Abstract
While research has indicated that college students may benefit from collaboratively reading academic texts, little is known about how they co-construct comprehension through text-based discussions. This case study focused on two groups of undergraduate students with different degrees of participation in discussions – one active group and one silent group – in a course on English for academic purposes (EAP) at a Chinese university. Drawing upon classroom observation and semi-structured interviews, the study investigated the spontaneous use of reading strategies in 10 post-reading group discussions and probed into the key processes for comprehension building shared by the two groups. The findings suggest that the students utilized a series of reading strategies and drew on the ideational and linguistic resources shared within the group to build comprehension. Three key processes for comprehension co-construction were found: (1) paraphrasing to contribute personal understanding, (2) elaborating to clarify meanings, and (3) summarizing to build consensus. Pedagogical implications concerning the instruction and task design for collaborative academic reading are discussed.
I Introduction
Tertiary-level academic reading challenges students with varying degrees of content and language levels (Ohata & Fukao, 2014), especially those who read in an L2 (Yapp et al., 2021). Research on reading experiences of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) has found that in transitioning from high school EFL learning to university-level English for academic purposes (EAP) learning, first-year university students gradually changed their conceptualization of academic reading from reading for learning English to ‘studying difficult content in English’ (Ohata & Fukao, 2014, p. 88). Faced with academic reading difficulties, students may resort to group discussion (Hirano, 2015) to construct a deeper understanding by building on each other’s prior knowledge and textual interpretations (Jin, Liu & Lei, 2020). Among the relatively limited number of studies on university-level collaborative academic reading, Jin et al. (2020) found that multiple reading strategies were employed by students in group discussions to facilitate their comprehension of text content.
While collaboratively reading academic texts has the potential to improve comprehension, little is known about the meaning co-construction process. In response to calls for using descriptive approaches to analyse meaning-making processes that inform teachers of how students comprehend texts, and the challenges students may encounter (Shepard-Carey, 2020), this study aims to explore the collaborative meaning construction process in post-reading group discussions in an EAP course. To do so, the study examines the spontaneous use of reading strategies by two groups of Chinese undergraduate students in five summarization (reading-to-present) tasks. Data from audio recordings of group discussions, classroom observation notes, and semi-structured interviews were collected to understand students’ collaborative meaning-making processes. Conceptualizing reading as a social practice, this study aims to describe and analyse how students develop comprehension as they read in small groups.
II Literature review
1 Reading as a social practice
Reading comprehension has been studied from a social perspective (Pearson & Cervetti, 2017; Shepard-Carey, 2020). Informed by Vygotsky’s (1978) theory, which emphasizes that individuals can achieve higher learning goals with the scaffolding of more competent peers, researchers have increasingly shifted their focus ‘from the individual and the text to the situational context surrounding the act of reading’ (Pearson & Cervetti, 2017, p. 32). Context is perceived broadly as including both ‘sociocultural contexts’ – cultural assets shaping and facilitating comprehension – and ‘ideological contexts’ – ‘particular discourses, political viewpoints, and economic interests’ (Pearson & Cervetti, 2017, p. 46) informing textual interpretations. From a social perspective, readers may draw upon three types of contextual resources to comprehend texts: interpersonal (e.g. peers), environmental (e.g. dictionaries), and intrapersonal (e.g. readers’ prior knowledge/experiences) (Aukerman, 2013).
Empirical research from a social perspective has shown the power of text-based discussion when students read collaboratively, which enables them to ‘combine their intellectual resources’ (Wilkinson & Nelson, 2020, p. 235) to co-construct comprehension. Aukerman et al. (2017) described collaborative meaning-making as ‘intercomprehending’ (p. 489), with learners utilizing shared ideational and linguistic resources to build comprehension. When engaging in text-based discussion, students contribute and build on peers’ ideas about texts, which constitute a shared ‘ideational repertoire’ that facilitates collaborative sense-making of texts (Aukerman et al., 2017, p. 489). Since ideas are mostly expressed through language, the linguistic repertoire shared among peers also plays an important role in collaborative sense-making (Aukerman et al., 2017). Aukerman et al. (2017) analysed the small-group discussion among second-grade students with developing bilingual ability and found that students commonly proposed ideas in relation to those of their peers. They built on others’ ideas by supplementing them with relevant information or showed disagreement by contributing alternative interpretations (Aukerman et al., 2017). They also borrowed and modified others’ language when communicating ideas (Aukerman et al., 2017). Similarly, Martin-Beltrán et al. (2017) found bilingual reading buddies provided peers with academic support when constructing meaning from texts, including cognitive support (e.g. building on ideas from peers) and linguistic support (e.g. using translanguaging to clarify meanings).
