Think-Aloud Strategy not as helpful for
beginning and advanced ELLs, study says
One approach for helping English language learners (ELLs) to improve their
reading comprehension, the Think-Aloud Strategy, seems to be more useful for
intermediate students than for beginning and advanced students, report two
researchers in a recent issue of the Journal of Adolescent & Adult
Literacy.
With federal and state accountability mandates for ELLs, educators are
struggling to find effective, research-based strategies to help students improve
their reading comprehension, they say. Because ELLs are unfamiliar with many of
the idioms and cultural references in text, the Think-Aloud Strategy is seen as
a tool to help students repair their gaps in comprehension. "The purpose of think-aloud is to help second- language learners develop the
ability to monitor their reading comprehension and employ strategies to
facilitate understanding of text," write Regina McKeown and James Gentilucci.
However, in a small study of 27 middle school ELLs at three different reading
proficiency levels, early intermediate, intermediate and early advanced, the
researchers found that the think-aloud strategy disrupted comprehension for more
advanced students and held no benefit for the beginning ELL reader who was still
using a bottom-up reading strategy focused on the word level.
The two researchers were surprised by the finding that think-aloud disrupted
reading comprehension for more advanced students, but they add that existing
research warns about this. In general, think-aloud strategies are disruptive to
the reading task at hand, they say, and may force more advanced ELLs to regress
to bottom-up reading strategies. It may be counterproductive for advanced ELLs
to use this strategy because they may have already developed self-monitoring
comprehension skills.
"The most important lesson drawn from Think-Aloud Strategy not as helpful for
beginning and advanced ELLs, study says this study is that teachers should not
make the mistake of considering all strategies as 'good teaching' and apply them
equally to all levels of English learners," the authors write.
"The very complex nature of second-language students requires teachers to
consider the research carefully before selecting strategies that purport to be
useful tools for improving all students' reading development."
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| Teacher modeled think aloud
For the study, students were
tested with the High Point Comprehension Assessment before and after the
intervention. The High Point Language, Literacy and Content series was the only
curriculum adopted by the State of California as both an English-language
development program and a reading intervention program. The authors say they did
not use a control group because they did not want to deny any student the
potential advantage of the think-aloud strategy.
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During the pretest, students silently read a text and then completed the High
Point Reading Comprehension Assessment. McKeown, the researcher and teacher,
modeled the think-aloud strategy for students over a two-week period during the
reading classes three days each week by reading social science texts as well as
the novel, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. After every two or three lines of text,
she stopped and restated what she thought was happening, asked questions and
made predictions.
During the 3rd and 4th weeks of the study, students began applying the
Think-Aloud Strategy to their daily reading assignments or to the Accelerated
Reader novel. McKeown monitored students as they read aloud and encouraged them
to think aloud in whatever language was more comfortable for them. Students were
taught to use additional strategies such as substituting another word for an
unknown word, using pictures and graphs to clarify meaning and ignoring
confusing sections until they could be clarified later with the teacher and a
peer.
Fix-up strategies posted in classroom
These "fix-up
strategies" for comprehension were posted in the classroom and were reviewed
before each reading session over a two-week period. After two weeks of
independent practice and partner work, students took a post-test.
McKeown reports that advanced students complained about the think-aloud
practice during the study, asking, "'Why do I have to stop and say what's going
on if I already get it?'"
"Think-Aloud Strategy: Metacognitive development and monitoring
comprehension in the middle school second-language classroom," by Regina McKeown
and James Gentilucci, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, October 2007, Volume 51, Number 2,
pp.136-147.
Published by ERN November 2007 Volume 20,
Number 8
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