Reciprocal Teaching to Foster
Reading Comprehension Skills of
Markus
Budiraharjo
A deficit theory model has made us believe that students’ failure to reach a particular level on the standardized examination results from their low intellectual ability, lack of motivation, and lack of academic commitment. However, the more intriguing fact we have at present is the opposite view of the deficit theory model. A growing body or research in cognitive strategy instruction (e.g. Brown, Campione and Day 1981, Brown, Palinscar, and Ambruster 1994, Brown and Palinscar 1984, King 1990, Rosenshine and Meister 1997) have led us to embrace a more progressive perspective about the students’ failure in their learning to read. Firstly, it was found that some students labeled as suffering from learning disabilities demonstrated sufficiently high cognitive potentials. Their level of cognitive abilities did not necessarily cause their failures in the schooling system. Secondly, they also found that some kind of quality supports was necessarily urgent to help failing students to achieve the standardized objectives. Reciprocal teaching (Brown and Palinscar 1984) was firstly developed to help failing students learn the successful strategies in learning process. Drawing basic principles of Vygotskian theory, proleptic teaching, and explicit instruction, reciprocal teaching uses four simple techniques: self-questioning, summarizing, clarifying, and predicting. This technique has been substantiated by a number of rigorous studies in different educational contexts (Westera and Moore 1995, Klingner and Vaughn 1996, King 1990, Lysynchuk, Pressley and Vye 1990). In sum, applying reciprocal teaching in our classroom as a quality support will teach us to adjust the nature of standards and the students’ potentials.
------- ---- ----------
Budiraharjo, M. (2003, October). Reciprocal
teaching to foster comprehension skills of EFL college students in expository
texts. Paper presented at the 51st TEFLIN International
Conference,
Website: www.geocities.com/eltindonesia
Email: eltindonesia@yahoo.com