EFL Students’ Shadow-reading and Written Retelling: A Sociocultural Approach

Abstract

This study explores EFL reading from a sociocultural perspective and attempts to discover more about the benefits of collaborative reading activities. Since this study adopts EFL reading as a social interactive process, shadow-reading was selected for analysis. The study was conducted on 60 EFL college students, 6 males and 54 females. Based on their TOEIC scores, the participants were divided into a shadow-reading group (n = 30) and a silent reading group (n = 30). An independent t–test was conducted to compare reading comprehension and retention between the two groups. In addition to the effect of shadow-reading was investigated whether language proficiency is also a variable affecting comprehension and retention and whether language proficiency and shadow-reading treatment have significant interaction effects through the use of two-way ANOVA, performed in SPSS version 21. Qualitative analysis of the data traced the evidence of how EFL learners could achieve together what they could not have achieved alone. The findings indicated that students in the shadow-reading group outperformed those in the silent reading group, not only in comprehension but also in retention. The study also revealed how EFL learners strategically employ moment-by-moment assisted guidance to resolve language related problems and idea related difficulties in text.