The Role of Metalinguistic Awareness in the Reading Comprehension of Sixth and Seventh Graders

While it is generally acknowledged that metalinguistic awareness plays a role in decoding ability (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. 2000. Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: an evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction: Reports of the subgroups, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. (NIH Publication No. 00-4754) [Google Scholar]), less is known about the role metalinguistic awareness plays in comprehension. In the present study, structural riddles and ambiguous sentences differing in the source of linguistic ambiguity were used to study the importance of metalinguistic awareness in reading comprehension. One hundred sixth and seventh graders were tested on 25 structural riddles and 40 ambiguous sentences. Performance was correlated with scores on the reading comprehension and vocabulary subtests of the GMRT4 (MacGinitie, MacGinitie, Maria, & Dreyer, 2000 MacGinitie, W. H., MacGinitie, R. K., Maria, K. and Dreyer, L. 2000. Gates-MacGinitie reading tests, , 4th ed., Chicago: Riverside Publishing Company. [Google Scholar]). It was found that both tasks correlated significantly with reading comprehension and vocabulary. A multiple hierarchical regression found that riddle solving explained unique variance in the reading comprehension scores, after vocabulary was statistically controlled. This is interpreted as evidence that metalinguistic awareness is an ability separate from general linguistic intelligence, which contributes to reading comprehension. The implications for instruction are discussed.