There are many ways to become more aware of your own reading behaviors and be able to monitor and make decisions about them. Specifically, you can
- recognize the reading strategies you do use–such as skimming, predicting, or questioning–and be aware of when you use them
- learn new strategies and evaluate them
- recognize that different readings have different genres and levels of difficulty and may require different levels of prior knowledge on your part
- be aware of the purpose you’re reading and vary your reading strategies accordingly
- select appropriate strategies for different reading situations
- develop standards for comprehension failure, so that you can recognize when you don’t understand what you’re reading?
- recognize when any of the following makes a difference in your comprehension:
* not understanding a word
* not relating the idea to your own knowledge
* not recognizing contradictions within the text
* not recognizing when you don’t see how the parts of a sentence are related
* not recognizing when you don’t see the relationship between sentences or parts of the essay
* not recognizing when there is information or perspectives missing