Effects of English Proficiency and Gender on Collaborative Strategic Reading

The effectiveness of Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) in facilitatingstudents’ reading comprehension has been highly commended in the literature (e.g., Klingner & Vaughn, 2000; Klingner, Vaughn, Arguelles, Hughes, & Leftwich, 2004; Klingner, Vaughn, & Schumm, 1998; Vaughn, Klingner, & Bryant, 2001). Basically, CSR is designed to facilitate reading comprehension, in particular, for students with reading, learning, or behavior problems (Klingner & Vaughn, 1996). It integrates two main instructional approaches: reciprocal teaching and cooperative learning (CL). This strategic instruction is meant to teach students techniques to comprehend expository texts, to meet diverse learning needs in the classroom, and to provide interaction opportunities in the context of multi-ability groups (Klingner et al., 2004; Vaughn et al., 2001).