Efficacy of Note-Taking Skills Instruction Supported by Self-Monitoring on the Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Note-taking, considered to be a combination of cognitive abilities, requires more than just writing. This is because note-taking is a conscious process that initiates reader into the process of comprehending and writing and requires, the note-taker to encode, organize clearly, to synthesize and to recall of the information. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of note-taking skills instructional intervention supported by self‐monitoring skill instruction on the reading comprehension of three primary school 4th grade students who read at frustration-level at their grade placement. The students' initial reading comprehension level was evaluated by the use the “Informal Analysis Inventory”. A multiple baseline across-participants-design was used in the study. Reading comprehension questions (both recall and deep understanding) pertaining to expository passages were used to evaluated the participants’ reading comprehension in all the probe sessions. Social validity data were collected from the participants on the instructional intervention. Results showed that the instructional intervention contributed to all the participants’ reading comprehension skills and note-taking performance. Each of the participant achieved at the instructional-level comprehension (Comprehension levels> 70%) after the self‐monitoring skills instruction. The social validity results confirmed that the students found that they had a better understanding of what they read taking more accurate and concise notes by paraphrasing the content instead of the use of verbatim copying.