Writing Strategies for Fostering Reading Comprehension

Educational methods for developing metacognitive strategies received increased attention in the last decades, especially in the field of fostering reading comprehension. We proposed to research the possibility of stimulating the use of reader's metacognitive strategies in reading by specifically designed writing instruction. After selecting four reading strategies which improve comprehension, special writing instructions were elaborated for stimulating the use of these strategies. We have reformulated two expository texts from textbooks used in the 4th and 7th grade of elementary education in concordance to the writing tactics, and tested student's comprehension. According to results, reading comprehension improved significantly for the reformulated texts. An eight-week writing instructional program was applied in 4th grade classes. Comparing the pre-and post-test results with false-treatment and control groups indicated significant increase in using metacognitive strategies in writing. Results indicate that metacognitive strategies in writing for more comprehendible texts can be trained in elementary grades. (C) 2015 Published Elsevier Ltd.