Collaborative Strategic Reading to Enhance Learners' Reading Comprehension in English as a Foreign Language

Abstract

Teaching reading to students in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is not a simple task. Teachers use various strategies to enhance students' reading skill. These strategies are applied at pre-reading, during reading and post-reading stages. One common strategy is Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR). CSR has been in practice since 1980. The theoretical foundation of CSR based on Vygotsky’s theory of social constructivism. The main four stages in CSR are preview, click and clunk, get the gist and wrap up. All the four stages have been described in detail. Through CSR, EFL learners learn various skills such as brainstorming, predicting, monitoring understanding, and finding the main idea. The findings of the previous studies support the idea of the effectiveness of CSR. Of course, teachers can play important role in the successful implementation of CSR. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v4n1p161