Reading processing, metacognitve strategies and teaching: revisiting the themes

Abstract

In the light of psycholinguistics, the article investigates reading, reading processing and the use of metacognitive strategies in the Brazilian school context. The research aimed at two groups of the eighth grade of a public school in Florianópolis, SC, Brazil in 2005. In order to carry it out four instruments were applied: (1) the identification questionnaire in order to collect information related to name, place and date of birth and if students had repeatead any grade before; (2) the psycosociolinguistic questionnarie to find out reading and writing habits of the participants; (3) the pre-test to evaluate reading performance before intervention and (4) the post-test to evalute reading performance after intervention. The results of PISA (Programme of International Student Assessment, 2000) and of the INAF (Índice Nacional de Analfabetismo Funcional, 2001, 2003, 2005) served as base for this research and showed that Brazilians read, but are limited to locate and recover explicit information. The alternative hypothesis affirms that students submitted to a programme of devolopment of metacognitive strategies achieve a better reading performance. The data served to test the hypothesis after the quantitative, statistic and qualitative analysis. The quantitative results of the post-test showed that there was variability on the scores. The statistical analysis enabled the confirmation that there was a significative difference between pre and post- tests. It was possible to confirm the alternative hypothesis of this research.