Researchers emphasize the importance of giving students opportunities to make sense of texts collaboratively through dialogue, which allows for the sharing of diverse interpretations and facilitates comprehension development (see Aukerman et al., 2015, 2017). Nevertheless, Martin-Beltrán et al. (2017) pointed out that few studies had closely examined student talk to reveal how learners ‘navigate[d] potential learning opportunities and challenges’ (p. 153) in text-based discussions.
2 Reading strategies in text-based discussions
Previous studies on collaborative reading have shown that both explicit (e.g. Boardman et al., 2018) and implicit (e.g. Clark, 2009) use of reading strategies in text-based discussions can facilitate students’ collaborative meaning-making. Drawing on Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural perspective, several influential strategy instruction models have been developed to guide students to practice reading strategies in text-based discussions to facilitate comprehension, including reciprocal teaching (Palincsar & Brown, 1984; Palincsar et al., 1987), transactional strategies instruction (Pressley et al., 1992) and Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) (Klingner et al., 1998; Klingner & Vaughn, 1999). Scholarly responses to these models have been mixed. For instance, strategy instruction in ‘decontextualized’ instructional situations (Palincsar & Schutz, 2011, p. 88) has been criticized for being ‘overly procedural or process based’ (Boardman et al., 2018, p. 177). By contrast, ‘comprehension-as-sensemaking’ pedagogy was regarded to be able to encourage ‘active exploration of possibilities for meaning’ (Aukerman, 2013, p. 5). On the other hand, research on the classroom discourse in lessons implementing the CSR model has demonstrated the facilitative role of strategies in co-constructing comprehension. For example, Klingner et al. (1998) analysed student talk and found that when using the main idea strategy (i.e. ‘get[ting] the gist’), students summarized and contributed key pieces of information from texts, then combined them and worked out a more complete gist. Students could have ample opportunities to engage in collaborative sense-making ‘when reading strategies are used in socially mediated structures for participation’ (Boardman et al., 2018, p. 191). Boardman et al. (2018) analysed teachers’ and students’ discourse and found that the use of strategies (e.g. predicting, summarizing, inferring word meanings) facilitated discussion of textual content, engaging students in voicing diverse interpretations and building on peer responses to construct meaning collaboratively. Therefore, in text-based discussions, strategies can serve as ‘vehicles’ for ‘deeper meaning construction’ (Boardman et al., 2018, p. 191).
Studies have identified the facilitating power of implicit use of strategies in post-reading group discussions. Clark (2009) differentiated between students’ explicit practice of strategies taught by teachers and their implicit use of strategies, referring to the spontaneous use of strategies that occurs as students discuss texts (Clark, 2009). Berne and Clark (2006) found that, without explicit instruction, ninth-grade students used multiple comprehension strategies such as questioning, interpreting, and summarizing in their discussion of literary texts. This unintentional use of strategies could also develop the group members’ joint comprehension. For example, students’ questions about the text elicited interpretations from peers and stimulated further enquires and discussion (Berne & Clark, 2006). Clark (2009) further pointed out that the effectiveness of students’ strategies varied, while it did not necessarily impede the co-construction of comprehension. As students worked on puzzling texts using interpreting strategy, in response to some interpretations that might not be sufficiently founded, other students would be prompted to contribute more substantive interpretations (Clark, 2009). Regarding academic reading, in particular, Jin et al. (2020) found that undergraduate students were capable of employing multiple strategies in discussions to improve comprehension, including ‘asking and answering questions’, ‘reasoning’, ‘orchestrating strategy use’, and ‘monitoring’ (pp. 5–6). Strategy use can help students draw on peers’ knowledge to construct textual meaning collaboratively. For example, questioning about text content from one member might lead to more collaborative elaborating and reasoning from other members who needed to exploit the prior knowledge relevant to this topic (Jin et al., 2020). In this sense, the strategies adopted by students helped them draw on ideational resources in the comprehension building process. Analysing the use of strategies implicit in discussion helps uncover the focus of the sense-making process (Clark, 2009).
