The effects of the reciprocal teaching method on the achievements of argentinean EFL college students

Abstract

The purpose of this study is three-fold: to investigate the effects of the strategy trainingmodel Reciprocal Teaching on the reading comprehension performance of ArgentineanEFL college students; to compare the effects of this training model on readers withdifferent reading-comprehension proficiency levels; and to investigate about thestudents` perceptions of the cognitive and metacognitive strategies they used and/orbelieved to use before and after the training period. The pre/ post test design used in thisexperience was mainly quantitative, although qualitative data were collected to helptriangulate results. Students were administered a questionnaire (SILL), a pre-test and apost-test, two semi-structured questionnaires after the pre and post-tests, and a finalsemi-structured questionnaire. The quantitative and qualitative data were analysed andthe results were triangulated to cross-validate them. The Statistical Package for theSocial Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyse the quantitative data. The qualitative datawere quantified by categorising the students` answers. The results showed that thisstrategy training helped enhance students` reading-comprehension, and that the methodcontributed to improve poor readers` reading ability. The training model Reciproca`Teaching helped the students know why, when, and how to use the strategies, and this,in turn, led them to become more autonomous and strategic readers. It would be quiteinteresting and recommended to replicate this study in similar EFL contexts and toincorporate this training model in the tertiary level curriculum because not only has itshown to be useful for the reading comprehension of texts in English but it may alsohelp students become better readers in other Ll contexts. It would also be quitebeneficial for teachers and students to adopt the Reciprocal Teaching procedure,especially the direct explanation of each strategy use and the frequent teacher modellingof each strategy