The effectiveness of using reciprocal teaching in an English-Medium course

Taiwan, ID CleaR2015-217

Many non-English speaking countries have imposed the policy of English Medium Instruction (EMI) courses in universities and colleges due to the idea that English proficiency determines the competitiveness of individuals and nations. The Ministry of Education in Taiwan also encourages universities and colleges to expand the percentage of EMI courses within its curriculum. However, many students struggle in EMI courses. One possible reason is that Taiwanese students do not have sufficient English competent to understand academic text and academic lecture in English. Reciprocal teaching (RT) has been considered an effective way to increase students’ reading comprehension in many elementary and junior high school language classrooms. In this teaching procedure, students via the teacher’s scaffolding experience predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarizing processes to comprehend reading texts. However, little studies have been done at tertiary level students. Thus, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of reciprocal teaching on Taiwanese students’ academic performance in EMI courses. Using an experimental design, the results showed that students’ academic performance can be effectively promoted through RT instruction. This implies that RT can help Taiwanese students comprehending academic text and further help them be successful in EMI courses.

Keywords: English-Medium Instruction (EMI), EFL undergraduate students, reciprocal teaching (RT), academic context