The Effects of Reciprocal Teaching on Reading Comprehension of Students with Different Competence in English

• Main Authors: Han-juTsai, 蔡涵如
• Other Authors: Chiou-lan Chern
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/08623267336422274380

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系在職進修碩士班 === 102 === A lot of research showed that reciprocal teaching could promote students’ reading comprehension effectively, but few related studies in Taiwan have been conducted to examine the effects by including students of different English competence in a real teaching scenario and comparing the differences between them. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to explore the effects of reciprocal teaching on reading comprehension of students with different proficiency levels, and to investigate their responses and suggestions to the intervention. The participants were 64 ninth graders in a junior high school in Taichung City. Based on their average English scores in the previous semester, the top 50% of the two classes went to a higher achiever class while the rest to a lower achiever class. In this study, the former was assigned as the higher achiever group, and the latter as the lower achiever group. Meanwhile, the researcher was the teacher for both groups. The reciprocal teaching intervention comprised ten sessions during five weeks, i.e. two sessions per week. The reading materials were nine descriptive articles from either textbooks or English magazines. The research instruments were a reading comprehension test from GEPT and a perception questionnaire. To analyze the results from pretest and posttest, paired sample t-test was used to investigate whether the two groups showed significant improvement. Besides, the responses and suggestions to the intervention were presented via descriptive statistics. According to the results, reciprocal teaching is effective in promoting reading comprehension of students with different proficiency. Most of the participants were positive about the treatment and credited it for increasing learning interests, enhancing metacognition, etc. Among the four reading strategies, both groups thought predicting was the easiest while clarifying the most helpful. But, in terms of the most difficult strategy, the higher achievers voted for questioning whereas the lower achievers chose summarizing. As revealed in the findings, reciprocal teaching can be incorporated in the English classroom in junior high schools because students of different competence would benefit from it in some way. Furthermore, suggestions were included in the conclusion for future research.