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Metacognitive skills are important for text comprehension, especially at university where most learning processes are unsupervised, and students rely on self-control and regulation when reading for comprehension. In today's universities, English as L2 has become the vehicle language for teaching and learning. However, some studies have concluded that university students who read English as L2 have inadequate metacognitive monitoring skills. Higher level processing skills, such as comprehension monitoring, are difficult to study and then improve. The main goal of the present study was to analyze the mental processing of readers when they monitored expository texts in English as L2 considering their English proficiency. Mental processing was related to readers' behavior when performing a reading task by using a set of variables guided by a psychological mechanism proposed for inconsistency detection. A total of 169 university students participated. The task was modeled on the error detection paradigm, which involved assessing the comprehensibility of scientific texts in English and reporting comprehension difficulties encountered. A special software was used to collect detailed data online about the readers' text processing and written reports. The results confirmed the set of processing variables and the theory-based predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper analyses the reasons for comprehension monitoring failure and the regulatory actions performed by Spanish university students when reading in English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Two different but connected empirical studies were conducted to obtain data about students' behaviour during a reading task. In Study 1, comprehension monitoring was assessed following the Error Detection Paradigm. Then, semistructured interviews were conducted to analyse subjects' regulatory actions. In Study 2, a questionnaire was proposed to classify subjects' detection X regulation actions when reading in EFL. Results showed that participants' comprehension monitoring level was not very high according to other literature findings. Moreover, the lack of language proficiency could imply additional processing and monitoring difficulties. The questionnaire accounted for a great percentage of participants' behaviour: semantic obstacles, spurious detections, no re-reading, skip information or no detection. Knowing students' reading obstacles is necessary for teachers and practitioners in order to help students become effective readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, various research works have focussed on assessing teachers' pedagogic knowledge, especially in science and mathematics. However, few works in the field of language have designed and validated tools for this purpose. The present work aims to progress in this line of research by designing and validating a questionnaire to assess the Spanish-language disciplinary knowledge of pre-service teachers. Spanish students from the degree in Primary School Education and Master's in Secondary Education as well as experts in didactics of language and in validating questionnaires participated. To analyse its content validity, we used the Delphi method and, to study consistency, we performed a psychometric analysis using the test-retest reliability method. The instrument was found to be consistent and valid. The results were below what was expected and revealed that the sample showed a clear shortcoming in disciplinary content in Spanish language. These data seem to be in line with those obtained in other areas. Consequently, CoDiLe can contribute to defining and remedying these possible deficiencies by providing consistent data to teacher trainers to guide their practice more effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]