3 Academic reading in small groups
As Passig and Maidel-Kravetsky (2016) noted, research on collaborative reading mainly focused on young learners, with little scholarly endeavors in the context of higher education. Existing studies on university students’ academic reading highlight the need for collaboration. McGrath et al. (2016) found students encountered comprehension difficulties as they read academic texts. They described students’ lack of collaboration as a ‘missed opportunity’ (McGrath et al., 2016, p. 162) as it limited students’ exposure to different interpretations of textual meanings. Interestingly, Saengpakdeejit and Intaraprasert (2014) interviewed 39 EFL college students and found that some students would discuss with peers to confirm understanding after reading English academic texts individually.
Relevant studies examining text-based discussion among college students showed it offered peers ideational and linguistic resources. In Martin-Beltrán et al.’s (2017) terms, it offered cognitive support and linguistic support that enhanced textual comprehension. Specifically, reading in small groups provided students with opportunities to draw on peers’ prior content knowledge, negotiate textual meanings, and modify their comprehension (Cotterall, 1990; Jin et al., 2020). Apart from the ideational resources available in small-group discussions, English learners have been found to use their multilingual competence to discuss text content with peers. Previous research has highlighted the use of translanguaging as a ‘useful resource’ in group discussion for deep comprehension of academic texts (Mbirimi-Hungwe, 2021, p. 266). Translanguaging, a meaning-making practice used by multilinguals in interactions (García & Li, 2014), can be perceived as ‘a linguistic decision or a strategy for learning’ (Brevik & Rindal, 2020, p. 928). In the context of classroom interaction, it refers to having ‘flexibility in language use’ to gain a better understanding of instructional content (Lewis et al., 2012, p. 659). In collaborative academic reading, students reported that the use of translanguaging in small-group discussions facilitated their understanding of difficult concepts in English (Mbirimi-Hungwe, 2021). Overall comprehension was also enhanced when students were allowed to make flexible use of linguistic resources when discussing main ideas in the text (Mbirimi-Hungwe, 2016).
Despite previous endeavors, little is known about how university students build comprehension collaboratively – ‘combin[ing] their intellectual resources’ through dialogue to co-construct comprehension (Wilkinson & Nelson, 2020, p. 235). Clark (2009) contended that to develop comprehension during discussions, students must share their initial comprehension, consider alternative interpretations, and then refine their comprehension. As mentioned above, an analysis of the students’ implicit use of strategies will enhance our understanding of their collaborative comprehension process. This study thus sets out to investigate the comprehension co-construction process by examining how strategies are used to facilitate collaborative sense-making of texts, paying special attention to how ideational and linguistic resources are utilized in this process. Given the facilitative role that collaboration could take in university students’ academic reading, an in-depth understanding of how they co-construct comprehension would be a meaningful contribution to the field of tertiary level EAP education, with pedagogical implications suggested.
III The study
This study was conducted in an EAP class at a prestigious university in China. Previous studies on EAP courses in the Chinese context have developed effective pedagogies to enhance students’ reading comprehension through small group collaboration (e.g. Jin et al., 2020; Wu & Gao, 2020), but little has been known about how they collaboratively develop comprehension of academic texts. Thus this study aims to explore the key processes for comprehension co-construction, which is characterized by the collaborative use of reading strategies and ideational and linguistic resources. By doing so, the present study also responds to calls for research documenting student learning in EAP courses, in order to inform curriculum development (e.g. Cheng, 2016).
One goal of the examined EAP course was to engage students in several small-group (five students per group) collaborative summarization tasks to enhance their academic reading comprehension and communication, with the teacher acting as a facilitator. The summarization tasks required summarizing textbook articles and delivering outline-based presentations, which involved using text comprehension and language skills to share authors’ ideas with audiences (Galloway et al., 2020) and concisely re-represent texts’ meaning (Leopold et al., 2019). Oral summarizations, though presented individually, were considered less of an end product created by individual presenters and more of a collaborative outcome that involved ‘building students’ knowledge through negotiation’ with group members ‘about which content to include and about how to express this information through language’ (Galloway et al., 2020, p. 36). The reading-to-present tasks well reflected how students collaboratively constructed meaning from texts and prepared for knowledge sharing as they worked in groups to read, discuss, and present.
