What ability does the think-aloud strategy help to develop in students?

The think-aloud strategy is a powerful instructional approach aimed at enhancing reading comprehension skills. When educators model this strategy, they verbalize their thoughts while reading a text. This process allows students to see how proficient readers engage with the material, make predictions, ask questions, and clarify understanding as they read.

By using think-alouds, students learn to approach texts more analytically. They understand the importance of monitoring their comprehension and can practice similar verbalizations, which helps them to internalize strategies such as summarizing, predicting outcomes, and inferring meaning. This direct modeling fosters a deeper engagement with the text and equips students with cognitive strategies they can apply while reading independently, ultimately enhancing their comprehension abilities.

In relation to the other options, while conflict resolution, active listening, and mathematical problem-solving are valuable skills, they are not the primary focus of the think-aloud strategy, which is specifically designed to improve students' reading comprehension through guided reflection and verbal processing of the text.