Effects of Two Instructional Procedures on Spanish University Students’ Comprehension Monitoring when Reading Science Texts in English

Two instructional approaches on comprehension monitoring in English as FL are contrasted. Although using the same materials (elementary science texts), one of them is based on tasks focusing on vocabulary and grammar, and the other one is based on main ideas identification and textual coherence. The English proficiency level was controlled and comprehension monitoring measures were obtained in the pretest and the posttest using embedded micro and macro-structural inconsistencies in texts. Results showed that teaching students to read in order to understand main ideas and to elaborate the text macrostructure produce better results than focusing attention on discourse low-level components.