In this study, strategies used in collaborative academic reading are defined as actions students ‘consciously select and employ’ to facilitate text comprehension and summarization (Oxford, 2017, p. 272). Specifically, this study aims to answer the following two research questions:
Which strategies are adopted by the two groups of students in post-reading discussions?
What are the shared key processes through which the two groups adopt reading strategies to co-construct comprehension?
IV Methods
1 Context and participants
This study adopted a qualitative research design to obtain an in-depth understanding of how university students collaboratively construct meaning of academic texts (see Patton, 2015). Specifically, a case study approach was employed to provide a detailed presentation of contextual conditions and to collect multiple sources of data for triangulation (Yin, 2018). The participants of this case study are thirty first-year non-English-major university students who had demonstrated high English proficiency on a placement test (administered when they entered the university) in an EAP course in a Chinese university. To address the research questions, this study focused on two five-student groups to provide a ‘thick description’ (Duff, 2008, p. 43) of how they completed collaborative reading tasks. Audio-recorded group discussions were analysed to explore how strategies facilitated meaning-making from academic texts.
The course started in Week 1 of a nearly five-month semester. Six collaborative summarization tasks (reading to present) were assigned in Weeks 2, 5, 9, 11, 13, and 15. The summarization task procedure was as follows:
Reading: Students were asked to preview academic texts (textbook articles) before class and had 5–10 minutes for individual in-class reading.
Discussion: After reading, they worked in groups for 10 minutes to summarize the texts and formulate an outline.
Presentation: One randomly-selected presenter from each group wrote the outline on the blackboard and gave a 2-minute, outline-based presentation.
The participants were selected via ‘maximum variation sampling’ so that the shared comprehension co-construction processes that emerged from the two very different groups were likely to capture the core experiences in collaborative academic reading (Patton, 2015). In Week 2, the first author (the class teaching assistant) observed the six groups as they engaged in Summarization Task 1. Students in Group 1 held a heated discussion, with all members actively contributing their opinions, while some students in other groups discussed matters with their desk mates only. However, Group 2 was the most silent group, which distinguished them from the other groups. Accordingly, Group 1 and Group 2 were selected for further analysis to identify the strategies used in discussion. The students participated voluntarily. Group 1 included two male and three female students (one History major and four Chinese majors); Group 2 comprised one male and four female students (all Chinese majors); The students’ background information is shown in Table 1.
Students in Groups 1 and 2.
Both groups completed six textbook-related summarization tasks over the semester, using articles from the reprint edition of the textbook, Academic encounters 2nd edition level 4 student’s book reading and writing: Human behavior (Cambridge University Press and Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press), which includes authentic, real-life examples to help students develop their English proficiency and learn content knowledge (Yang, 2017). Each textbook chapter includes three articles on one topic related to aspects of daily life (Yang, 2017). For each task, the groups drew lots to decide which of the three articles to read, discuss, and present. Task arrangement, reading materials, and organization for Week 2 to Week 15 are presented in Table 2. Presenters were mostly randomly invited and were not announced until the discussion had been completed. Task 1 familiarized students with collaborating and general task requirements and thus it was not analysed.
Summarization tasks for Groups 1 and 2.
2 Data collection
Classroom observation started at Week 2, when the first author observed the six groups engaging in collaboration and selected Group 1 (most active in terms of participation in the discussion) and Group 2 (most silent during the discussion) as focus groups. Data collection started at Week 5, when students started to be familiar with task requirements and procedures. Multiple sources of data were collected to address the research questions (see Table 3).
Data collection purposes.
Each data type served different purposes. Discussions were crucial for answering the research questions and were thus the main analytic targets. Classroom observation served to triangulate the discussion data, while semi-structured interviews helped contextualize specific strategic behaviors employed in discussions.
Group discussions: The first author audio-recorded both groups’ discussions. From Week 5 to Week 15, she recorded ten 10–15-minute text-based discussions (five from each group), then transcribed and coded them for qualitative analysis.
