In this concluding chapter, four sections are contained, including (1) summary of findings, (2) pedagogical implications, (3) limitation, and (4) suggestion for future research.
Summary of findings
In this study, three research questions are proposed, and they are (1)What are the students’ perception and attitude toward Reciprocal Teaching? (2) How does Reciprocal Teaching help students understand the text better? (3) Does Reciprocal Teaching influence students’ motivation of English learning? The three research questions all aim to examine the effect of Reciprocal Teaching on EFL mid and low proficient students. What differs the three is that the first research question is based on the perspective of the students, while the second and the third questions are based on both the perspective of the teacher/researcher and the students.
For the first research question, the study revealed students’ positive attitudes toward Reciprocal Teaching. Students expressed their support of the whole teaching procedure, the individual strategy use, and the future employment of Reciprocal Teaching. However, while most of the students consistently showed their positive attitude throughout their questionnaire, Simon and Jane, two proficient students, partially supported the strategy instruction. Simon thought that Reciprocal Teaching helped him understand better and he liked English more because of Reciprocal Teaching. However, he did not completely appreciate the use of Reciprocal Teaching.
The reason was that he found it difficult employing and mastering the target strategies. Jane acknowledged that the strategies learned in class and the support from
the peers helped her understand the texts better. However, she did not devote herself to the whole intervention or the group discussion and thus she held neutral attitude toward Reciprocal Teaching and her motivation to learn English was not changed with Reciprocal Teaching.
For the second research question, the findings, based on the researcher’s observation in classroom and student’s open-ended questionnaire and interview, confirmed the positive effects of Reciprocal Teaching on students’ reading comprehension. Students’ comprehension was achieved from four aspects, including (1) group discussion, (2) support from peers, (3) interaction, (4) strategy employment.
However, some unexpected obstacles and unachieved goals were encountered during the implementation, including (1) students’ off-task conversation and (2) little engagement of low proficient students.
For the third research question, from students’ self-reported questionnaire, five of the seven participants acknowledged the merits of Reciprocal Teaching. The others mentioned the atmosphere of group discussion, support from others, and constructing meaning on their own made them love English more. Also, with the target strategies, they could learn English in an interesting and efficient manner, which was very different from what they would expect in an English classroom scenario. However, two girls did not express the same feelings with the majority. In Joy’s mind, she still regarded English, which contains inscrutable grammar points, difficult to learn. Also, She might fail to apply the target strategies to the school-based and grammar-oriented English course. On the other hand, Jane, of low proficiency and low motivation, did not devote herself to the whole teaching process. Therefore, her motivation to learn English stayed the same as that from the very beginning.
In spite of some obstacles and Simon’s and Jane’s partial agreement on the effects of Reciprocal Teaching, it seems that Reciprocal Teaching can, generally speaking, benefit students’ reading comprehension, elicit students’ positive perception and enhance their motivation to learn English.
Pedagogical implication
Five teaching implications can be drawn from the study, and they might be particularly useful for those who would like to incorporate Reciprocal Teaching to their reading courses.
First, heterogeneous grouping is one of the important features of Reciprocal Teaching and many relevant studies also adhere to this principle (Hacker & Tenent, 2002; Palincsar & Brown, 1984; Palincsar et., 1987). The current study uses the same grouping to elicit more scaffolding among the students. Therefore, the heterogeneous groping was recommended despite the fact that a previous study confirmed that homogeneous grouping can also work well (Wu, 2012). In fact, the adoption of homogeneous grouping is not so rare in literature on Reciprocal Teaching, especially when incorporated into remedial courses (Yang, 2010). Its feasibility lies in that apart from the instructor’s scaffolding, among the students categorized as less capable ones, there must be at least one who is more willing or able to assume the leading role.
