Abstract
Collaboration has been found to facilitate comprehension of challenging academic texts. Following the Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) model implemented in primary and secondary school classrooms, this researching EAP practice paper detailed the development of a three-stage teaching method to facilitate Chinese first-year college students’ comprehension of research articles. The three-stage teaching method consisted of individual reading, group discussion, and collaborative reflection. Drawing on the discussion and interview data from one of the reading groups, this study revealed their comprehension processes and collaborative use of strategies activated by the three stages. Specifically, results showed that the students prepared themselves for collaboration at the first stage, successfully constructed meaning collaboratively at the second stage, and modified their comprehension at the final stage. Implications and limitations of the three-stage teaching method for collaborative academic reading are also discussed.
1. The context
Research has suggested that collaboration can facilitate comprehension of academic texts, because it can help students share their understanding and clarify their confusion (Hirano, 2015). Collaborative reading is especially beneficial for college freshmen, as progressing from high schools to EAP classrooms poses many challenges (Ohata & Fukao, 2014). For example, college freshmen tend to find the lack of content knowledge particularly challenging (Hirano, 2015), because they have to apply content knowledge to understand academic discourse, the “difficult content in English” (Ohata & Fukao, 2014, p. 88). In addition, “discursive conventions of academic writing” and “domain-specific vocabulary” (McGrath, Berggren, & Mezek, 2016, p. 153) may also create difficulties for college students to comprehend academic texts. Moreover, non-native English speakers may face additional language challenges as they tend to struggle with unknown vocabularies for text comprehension (Hirano, 2015).
4.4. Limitations perceived by students
In interviews, students pointed out two limitations of this teaching method. First, as the length of the three sections of a text often varied, students assigned to read the longest section at the individual reading stage tended to face more difficulties. Second, although every two students read the same section, it was usually one of them that reported the content to other group members in group discussions. Those who had limited confidence in English or reading proficiency often kept silent. They reported in interviews that they had relied on their peers to share the content they were assigned to cover, which they perceived as a disadvantage of pairing.
