Which cognitive process involves awareness and regulation of one's own thinking and learning strategies?

• A. Receptive language
• B. Metacognition
• C. Semantic
• D. Expressive language

Answer: (B)

Metacognition is thinking about one's own thinking. It involves being aware of what you know and what you don’t, choosing strategies to learn, and adjusting them as you work. In a learning task, you might plan the steps before starting, monitor your understanding as you go, and decide to reread, summarize, or change strategies if comprehension stalls. Afterward, you evaluate how well your approach worked and what to adjust next time. The other terms describe language skills—receptive language is understanding language, expressive language is producing language, and semantic relates to word meaning—so they don’t capture the idea of monitoring and controlling thinking and learning processes.