Comprehension strategy training in content areas

The main objective of this paper is to present the results of two studies developed to test the effectiveness of teaching different strategies for identifying important information in the context of ordinary instruction. Training in both studies can be characterised as metacognitively oriented and contextualised in content areas. Also, the same strategies have been the object of training in both cases. Previous knowledge activation and diagrammatic representation of relations among text ideas were among the main strategies trained. 31 subjects (11 to 12 years-old) participated in the first study, and 104 (11 to 14 years-old) in the second one. In both cases, subjects were divided into two groups, experimental and control. Assessment was made through an interview carried out separately with two texts. Results reached statistical significance mainly in study 2, but only for students in higher grades. These results show the effectiveness of the kind of training developed and the importance of taking into account the developmental and/or academic level of students in order to determinate when to introduce strategy training.