Further, previous literature also recognized that less capable students can also lead their counterparts in group discussion (Chen, 2011). Therefore teachers shall not worry too much about how low achievers can carry out a conversation and acquire the strategy simultaneously when being grouped together. In this present study, the mid proficient students did demonstrate the skill well and thus provided the modeling role for the low proficient students. Also, the low proficient students gained a lot of
assistance and support from the mid proficient students. Though the low proficient students did have difficulty employing some of the strategies such as clarifying and questioning, the mid and low students both benefited from group discussion, support from the peers, and interaction.
Second, while Reciprocal Teaching was originally developed and claimed to have the biggest effect with expository articles (Palincsar & Brown, 1984), this study confirms that Reciprocal Teaching can also be applied to other genres, namely narratives. In this study, seven picture books were adopted and each is a narrative story. In the literature on Reciprocal Teaching, the adoption of narrative stories was not uncommon, and they yielded very promising results (Chern, 2005; Shiau, 2010;
Yang, 2010). Therefore, teachers can choose either expository or narrative texts when implementing Reciprocal Teaching. The point is that the reading materials should be suitable for the readers’ proficiency and interest.
Third, students’ misconduct, off-task conversation, was reported in this study and in the literature (Hacker & tenant, 2002). While I speculated on the possible influence of genders and proficiency level of the participants, teachers may need to make some modification to tailor Reciprocal Teaching to students’ need so as to arouse their motivation. For example, in considering low proficient students’ demotivation, teachers may incorporate games and competitions into the whole teaching process.
Thus, low proficient students might find Reciprocal Teaching more challenging and interesting, and therefore be more involved in the teaching process. On the other hand, the teacher may set different goals for different proficient students so that the low proficient students would not feel so challenged throughout the whole teaching process.
Fourth, in the previous chapter, students’ lack of interaction was identified. This deserves much attention from teachers. While cooperative learning has been extensively studied and verified (e.g., Oxford, 1977), it seems that in real teaching scenarios, teachers are not really giving students the chance to interact with one another. The lack of interaction was reported by the students in the study. Most of the time, they were reading silently and they would discuss what to write down in the worksheet. In fact, cooperative interaction or learning is of great importance and can promote students’ learning. Also, in implementing cooperative learning, teachers should give students some guidance or modeling. For instance, in implementing Reciprocal Teaching, in order to prepare students for the discussion, teachers can give them some language template or prompts to initiate their conversation, such as “I think…because…,” “I bet…because,” and “I predict…because.” These will be great help for students as suggested by Oczkus (2003). The leadership or the modeling of the group leader was an important factor of a successful, mutual, and reciprocal group interaction. It was also challenging for the group leader to elicit the other members’
opinions or questions. The group leader might encounter silence most of the time and thus the discussion might not go smoothly. The atmosphere and the discussion outcome might be relevant to the learner’s learning styles and preference.
Fifth, since the current study has verified the effect of Reciprocal Teaching on students of mid and low proficiency, the finding may shed some light to the reading course for the low English proficient students in an EFL context. In the past, teachers might rely multiple choice or question/answer practice for reading comprehension;
however, the finding in this study suggests a new approach that has great help to the low-achievers in school. Teachers may adopt cooperative, constructive, and
meaning-oriented learning or teaching. English shall not be just for repeated drills or reading comprehension check practice. Rather, through small-group discussion, less capable students can have alternative and abundant chances to witness and learn from their counterparts who can provide the needed support or assistance for them. Both can assume different roles in constructing meaning and interpreting a text. Furthermore, not just for students, the promising result confirms that Reciprocal Teaching can act as a feasible alternative for English teachers in teaching reading in class. Reciprocal Teaching is an approach that could be applied to bigger-scale educational settings in EFL contexts, such as the whole nationwide implementation.
Limitation
The limitation of the study is discussed in this section. First, the strategy instruction took place in one of the eighth-grader club activities in a junior high school, and it had to abide by the school schedule. The intervention of the strategy instruction was only implemented for seven meetings, with two periods in each meeting. Though the result is promising, a greater outcome or finer, closer observation would be possible if more time is included. For instance, if time permits, the researcher might implement Reciprocal Teaching with longer period to see whether low proficient students would show more interest and enthusiasm. Also the researcher might have clearer ideas about how students’ motivational and attitudinal behavior would transform or emerge.
