Reciprocal teaching is a comprehension-fostering activity. The teacher modelled the activity through series of instruction and the students applied the
activity within the cooperative group. From the definition above, the goal of reciprocal teaching is to help the students achieve comprehension. From this point
of view, the students are introduced to four basic strategies in the reading processes where each of the strategies facilitates the students to build meaning and to monitor
their own understanding. The model of dialogue whether it happens among the students themselves or between the teacher and the students is an effective way to
connect the reading ability of each student so that the skilled students may help the unskilled students decode and understand the text. Carter 1993 stated that if the
meaning construction fails to happen, the students are not learning at all. Moreover, the appropriate background knowledge also determines the success of the students
to achieve comprehension. The information about what they have already known may support them to confirm or reject the author’s ideas.
There are four major strategies proposed in reciprocal teaching, namely summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting.
a. Summarizing
Summarizing may help the students identify, paraphrase, and integrate the important information from the text. This activity involves the skill of identifying
main ideas and supported details of the text. The text may be summarized across sentences, across paragraph, and across the passage as a whole. For the first time,
the students learn to summarize across the sentences and paragraph levels. When they become more strategic, they enable to integrate at the paragraph and passage
levels. The students also activate their background knowledge in order to help
them find and integrate the information they get. The failure of the students in identifying the important information from the text shows the incompleteness of
comprehension.
b. Question Generating
This strategy takes the students one more step along in the comprehension activity. Question generating provides the chance of the students to identify the
important information where it will be used as the substance of the question. After the students create the question, they have to assure themselves that they are able
to answer their own question. This skill is a flexible strategy since it can be taught and encouraged at many levels. Some school institutions may require the students
to master supporting detail information and some may require the students to be able to infer or apply the new information from the text. Question generating also
supports summarizing in which both of these strategies require the skill on identifying the important information.
c. Clarifying
Clarifying is an important activity when dealing with the students who have the history of comprehension difficulty. The problem may cause by their belief that
the purpose of reading is to say the words correctly. When the students are asked to clarify, their attention is drawn to the fact that there are many reasons why text is
difficult to understand. This skill provides the students the opportunity to get a better understanding on the unfamiliar vocabulary, unclear references, or difficult
concepts that hinder their comprehension mastery. They are also taught to be aware
of some aspects which can restrict their comprehension and to take necessary measures to restore meaning, such as, re-read the text, consult the dictionary, or
ask for help.
d. Predicting
