Which technique is mentioned as effective for boosting students' reading comprehension abilities?

• A. Reciprocal Teaching
• B. Phonics Instruction
• C. Silent Reading
• D. Repeated Reading

Answer: (A)

Reciprocal Teaching strengthens reading comprehension by turning students into active readers who guide a text discussion using four key strategies: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. When teachers and students rotate roles in small groups, learners articulate their understanding, monitor meaning, and collaboratively repair misunderstandings. This explicit, interactive practice helps students surface evidence from the text, think about what they know, and apply strategies to make meaning, which directly boosts comprehension.

Phonics instruction focuses on decoding and word recognition, which supports reading but isn’t the same as building these comprehension-focused strategies. Silent reading provides time to read but typically lacks structured instruction in how to think about and interrogate the text. Repeated reading can improve fluency, which supports comprehension indirectly, but it doesn’t offer the explicit, strategic dialogue that reciprocal teaching provides.