Reciprocal Teaching Of Reading Strategies And Background Knowledge Of The Interaction

Reciprocal teaching is a group-learning form in which four comprehension strategies are instructed. It is structured by dialogues between the teacher and the students, which are leaded and dominated by a leader. A lot of studies have proved its effect on improving students' comprehension. In this study the researcher used reciprocal teaching to teach several primary school students reading comprehension strategies. After that, we asked these students to read some texts that they have no background knowledge. By tests and dialogue analysis, we conclude that:(1)The prediction strategy is less affected by knowledge and is hard to be taught in reciprocal teaching. It is rather a general strategy.(2)The question strategy is much affected by knowledge. When students read the texts of which they have no background knowledge, the questions they put forward are almost on details instead of main points of the section.(3)The summary strategy is also affected by knowledge. The most difficulty lies in the fact that they cannot identify the important information of what they have read. The reason is that their working memories are occupied by lots of details of the texts.(4)The dialogues of the strategies can help construct new cognitive st-ruct ure. The prediction strategy can activate students' background knowledge; the c larifying strategy can give students rich and visual information through their int eractions. The question and summary strategies can focus on the main points a nd internal relations of the texts.(5)The students' abilities of self-monitoring and self-regulation are not good when they read those kinds of texts, they can't lead the dialogue, either.(6) When using reciprocal teaching, teachers can regulate the texts and the process itself to bring all the students to good comprehension.