Classroom observation: The first author observed the class and took field notes on group members’ strategic behaviors in group discussions to triangulate the main data.
Semi-structured interviews: The first author conducted two to three semi-structured interviews with each participant individually to contextualize specific strategies they and other group members had used. The semi-structured interviews were conducted over the period from Week 9 to the end of the semester, with an average length of about one hour. Students were often asked to re-read the passages they had read in class before they were requested to answer interview questions. During the interviews, the first author raised questions concerning students’ use of strategies during group discussions. The discussion recordings were played to stimulate recall when needed. Some example questions for students are: In Summarization Task 5 (Week 13), why did you first paraphrase the whole passage? Why did you use the Chinese terms to explain the English ones? Follow-up questions were asked, informed by the responses from students, to obtain the students’ explanations or evaluations of specific strategies they adopted.
3 Data analysis
The discussion transcript was divided into student talk turns, with each turn beginning and ending as one student started or stopped speaking (see Berne & Clark, 2006). The turns were then grouped into different episodes, each centering on the discussion of a specific stretch of text. The episodes were analysed ‘in their entirety’ (Boardman et al., 2018, p. 183). An inductive approach was adopted for data coding (Thomas, 2006), informed by the categories of strategies found to be used by college students in L2 (English) academic reading (see Table 4). Following previous research (i.e. Berne & Clark, 2006; Clark, 2009), the coding scheme was developed and refined with reference to the strategies found in the literature (i.e. Hong-Nam & Page, 2014; Li & Munby, 1996; Malcolm, 2009; McGrath et al., 2016; Mokhtari & Reichard, 2004; Saengpakdeejit & Intaraprasert, 2014; Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001).
Strategies used in L2 (English) academic reading.
Prior to beginning the coding process, the research team discussed the scheme. The first author reviewed the classroom observation notes for specific lessons and the passages read by the two groups. Next, she read through all the discussion episodes and excluded off-task conversations. Each episode was analysed in relation to specific stretches of text in the reading passages and attached codes that denote the respective strategy categories to specific talk turns. For example, if several talk turns were all about Chinese paraphrases of a specific sentence in the passage, the turns were coded as ‘paraphrasing’. An emerging feature in the data was that the students sometimes employed multiple strategies simultaneously in a ‘strategy cluster’ with the most ‘potent’ one being the cluster’s basis (Oxford, 2017, p. 25). Therefore, multiple codes were attached to a single episode. All codes were formulated based on data features, concerning categories established in the literature (see details in Table 4). After the initial coding, a ‘peer debriefer’ (Given, 2008, p. 200), who also worked as an EAP course teaching assistant for another class, checked all the coded texts and an agreement of slightly over 90% was reached. All the discrepancies then underwent further discussion and agreements were reached after modification as appropriate.
V Findings
1 Strategies used in collaborative academic reading
The participants were found to adopt a series of reading strategies to facilitate co-construction of comprehension. Twelve strategies were identified in the discussions (see Table 5), most of which were employed by both groups. Students employed the strategies of ‘questioning’, ‘using prior knowledge’ (Clark, 2009, p. 105), and reasoning (Boardman et al, 2018; Jin et al., 2020) to consolidate team members’ ideas and to develop their own understanding. They also analysed text features to improve comprehension through paying attention to topic sentences (Li & Munby, 1996) or keywords, evaluating text content (Clark, 2009), and analysing text structure. They drew on their multilingual resources for fuller comprehension by, for example, translating L2 into L1 (Hong-Nam & Page, 2014; Li & Munby, 1996; Malcolm, 2009; McGrath et al., 2016; Saengpakdeejit & Intaraprasert, 2014); paraphrasing, and elaborating L2 content in L1; and summarizing L2 content in L1 which echoes the findings in Saengpakdeejit & Intaraprasert (2014). The students also orchestrated strategy uses to facilitate meaning-making (Jin et al., 2020).
Strategies used in discussion.
Note. Student talks were translated into English.
