Characteristics

Students with metacognitive skills approach their studies by identifying “what I know,” “what I don’t know,” and “what I want to learn about.” As they begin a study session, while studying, or outside of their study sessions, they ask themselves self-evaluation questions like these.

• What do I know about this subject?
• How much time do I need to spend on this?
• What would be good strategies or ways of learning this?
• How can I estimate or predict the outcome of this task?
• How should I revise or adapt my study procedures, strategies, or methods?
• How can I spot an error if I make one?
• Did I understand what I just read?

If the student realizes that s/he doesn’t see connections or understand concepts, s/he tries to do so, and adjusts study techniques accordingly, or knows how to ask for help. Successful students also engage in self-regulation and self-monitoring of their learning, in that they naturally use the following self-monitoring techniques.

• Make and refine predictions about what they are reading
• Maintain attention during instruction and problem solving
• Make connections between new knowledge and previous knowledge
• Ask themselves questions
• Know how to adapt their approaches when not succeeding or when doing somethingwrong
• Focus on the more important aspects or information of a task or text
• Tune out or focus less on less important information
• Recognize when a relationship or connection occurs or is implied
• Use visualization when reading and problem solving
• Consider the worth of ideas
• Know when and where to ask for help
• Set priorities

2 Activities to promote metacognition

To help students with their study skills, you might take time to have them try some of the following activities, to become more aware of their study skills.

2.1 Mental rehearsal

Have them mentally rehearse a problem or procedure. Have them mentally rehearse the steps to solving a problem. Also have them verbally articulate the procedures for solving a problem.

2.2 Journaling about their learning

Have them write a personal journal, in which they describe their study habits, study process, and evaluate the effectiveness of their study habits.

2.3 Introspecting about their writing process or work processes

Have them introspect and write or talk about how they go about writing an essay, write a major assignment, or work on a major project or assignment. This includes how they get started, come up with ideas, create drafts, revise, and practice.

2.4 Self-evaluation of their learning and progress

Have the student introspect and reflect on his/her study habits and learning strategies, whether they are effective, and how s/he could improve. You can have students do this as a written assignment, or by interviewing the student, or by having students discuss and articulate this with each other in pairs or small groups.

2.5 Introspecting about their motivation (see entry on motivation)

Have students (in pairs, small groups, or with you) reflect on and share about their motivation for learning; refer to the questions at the end of the unit on motivation.

2.6 Think-aloud

Have one or students work through a problem, and have them verbalize their thinking processes and how they are trying to solve the problem. This can be done in pairs, or between you and the student. Note that it is actually difficult, and there are limitations to how well people can introspect about their thinking processes, so don’t expect too much; this is just a self-awareness building exercise.

2.7 Prediction and inferencing

Have the student read a passage. Stop her before the end and ask her to predict what will happen, or what point the writer is getting to. Ask questions about the passage, or about a problem, that require her to make guesses or inferences beyond the information that is directly available.

2.8 Error analysis

Have the student analyze his/her mistakes and articulate the reasons, e.g., try to get him/her to identify the mistakes in reasoning. If you want to focus on language learning, have the student read a passage aloud, record it, and play it back. Have the student try to identify errors in reading or pronunciation, and how s/he was led astray (e.g., she should realize that she confused two similar words while reading).