The main objectives of this study were to probe into the effects of implementing Reciprocal Teaching in English classes. According to the research questions, the following discussion will first center on students’ perception of Reciprocal Teaching, the effects of Reciprocal Teaching on critical thinking among high and low achievers.
Next, the pedagogical implications followed by the limitations of the present study and the suggestion for future research will be discussed. Lastly, a brief summary derived from this study will be provided as a conclusion.
Students’ Perception of Reciprocal Teaching.
In general, from the responses of students in the questionnaire, they felt very positive about Reciprocal Teaching. A majority of them agreed upon the idea of integrating Reciprocal Teaching into English classes. Relative to conventional pedagogy, Reciprocal Teaching provided learners with a more interesting and motivating atmosphere, thus producing a number of encouraging results.
When students were asked the most significant gains after Reciprocal Teaching sessions, a huge majority voted on the improvement in English proficiency, especially in reading comprehension, which corroborated with the claim that the strategic processing of texts enhanced students’ reading comprehension (Rosenshine & Meister, 1994; Spörer, Brunstein, & Kieschke, 2009). Besides, improvement in speaking and writing abilities was also in line with what was claimed in Frances and Eckart’s (1992)
Oral communication skill, particularly in the eye of high achievers, was deemed to be a significant gain. If we take the test items of College Entrance Examination into consideration (Chou, 2015, 2017), students tend to bypass the cultivation of speaking since it isn’t within the common testing scope. The suggestions from a high achiever starkly reflected this washback effect that language learning means memorizing a large amount of vocabulary and complex grammar rules, etc. Nevertheless, in the framework of Reciprocal Teaching, speaking ability is highly needed. It turned out that lively discourse among students also brought about a boost to self-confidence and learning motivation in addition to speaking abilities.
Based on the findings about the effects the four strategies had on English language learning, students found their writing more satisfactory, thanks to the two strategies: summarizing (i.e. comprehension-fostering) and questioning (i.e.
comprehension-monitoring). Different from the study design in Shiau’s (2010), which only required students to note down their self-generated questions, the participants in the study had to complete writing all four strategies listed on the worksheets. In this way, they had chances to proofread their works and also learn from one another by copying down answers they liked from their group members.
Over the course of the implementation, Reciprocal Teaching equipped students with more strategies to deal with problems encountered in reading, which is indispensable to independent lifelong learners (Paris & Winograd, 1990). For example, the low English proficiency readers, who usually suffer from limited command of problem-solving strategies, were empowered to better tackle comprehension issues encountered in reading with the help of Reciprocal Teaching. As more problems were resolved, their problem-solving ability developed as well (Yang, 2010).
Another benefit derived from this intervention was the skill of self-expression and time management. In the process of group discussion, everyone had the
opportunity to lead the dialogue and take up different roles. These two practices collectively may lead to more lasting effects on strategy acquisition. Compared with poor achievers, who have not yet developed a high degree of proficiency in basic skills for English speaking, high achieving students would stand a better chance to enjoy this interactive process.
In the evaluation of the four strategies, the class unanimously referred to summarizing as the most challenging but most helpful strategy. From students’
feedback, it is possible to argue that what makes summarizing difficult is its requirement of integrating multiple skills and knowledge into writing. Once one can produce a well-rounded summary, it usually indicates his or her finer comprehension of the target texts.
Reciprocal Teaching and Critical Thinking Among High and Low Proficiency Readers.
The relationship between Reciprocal Teaching and critical thinking among high and low achievers can be discussed from two angles. First, it will be analyzed from students’ answers to question No. 5 in Perception Questionnaire: Do you think the four strategies help you become a better thinker? Second, an analysis will be made based on the coding result of student-generated questions.
Interestingly, as the collected data from the questionnaire revealed, both high and low language proficiency readers agreed that a strong link did exist between Reciprocal Teaching and critical thinking. In brief, Reciprocal Teaching fostered thinking capacity through a systematic process of strategy training in a social context, where peer support helped stimulate metacognitve activities in cooperation and
questions.
On the whole, the question levels from the first to the last articles were in an ascending trend for both high and low achievers. This supported the assumption that Reciprocal Teaching exerted a positive impact on the development of critical thinking.
However, a closer look at the details will unfold similarity and difference between its impacts on high and low language proficiency readers. To begin with the similar part, an identical phenomenon for both levels was the continuity and ranking changes of Remembering and Applying questions within the top three positions. Owing to the design of the study, students were presented only with nonfiction text materials in classroom lessons, all of which were closely connected with their life experiences. For example, the first article “The Light of Halloween” was about the origin of the festival they were familiar with, while the second article “What is Written in the Stars?” was a very popular topic among youngsters. In the third article “Inventing a Better World,” where two commonly seen inventions were mentioned, i.e. automatic sensing faucet and Post-it note, it was understandable that students could resonate with the content easily. Resembling the third article, the fourth topic was about “The Magic of Science,” again, two science experiments in the text were simply carried out so students could really apply what they learned to daily life when needed. The final article, “Dancing to Nobody’s Tune” dealt with a ubiquitous issue almost every high school freshman would confront, the pursuit of dreams together with some possible obstacles along the way. In a word, the more an article echoed with readers, the more Applying questions were generated.
What marked the critical differences between high and low achievers was the margin of changing levels. Both high and low achievers gradually moved up to higher-level questions according to Bloom’s Taxonomy. The difference is how big a leap they moved from the first to the final articles. As reported in the previous section
(see Table 24), the percentages increased to a greater degree for high achievers, which implied that Reciprocal Teaching had a higher impact on this group. What caused such result deserves further investigation. One possible explanation for relatively less improvement in low achievers was that they might run a risk of failing to grasp the correct use of Reciprocal Teaching strategies. As explained by a low achiever, writing summaries didn’t require her to completely understand the target text. Such misconception of strategy supported the findings by Hacker and Tenent (2002), who pointed out that one of the key factors to determine successful Reciprocal Teaching implementation was in the accuracy and mastery of the newly acquired strategies.
As strongly suggested in the study of Shiau (2010), an explicit instructional support of making summaries might enhance the quality of students’ production.
Following the specific advice on teaching methods from Rosenshine and Meister (1994) along with Oczkus (2003), the study was designed as a two-day treatment for each week. On Day 1 Teacher-led discussion, students wrote summaries under the teacher’s guidance, receiving instant feedback and correction when they shared their works with the class. On the follow-up Student-led discussion, they applied what they learned to raise the quality of summaries. This virtuous cycle of expert modeling, scaffolding, and fading had brought about students’ self-perceptible advancement in writing. All in all, the explicit strategy teaching and a certain period of practice with cognitive modeling would augment the effects of Reciprocal Teaching methods (Rosenshine & Meister, 1994).