Paper presentation on collaborative teaching and peer teaching at ELTAI International Conference Chennai. 2012

1. 7th INTERNATIONAL AND 43rd ANNUAL
ELTAI CONFERENCE
The English Classroom –
Experiments and Experiences
Strategies for Success in Language
Learning:
Collaborative and Peer Teaching

2. COLLABORATIVE READING AND
GROUP THINK-ALOUD:
ACTIVITIES FOR DEVELOPING
AUTONOMY IN READING
Dr. KSHEMA JOSE
Assistant Professor
The English and Foreign Languages University
Hyderabad
kshemajose@yahoo.com

3. Key Idea and Keywords
• Identify features of a Strategy Training
Programme that can facilitate acquisition of
new strategies and develop autonomy in
reading comprehension
• Collaborative learning, Group think aloud,
Autonomous reading, Introspective
interviews, Retrospective interviews,
Metacognitive awareness, Comprehension
monitoring

4. Lifelong Learning
Autonomy in Language Learning
• Control one’s process of learning
• Motivation
• Makes learning focused and purposeful
• More effective learning
• Transfer autonomous behaviour to other areas
of social behaviour

5. Autonomous Readers
• Use of Reading Strategies to access any text type
• Modify reading strategies according to reading
purpose
• Employ reader-specific reading strategies
• Comprehend without external support
(Oxford, 1990)

6. Strategy Training Programmes (STP)
Awareness of strategies leads to independent and
effective learning - Wenden and Rubin (1987),
O’Malley and Chamot (1990)
However, awareness raising is an essential but not
sufficient requirement for developing independent
reading habits.
We need to equip learners with alternative
strategies to solve his comprehension problems.
Make reader aware of a wide variety of strategies,
so that he can choose, adapt, modify, adopt, or
even create a new one to fit his learning style.

7. Designing a STP
• Learners should have basic decoding skills
• Explicit instruction through reflective dialogue
• Opportunities for guided practice
• Opportunities for Independent practice
• Feedback
• Promote socio-constructivist learning
• Allow learners to choose strategies that
appeal to them

8. Objectives of the Study
(i) Identify the reading strategies used by the
subjects and determine if an awareness of
reading strategies would lead to better
comprehension
(ii) Decide if group activities like collaborative
reading and social think alouds can expose
learners to strategies used by peers, and if they
could be encouraged to make use of these
(iii) Analyse teacher roles and learner roles in
collaborative reading and social think-aloud
activities.

9. Details of Study
• Subjects: Twenty, male, adult, ESL learners, 19 to
31 years, low to intermediate reading proficiency
• Duration: 20 days
• Texts: Nine - 3 intermediate and 6 advanced
• Tools to access strategies: TOL, metacognitive
response sheet, retrospective and introspective
interviews
• Tools to assess comprehension: free recalls, and
factual, local, global and inferential
comprehension questions

10. Details of Data Collection
Sl
no.
Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4
1. texts used 1A: text 1
1B: texts
2,3,4 and
text 1
texts 5 and 6 texts 7 and 8 texts 9 and 1
2. classroom
activities
1A: reading
tasks, SILL
1B: TOL,
retrospectiv
e,
introspectiv
e
interviews
and reading
tasks
group discussion
of strategies,
collaborative
reading, social
TOL, peer teaching
of strategies, inter
group discussion
of responses
collaborative
reading,
individual
performance
of tasks,
discussion of
responses
individual
reading,
individual
performance of
tasks, reports of
strategies used,
responses to
SILL
3. Purpose/ 1A: entry aware of if exposure to if there is

11. Findings
Post intervention improvements observed:
• Better Free recall: able to locate main and supporting
details of the text
• Increased understanding of word/ phrase meanings
• Increased performance in inference-based questions
• Better understanding of anaphoric and cataphoric
referents
• New reading strategies added to strategy repertoire

12. Relevant TOL excerpts
• One person, my friend said me it is good to read first one
paragraph and last one paragraph, then I am know what is
very very important in this lesson. This is correct…
• Many things am not understanding when I started Spoken
English classes in CIEFL. I am reading and reading with no
understanding and now I am also thinking and making
pictures. Then I always know what is talking about in next
paragraphs also.
• First am reading to get the all-meaning of the paragraph.
Then I look for important points just to underline them.
• We can see capital letters and all… then one should read
with good attention.

13. Strategies Most Adopted
• Self-monitoring
• Skipping paragraphs or sentences and reading
ahead
• Guess word meaning through context
• Guess word meaning by breaking it up into
familiar parts
• Translation and substitution
• Translation and elimination

14. Relevant TOL excerpts
• I am by hearting many important points, I am writing down them
and looking at them when I read below paragraphs.
• It is good to make questions in a text, then only reading is very
much easy for a student… he can always point, like look for
answers.
• …you understand by understanding the before sentence and after
sentence. Then you also understand a one or two new words…
• I cannot follow this sentence, then this one sentence I translate.
• I read and read a sentence with one word I am not understanding,
is translated to Telugu by me. The full sentence is made into Telugu
but the difficult word is put as a dash. Then the same word in my
mother tongue, I check all the word and the correct word is used by
me also in English.

15. Comprehension Scores
Pre and Post Intervention
Texts 2, 3, and 4
(max score: 12)
Texts 7, 8, and 9
(max score: 12)
R1 4.5 11.5
R2 3.5 12
R3 7.5 11
R4 7 6.5
R5 10 8.5
R6 4.5 12
R7 4 8.5
R8 5.5 10.5
Mean 5.8 = 6 10

16. Learner Changes Observed
• Enhanced metacognition
• Making use of repair strategies
• Using new reading strategies
• Improvement in task performance
• Gained confidence to read independently

17. Features of an Effective STP
• Explicit teacher think-aloud model of effective reading
comprehension strategy use to raise awareness of
reading comprehension strategy use.
• Provide explicit peer think-aloud model of effective
reading comprehension strategy use to provide
exposure to alternate reading strategies used by peers.
• Provide sufficient social/ collaborative reading
opportunities to discuss and demonstrate use of
strategies.
• Provide individual opportunities to practice use of new
strategies acquired in social contexts.

18. Learner Roles
• Focus shift from teacher and materials to learners
• Cooperative learning – active information
processing and cross-modelling, economical
• Type 1: proficient users – benefit from
homogeneous groups
• Type 2: less proficient users – benefit from
heterogeneous groups
• Type 3: least proficient users – require individual
attention, intensive training, teacher support

19. Teacher Roles
Explicit interventionist approach
• Identify effective strategies
• State purposes of each strategy
• Monitor group learning by helping learners discuss with
and demonstrate to their peers the strategies they use
• Provide appropriate tasks for strategy practice
• Facilitate transfer of strategies from one text to another by
assisting learners to explicitly link metacognitive knowledge
about the individual learning process with strategies that
are expected to enhance learning
•

20. THANK YOU
kshemajose@yahoo.com