The Effects of Reciprocal teaching versus Skill-based teaching on Reading Comprehension of Iranian EFL Learners

This study aimed at investigating the effects of reciprocal teaching on reading comprehension and metacognitive reading strategies of Iranian EFL learners. The participants werepurposively selected and randomly assigned into two groups: an experimental and a control group. The experimental group was taught through reciprocal teaching while the controlgroup was taught through skill-based teaching. In order to find out the proficiency level of theparticipants the PET test was administered. Other instruments employed were a pretest, a posttest and a questionnaire on metacognitive reading strategies to collect the relevant data.Then the collected data was analyzed quantitatively. The results of the study indicated thatreciprocal teaching had a significantly positive effect on the English reading comprehension and usage of the four main metacognitive reading strategies. The posttest mean score of theexperimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group at 0.05 level. Reciprocal teaching also enhanced the reading ability of both the proficient and less proficient students. Moreover, the results from the questionnaire showed that the students inthe experimental group employed significantly more metacognitive reading strategies after reciprocal teaching, at 0.05 level.

Keywords:

language proficiency , reading comprehension , reciprocal teaching , metacognitive strategies , skillbased teaching