Metacognition, reading goals and didactic activities of Portuguese as a mother tongue

Most reading activities presented in Portuguese as mother tongue course books propose only "copy-and-paste" questions of explicit information from texts, stressing only part of the entire cognitive process of reading. These activities do not help students understand reading as a cognitive and a metacognitive process which requires the establishment of reading goals; therefore they do not help students and teachers assess the students' reading quality. Based on research into metacognition and reading goals, and through observation of a students' book reading activity, this article highlights causes and consequences of the problem at issue. It also proposes an activity which aims to evaluate the students' reading quality and discusses how we can help them understand reading as an action also defined by the objectives for the construction of meaning from the reading of a given text.

cognition; metacognition; reading objectives; Portuguese-teaching course books; Portuguese as mother tongue