Effects of Think-aloud with Feedback on College EFL Reading Comprehension

The present study aimed to examine the effects of think-aloud with feedback on reading comprehension of 122 Korean undergraduate students enrolled in general English reading classes. For 14 weeks, students received instructions based on the assigned treatment across four conditions: (1) no think-aloud and no feedback (Control group); (2) think-aloud, but no feedback (No Feedback group); (3) think-aloud and errors marked with codes from eight different error categories (Implicit Feedback group); (4) think-aloud and errors marked with correct answers (Explicit Feedback group). Students were pre-and post-tested for their reading proficiency to investigate the effects. The data revealed that think-aloud groups performed better on the post-test, and the group with explicit feedback had a significantly higher gain score than the control group which received traditional training. The data also discovered statistically significant effects of think-aloud with explicit feedback on inferential types of questions in the reading comprehension test. However, there was no significant effect on literal questions on the same test.