FOSTERING CHILDRENS REVISION SKILLS THROUGH TRAINING IN COMPREHENSION MONITORING

Elementary school children generally do not revise frequently or skillfully in the classroom. Two studies were conducted to learn if children's ability to revise problematic texts could be facilitated through training in a comprehension monitoring strategy. In the first study, third- and sixth-grade children who were trained in a self-questioning text-evaluation strategy located and revised significantly more target text problems than did control children. The goal of the second study was to compare the effects of prior exposure to problematic texts and self-questioning strategy training. The results showed that a combination of the two approaches was most effective in increasing third graders' revision scores. The results from both studies show that acquiring a strategy for evaluating the comprehensibility of a text can help children make appropriate revisions to improve that text's communicative quality.