Developing Reading Strategies Through Reciprocal Teaching Method

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of strategy training on the improvement of reading proficiency of Korean EFL college students. The training procedure was based on Reciprocal Teaching Method developed by Brown and Palincsar (1984). It involves four concrete activities to teach comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring strategies explicitly. The four activities are summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. Strategy training was provided to 68 students enrolled in a College English for Liberal Arts course in the spring semester of 1996. Pre- and post-tests were administered prior and after the training, and students were grouped according to their reading proficiency level, based on the pre-test scores: high, intermediate, and low. The following research questions were addressed: "Dose strategy training through Reciprocal Teaching Method enhance L2 reading?" If so, "Which reading proficiency group is influenced most by the training?" The results show that strategy training is effective in enhancing EFL reading, and that the effectiveness of the training varies with L2 reading proficiency ; the students in the low proficiency group improved the most on the posttest. The results of the study suggest that foreign language reading pedagogy, especially for adult students in academic settings, should benefit from the explicit and direct strategy teaching.