It’s also possible to explore how much time is needed for the low proficient students to accommodate themselves to Reciprocal Teaching.
Second, the sampling and grouping of the students was a big challenge for the implementation of the study. Five students were from different classes in the school;
only Eric and Elaine were from the same class. In other words, the students did not
know each other before. When asked to discuss the text, most of the students felt weird and uncomfortable with the task due to the unfamiliarity within the group.
That’s why there is a strong, obvious contrast between the two groups no matter in the aspects of ongoing discussion or the learning outcomes. Group A always had a heated and fruitful discussion results while there was little chemistry in Group B. Jane, a member from Group B, reported that in her questionnaire. Also, the two students whose motivation was not enhanced after the intervention were also from Group B.
Maybe the dull atmosphere of the group discussion was the reason why Jane and Joy did not have motivational change when taught via Reciprocal Teaching. The atmosphere and the familiarity of the group members might be an important factor how Reciprocal Teaching may affect the learners’ perception and motivation.
Third, the small sample size makes the study results less applicable to other students and teaching contexts. Some satisfying outcomes or unachieved goals might be specific to the seven students, who were of mid and low English proficiency. Their improvement or perception might not be the same as those who have better English proficiency or those who hold active attitude or higher motivation toward English learning. Therefore, it might be desirable to see whether EFL learners of higher proficiency levels demonstrate similar behaviors or hold the same perspective and attitude toward Reciprocal Teaching.
Suggestion for future research
In this section, five aspects are drawn and offered to give some direction for future research. The first part is about the adopted teaching materials; the second part is about the learners; the third part is about the research method; the fourth part is about other issues that need to be further probed into.
First, in this study, in implementing Reciprocal Teaching, the researcher chose the narrative genre and picture books as the teaching materials to fit the proficiency of the EFL learners. For future research, teachers may introduce and utilize other genres in addition to expository and narrative essays, making students’ reading richer and more diverse. By doing this, for the practical concern, student’s learning motivation might be higher, and for the theoretical concern, the effect of other genres can be further explored.
Second, future research may be implemented on more students, examining whether EFL mid and low achievers can generally benefit from Reciprocal Teaching, and whether they consistently demonstrate the same tendency as reported in the study. In addition to a larger student sample, since the current study was implemented on one particular grade level, and in one particular school, the result, again, might be biased and less applicable. To have deeper and more comprehensive understanding of Reciprocal Teaching on mid and low proficient learners, more studies are needed to observe its effects on students of different proficiency levels and schools.
Third, regarding the research method, while the current study is qualitative-oriented, it was only conducted for seven sessions. For future studies, longer duration is suggested so as to yield deeper, broader observation and more comprehensive result. Besides, a quantitative approach can be incorporated into future research. Thus, more empirical evidence can be offered to examine the effect of Reciprocal Teaching from different aspects. For example, a standardized or researcher-developed test can be administered, which might be more objective in examining students’ gain in language proficiency in local context.
Fourth, in the discussion section, the study brings up the issue concerning the
influence of gender and learning styles on strategy instruction. However, in reviewing literature, while many factors have been identified as playing a role in strategy use, little is known about what influences the feasibility of strategy instruction. To have more comprehensive insights, in the future, more studies can be carried out to explore the influence of gender and learning styles on strategy instruction.
Fifth, in the result section, some students’ limited interaction, though they had good command of strategies and full comprehension of the text, was identified. This might be related to the personality of the students. Introverted learners and extroverted learners might have different learning outcomes when Reciprocal Teaching is adopted. This issue was only a preliminary speculation from the researcher. To have a more comprehensive insight, future studies may explore and examine the influence of students’ personality on their learning.
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