Reciprocal Teaching

Abstract

Of late, the role of metacognition in reading has received considerable attention from researchers and practitioners. This is reflected in the views advanced by researchers such as Brown and Palinscar (1985) and Gracia and Pearson (1990). This line of research is particularly important because of the difference between teaching of discrete skills and making learners aware of the internal processes that are carried on in the mind through metacognition. Often, individual readers may be able to perform discrete skills such as skimming and scanning, tolerating ambiguity, finding meanings from context and drawing inferences, but face difficulty in summoning the right strategies to gain holistic understanding of text. One methodology that has proven to offset this difficulty and internalize the process of understanding is Reciprocal Teaching.