Teaching Metalinguistic Awareness and Reading Comprehension with Riddles

New evidence shows that some types of metalinguistic awareness could be important for reading comprehension in much the same way that phonemic awareness is important for learning to decode. In a recent study, students between 7 and 9 years old were taught to manipulate language and understand the multiple meanings of ambiguous words and sentences. This brief training program resulted in improved scores on standardized tests of reading comprehension. One of the most successful elements of this training was a session on understanding and producing riddles. Riddles are the perfect medium for learning how to manipulate language for many reasons, including students' familiarity with them and motivation for reading them. This paper contains the procedures used for writing riddles with primary-grade students as well as observations on the riddling abilities that can be expected from students with widely varying reading abilities. (Contains 3 figures and 2 tables.)