The impact of reciprocal teaching strategies on language proficiency of young efl learners

The purpose of this study is to find out the possible effect of reciprocal teaching method on learners' views on language learning, and to see whether they will improve the basic language skills starting firstly with the reading skill itself. Providing a great variety of materials making it possible to implement the target strategies of reciprocal teaching, active participation of the learners into the process is aimed. Observing even his classes that learners were not given enough chances to acquire themselves active roles in instruction and gain the control over their own learning, the researcher as the teacher has been driven to look for modern collaborative methods, with which the classes would be more language classes. With consideration of current educational practices and readiness of learners for that change in language instruction, modified version of reciprocal teaching method has been implemented with a search for its possible positive impacts on TEOG performance of learners. Therefore, in order to be able to test the anticipated positive effects of target method on language instruction, a quasi-experimental research design procedure was carried out, in which two groups of learners whose language proficiencies were determined with a pretest to be similar to each other. The experimental group was exposed a reciprocal-based instruction, while the control group was continued to be instructed as it had regularly been. The language class structure of control group was called "traditional class structure" in this study in that no change in language education and teacher-learner roles was planned. So as to compare the progress both groups had made, a sample TEOG test was exposed before the intervention and the results were contrasted with those from actual TEOG. An attitude questionnaire conducted again before and after the instructional process was also interpreted to see possible change in learner views. Keywords: English language teaching and learning, reciprocal teaching, reciprocal intervention, regular instruction, EFL learners