SELF-REGULATION IN READING EFL ACADEMIC TEXTS — EFFECTS OF GROUP-WORK DYNAMICS

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to determine the effects of Collaborative strategic reading (CSR), an instructional framework designed to improve students’ reading skills (Klingner, Vaughn 1999), on EFL learners’ inventory of reading strategies and the frequency of its use. In a quasi-experimental pre-test – post-test study with a control group, the participants were, over two semesters, exposed to strategic reading instruction in either a cooperative or an individual setting. A series of mixed between-within repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted in order to see whether there were differences in the use of reading strategies between the students from the two groups, as well as between the same students tested at three different times (at baseline, at the middle of the experiment, and upon the completion of the experiment). The results indicate that the cooperative setting has a statistical effect on the use of strategies employed during and after reading academic texts, but not before. The results further show that the students from the experimental group reported significantly more self-regulatory behaviors than the students from the control group upon the completion of the experiment, but not at its middle, suggesting that prolonged exposure to experimental input is necessary for the effects of group-work dynamics to become visible and the strategic framework to become internalized. Pedagogical implications of the results mainly address the potential of group-work dynamics in offering an effective alternative to typical teacher-centered EFL instruction found in most university contexts.