Correct Response: B: Self-monitoring skills are metacognitive skills that are an essential part of reading comprehension. Self-monitoring involves being aware of one's thinking during reading, including actively thinking about a text's meaning (e.g., whether the vocabulary is familiar, whether the text makes sense, what parts of the text are challenging or confusing) and engaging in self-questioning about the text during reading. By teaching the English learner self-monitoring skills, the student will be able to recognize when comprehension has broken down, determine the area(s) of difficulty, and take action (e.g., rereading, determining the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary) in order to repair comprehension. Text-feature analysis involves learning how to use text features (e.g., headings, subheadings, bold text, photographs, diagrams, captions) to support reading comprehension. Such text features can provide schema and context in informational texts and often help clarify the content presented in the text. Since science textbooks frequently utilize text features, the English learner in this scenario can become a more strategic reader by learning text-feature analysis. A is incorrect because simply learning to skim a text to determine its language demands will not provide the student with strategies for meeting those demands. The ability to make personal connections to a text (C) may help motivate the student to continue reading but does not improve the student's comprehension. D is incorrect because the student is described as a fluent reader, which implies that the student is already an accurate decoder (fluency involves reading a text accurately, at an appropriate rate, and with appropriate expression). Decoding is an area of strength for the student, so focusing on reviewing decoding skills is unlikely to improve the student's reading comprehension.
