Comprehension Strategies: A Response to Walczyk's 1994 "The Development of Verbal Efficiency, Metacognitive Strategies, and Their Interplay"
. "The Development of Verbal Efficiency, Metacognitive Strategies, and Their Interplay" ( Walczyk , 1994) uses Perfetti's (1985) Verbal Efficiency Theory as the lens with which to view the construct of comprehension. The following is a response to a couple of questions raised by Dr. Omer Ari in regards to this article. 1. On page 182, Walczyk discusses “compensatory mechanisms” and the conditions under which they may be used. What does he mean by “compensatory mechanisms”? Compensatory mechanisms are the comprehension strategies students might use to repair comprehension. These strategies require that the reader be metacognitive . Once a breakdown in reading comprehension has been detected, the reader has several courses of action, depending upon where the breakdown occurred. For example, a student can read slower. If the information decays in working memory, the reader can re-read the text (or that portion of the text). The reader can pause to summari