Students with language learning disabilities (LLD) demonstrate difficulties with word recognition and listening comprehension skills (Catts & Hogan, 2003; Catts & Kamhi, 2005). These deficits negatively impact their ability to develop effective reading comprehension skills. Despite the current literature available to educators regarding the benefits of explicit instruction in both listening comprehension and reading comprehension strategies, few are providing this type of instruction within the academic setting (Pressley, 2002). Pressley, Wharton-McDonald, Mistretta, and Echevarria (1998) discovered that most teachers assessed their students’ knowledge of strategies after they read rather than providing explicit instruction in the use of these strategies before, during, and after reading (Pressley). This lack of explicit strategies instruction may cause students with LLD to become dependent on support staff, such as speech-language pathologists and special educators, to guide them to construct meaning from classroom lectures and textbooks. Students with LLD may develop a learned helplessness that does little to promote the knowledge and use of strategies necessary to function independently within the academic setting.
Several intervention approaches have been successful in improving reading comprehension and listening comprehension skills of students with and without disabilities. These approaches include explicit training in metacognition, which involves learning and applying various strategies while listening and reading (Graham & Wong, 2001; Mason, Snyder, Sukhram, & Kedem, 2006; Meloth, 1990; Paris & Paris, 2001); comprehension monitoring (Kinnunen & Vauras, & Niemi, 1998; Walters & Chapman, 2000); and text structure knowledge (Garner & Bochna, 2004; Newby, Caldwell, & Recht, 1989) Several studies have shown that when explicit strategies instruction is provided using one modality, either reading or listening, the improvements observed in one modality transferred to the other (Aarnoutse, 1997; Garner & Bochna, 2004; Hendrick & Cunningham, 2002; Lehto & Anttila, 2003). This indicated that students who receive metacognitive strategies instruction using either listening or reading tasks could potentially improve skills in both areas.
Based on the research, this study sought to determine the effects of explicit instruction in metacognition including strategies instruction, comprehension monitoring, and text structure knowledge on listening comprehension and reading comprehension of students with LLD.