Which statement best describes metacognitive strategies for monitoring comprehension?

• A. Rely on decoding alone.
• B. Skimming without stopping to think.
• C. Subvocalizing while reading.
• D. Self-questioning, summarizing, predicting, and clarifying misconceptions during reading.

Answer: (D)

The key idea here is metacognitive strategies that help you monitor and regulate understanding as you read. Metacognition means thinking about your own thinking, so these strategies involve actively checking what you understand, asking yourself questions, and adjusting as you go.

Self-questioning keeps you engaged with the text by prompting you to verify meaning, clarify confusing parts, and confirm you’re following the plot or argument. Summarizing forces you to put ideas into your own words, which helps you see what’s clear and what isn’t. Predicting keeps you actively forecasting what might happen next or what a section will argue, which reinforces engagement and consistency in meaning. Clarifying misconceptions is about noticing when something doesn’t make sense, revisiting the text, and realigning your understanding with what the author is conveying. Taken together, these practices actively support understanding rather than passively reading.

Relying on decoding alone focuses on word-level skills without ensuring overall comprehension. Skimming without stopping to think bypasses the very monitoring process that helps you catch misunderstandings. Subvocalizing is a reading habit that may aid fluency for some but doesn’t explicitly describe monitoring and regulating comprehension.