Think-Aloud Strategy: Improving Reading Comprehension in an Online Context

Abstract

In response to the pandemic spread of COVID-19, universities all over the world have shifted to e-teaching. The Department of English, Mustaqbal University, College of Administration and Humanities, Saudi Arabia, used the Microsoft Teams App for teaching all courses in virtual classrooms. However, reading as a receptive skill, was difficult to teach remotely because it was not so interactive for a teacher to know whether the students have performed the assigned tasks or not. Therefore, there was a need to search for a strategy that could be integrated while using technology to help EFL students improve their reading comprehension. This strategy was think-aloud strategy which could potentially make use of participants’ mental data while interpreting and responding to a text. During reading, this strategy is capable of making the mental processing covert showing direct evidence of internal reading processes. A quasi-experimental design with an experimental group and a control group was used to determine the effectiveness of this think-aloud strategy in improving the reading comprehension of 72 EFL female students majoring in English, Business, and Law. Moreover, the study also explored the instructors’ and the students’ perceptions towards this strategy. Results indicated that all participants viewed the think-aloud strategy very positively. The study recommends adopting a highly customized think-aloud strategy to facilitate readers’ comprehension.