2 Key processes for comprehension co-construction
Our analysis shows that three key processes for co-constructing comprehension were shared by the two groups. They are: paraphrasing to contribute personal understanding, elaborating to clarify meanings, and summarizing to build consensus. Collaborative use of the three strategies – paraphrasing, elaborating, and summarizing – characterized the three shared key processes, during which students were found to have flexibly utilized ideational and linguistic resources available in their groups to develop comprehension. The students often contributed their interpretation of texts first, modified comprehension through clarifying meanings when difficulties/divergences emerged, and built consensus before delivering presentations.
a Paraphrasing to contribute personal understanding
To collaboratively construct textual meaning, active group discussion participants frequently shared textual interpretations using paraphrasing (mostly in Chinese, facilitated by translations) to decode texts, which invited responses and further discussion. Consistent with Aukerman et al. (2017), students in both groups offered acknowledgments and supplementary information to show agreement or proposed conflicting ideas when there was disagreement. Table 6 shows an example of employing paraphrasing to build initial understanding.
Excerpt 1.
Note. Student talks were translated into English.
In Table 6, students in Group 1 discussed an article on late adulthood. Zoe (Z) shared her textual interpretation by paraphrasing the L2 content into L1, translating several phrases and sentences (see talk turn No. 5, 9, 14, 15), and repeating some keywords from the passage in English (No. 5, 7). She flexibly drew from linguistic resources to express her textual comprehension. Patricia (P) and Louis (L) largely agreed and acknowledged her interpretations. Louis also added some supplemental textual information. Paraphrasing served as the basis of the strategy cluster identified in this episode. Through paraphrasing, students built on and modified Zoe’s interpretation, and collaboratively constructed textual comprehension. In another case, in Week 13, the discussion started with Zoe offering Chinese paraphrases of the passage: ‘Ok, let me share my understanding . . .’ She later asked, ‘Do you have anything to add on it?’
In the same week, another typical example was observed in Group 2’s discussion. Tina took the initiative to paraphrase the whole passage in Chinese. She explained in an interview that she did so because this passage was quite difficult to understand and group members might be uncertain about their interpretation. Those not used to sharing their interpretation may keep silent and therefore, she contributed hers so that the group could work on it together. 1
Notably, while the students in both groups frequently paraphrased the L2 content into L1 to enhance comprehension, they emphasized key phrases in English. In the follow-up interviews, John indicated that he tended to repeat key terms in English to avoid misunderstanding when he could not formulate a pertinent translation. Zoe expressed a similar concern that group members might not know which keyword was referred to if it was paraphrased in Chinese.
b Elaborating to clarify meanings
Students in both groups employed the elaborating strategy to clarify textual meanings or ideas when opinions diverged or when encountering comprehension obstacles, which helped enhance their understanding (O’Reilly et al., 2015). Specifically, their elaboration was supported by topic-specific or general world knowledge (McCarthy & McNamara, 2021), reasoning, and key information from texts. Students actively responded to the elaboration by offering further explanations or conflicting opinions with justifications. Table 7 shows an example.
Excerpt 2.
Note. Student talks were translated into English.
Extracts from the textbook article: Emblems are substitutes for words; they are body movements that have rather specific translations, such as the nonverbal signs for ‘OK’, ‘Please’, ‘Come here’, ‘Go away’ . . . (Yang, 2017, p. 113) Illustrators accompany and literally illustrate verbal messages . . . In describing a circle or a square, you more than likely make circular or square movements with your hands. (Yang, 2017, p. 114)
Table 7 presents an extract of discussion among all group members of Group 1, namely, Patricia (P), Karen (K), John (J), Louis (L), and Zoe (Z). The students drew on their topical knowledge of the Chinese language and literature to differentiate between ‘emblems’ and ‘illustrators’. ‘Emblems’ were paraphrased in Chinese as 象征 (using something specific to represent abstract meanings), and ‘illustrators’ as 图解 (using graphics to explain something). The term 象征 was proposed earlier by Louis. While group members were voicing conflicting opinions, John explained that one could not tell emblems directly. Building on John’s elaboration, Louis reasoned (see talk turn No. 13) to differentiate ‘emblems’ from ‘illustrators’: emblems are abstract, while illustrators are concrete. The others agreed and linked the meanings of the Chinese terms to the English ones to enhance comprehension.
In follow-up interviews, Louis explained that as his peers understood the terms in Chinese (since most majored in Chinese), he used them to explain the English ones to facilitate textual understanding. While Karen and Patricia acknowledged that using Chinese terms facilitated immediate understanding, John and Zoe indicated that it might cause misunderstanding during presentations; however, without a better way to explain the English terms, they relented.
