Correct Answer - Option 4 : All of the above
The reciprocal teaching method is one of the effective approaches that teach learners to become responsible for their reading and employ metacognitive reading strategies over cognitive reading strategies (Cohen, 1998). Palincsar and Brown initiated it in the early 1980s in English classrooms of native speakers.
- It has been recognized as a valuable teaching method by many researchers, reading teachers, and educators because it is a form of systematic training in strategies that helps efficient readers to improve their reading comprehension and become independent readers.
- The goal of reciprocal teaching is to instruct students with specific strategies that they can apply to new texts.
- Reciprocal teaching is based on Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (1978) and the proleptic model of teaching (Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976, as cited in Manning & Payne, 1996).
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According to Vygotsky’s concept, children can develop their learning to reach a level of actual development by independently solving problems and another level of potential development under adult guidance or expert scaffolding and in collaboration with more capable peers. For language teachers, it is then necessary to provide the learners the scaffolding or tools that include effective intervention and language learning strategies, and then gradually remove these as the learners use them on their own.
Characteristics of Reciprocal Teaching: According to Palincsar and Brown (1984), reciprocal teaching is an instructional approach that can be best characterized by three main features:
- The scaffolding and explicit instruction which a teacher uses and which include guided practice and modeling of comprehension-fostering strategies
- The four main reading strategies of predicting, generating questions, clarifying, and summarizing
- Social interaction provides opportunities for learners to improve their cognitive, metacognitive, and effective strategies and offers them chances to share ideas, increase confidence, and learn from their more capable friends.
- The above three features help improve the students’ ability to resolve comprehension difficulties, reach a higher level of thinking, build metacognition, and increase motivation. As a result, students create new knowledge from what they internalize and develop their reading potential.
- From these three features, students promote their metacognitive awareness: planning before they read, comprehension-monitoring or control of their own reading process while reading, and self-evaluation while reading and after reading.
From the above, we can conclude that Questioning, clarifying, and predicting are the component of Reciprocal Teaching.
