The Effects of Reciprocal Teaching vs. Think-Aloud on Reading Comprehension of Pre-Intermediate Students in Iran

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of reciprocal teaching strategy and think-aloud strategy on the English reading comprehension of Iranian students. Three pre-intermediate level classes were selected and randomly assigned into three groups: two experimental groups and one control group. One experimental group received think-aloud strategy, the other one received reciprocal teaching strategy and the control group received a placebo. Reciprocal teaching involves four main reading strategies: predicting, questioning, clarifying and summarizing. Think-aloud involves prediction, forming mental pictures, connecting what they read to what they have already read, creating analogies, verbalizing confusing points, and using fix-up strategies. There were pretest and posttest for these three groups. The findings indicated that the two experimental conditions of think-aloud strategy and reciprocal teaching strategy had significantly positive effects on the reading comprehension of pre-intermediate EFL learners; however, think-aloud strategy enhanced English reading comprehension better than reciprocal teaching strategy.