In other studies on individual academic reading, students were also found to use prior topical knowledge for self-explanation and comprehension (e.g. Davis et al., 2017). Readers were also found to use both personal experience and content knowledge in comprehending the text (Brooks, 2016). The ‘appropriate connection’ (Brooks, 2016, p. 9) between prior knowledge and text content demonstrated among the participants in this study reflects a high degree of comprehension. Importantly, compared with individual reading, collaboration allows not only the use of richer knowledge sources to improve comprehension (see Jin et al., 2020) but also critical evaluation of the appropriateness of the connection between prior knowledge and text content. This suggests the potential of collaborative academic reading for developing deeper comprehension and richer learning experiences.
c Summarizing to build consensus
The analysis suggests students usually employed summarizing strategy to synthesize textual information and peers’ ideas to build a consensus in discussions. They mainly summarized by using key textual phrases (in L2) and their own words (in L1). With peer contributions, they collaboratively consolidated what they learned from texts for constructing concise summaries.
In Table 8, the students, Tina (T), Zack (Z), and Christina (C), in Group 2 co-constructed the summary using textual phrases (see talk turn No. 5, 8) in L2, supplemented with their own words in L1 and occasionally in L2 (talk turn No. 2). This is consistent with Saengpakdeejit and Intaraprasert’s (2014) study which found that students summarized academic texts in both L1 and L2 when reading individually. When being asked why he repeated English textual phrases in the discussion, Zack (Z) explained that it facilitated understanding and helped others locate specific content in the passage. Like Group 1 members (e.g. John and Zoe), Zack also showed concerns about causing misunderstandings or ambiguities in meanings if he did not use the original English phrases in discussion.
Excerpt 3.
Not. Student talks were translated into English.
Students in both groups summarized texts collaboratively to reach a consensus in understanding. They rarely challenged the peers’ summaries, partly because their doubts had been alleviated through earlier elaboration and partly because the textbook articles were generally easy to understand and summarize. Nevertheless, Karen (member of Group 1) reported that before she built enough rapport with Patricia, the ‘aggressive’ member who held strong opinions, she tended not to ‘argue’ with her, as she could not ‘win’.
VI Discussion
1 Strategy use, translanguaging, and collaborative meaning-making
This case study has delineated how two groups of undergraduate students collaboratively constructed meanings of academic texts by analysing their use of strategies in post-reading group discussions. Analysis of the two groups’ comprehension practices, first of all, revealed the students’ ability to utilize a series of strategies that ‘provided opportunities for deeper meaning construction’ (Boardman et al., 2018, p. 191) as they elicited textual interpretations, conflicting opinions, and meaning negotiation. Interestingly, in addition to building on ideational resources, the students strategically drew on shared linguistic resources to develop comprehension, which manifests the benefits of collaborative reading (Aukerman et al., 2017).
Three key shared processes for co-constructing comprehension in both groups emerged from this study. First, the students paraphrased text content, often into Chinese, to contribute their understanding of academic texts, which provided a basis for discussion, supplementation, and revision. Second, when divergence occurred, the students elaborated their ideas by using their group members’ previous relevant knowledge and reasoning strategy, which helped peers construct a deeper understanding of the texts. Third, to build consensus, the students summarized text content, either by using their own words in L1 or adopting the original L2 (English in this case) key phrases from texts. Echoing the iterative nature of comprehension development process pointed out by O’Reilly et al. (2015) in individual reading-to-share activities, co-constructing comprehension was also found as an iterative process during which the collective comprehension constantly underwent modifications and refinement.
In consistence with previous studies on the use of translating strategy in individual academic reading (e.g. Hong-Nam & Page, 2014; Li & Munby, 1996; Malcolm, 2009; McGrath et al., 2016; Saengpakdeejit & Intaraprasert, 2014), students in this study were found to be able to present, confirm and modify their comprehension drawing on shared linguistic resources in the context of collaborative academic reading. Furthermore, they demonstrated flexibility in using both L1 and L2 to build comprehension. Echoing the finding of Mbirimi-Hungwe (2021) that translanguaging facilitated the understanding of English academic concepts, the Chinese paraphrases, translations and summaries deployed by the participants in this study indicate the potential of L1 use to construct meanings (McGrath et al., 2016). It points to the importance of further investigation on how learners can draw on shared linguistic resources to achieve effective communication and meaning-making in L2 academic reading.
2 Pedagogical implications for collaborative academic reading
This study supports prior findings (e.g. Cotterall, 1990; Jin et al., 2020) on the benefits of collaborative academic reading for tertiary-level students, which provides opportunities for building on collective intellectual resources to develop fuller comprehension (Wilkinson & Nelson, 2020). Having revealed both learning opportunities and challenges in collaborative academic reading, the findings of this study have the following pedagogical implications.
First, teachers can encourage students to voice their opinions actively and critically to challenge different perspectives in discussions (Aukerman, 2013). Researchers have argued that collaborative sense-making ‘can and should also be seen as an end in itself’ (Aukerman et al., 2017, p. 506); teachers should recognize students’ ‘thoughtful understandings’ (Aukerman et al., 2015, p. 75) or ‘consistent interpretations’ of texts, although they ‘may not [be] . . . intended by the author’ (Rumelhart, 2018, p. 48). The findings in this study indicate that collaborative reading may create rich learning opportunities and foster fuller comprehension. Encouraging students to raise competing interpretations in discussions may alleviate their worries about winning or losing, such as those Karen had. However, such cases may occur where students struggle to make sense of texts, which indicates the need for targeted pedagogical support. Students would benefit from contingent scaffolding offered by teachers, in the form of providing immediate responses to students’ thinking and emergent comprehension (Reynolds & Daniel, 2018).
Second, it is also important that teachers recognize the value of using multiple languages for meaning-making (Blair et al., 2018). It would be beneficial to encourage the use of translanguaging practices for comprehension in L2 academic reading (Mbirimi-Hungwe, 2021).
Third, the findings revealed that when the students were assigned to read the whole textbook passage, they sometimes saw no need for in-depth discussions as they could easily understand the texts and reduced their contributions to group discussions once the responsibility for task completion shifted to the presenter. This has implications for the design of collaborative reading activities. Specifically, teachers may organize tasks in ways that assign responsibility to every group member, because students are more likely to be deeply engaged in collaboration when given responsibility for leading the group in turns (Spörer & Schünemann, 2014). For example, engaging students in jigsaw reading (i.e. each student is responsible for reading a particular section of an academic text and then bridging the information gaps among members through discussion) may encourage more opinion exchanges within groups (see Jin et al., 2020).
3 Limitations
The limitations of this study must be considered when interpreting the findings. First, this study drew on a single case of the collaborative academic text summarization processes by two groups of undergraduate students in one EAP course. Future studies could expand the research scope to include more participants or participants from more diverse contexts to reach a more comprehensive understanding of the meaning co-construction process. Furthermore, the duration of the discussions was short, which may limit our understanding of students’ strategic use of ideational and linguistic resources over prolonged discussions. Since students’ prior educational experiences and familiarity with reading strategies may influence the effect of collaborative meaning-making, more cross-sectional research on participants with different backgrounds is also expected. Last, although the audio-recording data captured authentic language use in student discussions, future studies may also consider collecting discussion data via video recordings so that the concurrent non-verbal behaviors can be captured to explore how translanguaging and other semiotic resources are employed in collaborative academic reading, contributing to a fuller understanding of the meaning-making process.
VII Conclusions
Through analysing the use of strategies implicit in post-reading group discussions, this qualitative case study has provided a preliminary understanding of how undergraduate students collaboratively develop their comprehension of academic texts. The findings indicate that collaborative reading provides rich ideational (Aukerman et al., 2017) and linguistic resources (Mbirimi-Hungwe, 2021) that facilitate comprehension, compensating for students’ ‘missed opportunity’ (McGrath et al., 2016, p. 162) to question and build on each other’s interpretations in individual academic reading. However, it is noteworthy that while students strove for comprehension through collaboration, they might still need contingent scaffolding from teachers (Reynolds & Daniel, 2018).
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the editor and anonymous reviewers of Language Teaching Research for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of the article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a grant from the National Social Science Fund of China (18BYY110).
