A Comparative Analysis of the Impact of Cooperative versus Textbook-based Individual Prereading Activities on the Reading Comprehension of Students of Spanish

Reading texts with historical and sociopolitical content in a foreign language is often a challenge for second language students. The obstacles encountered by students should be of concern to language instructors. Lack of background knowledge frequently causes the reader to abandon the reading activity with a sense of disappointment and frustration. This quantitative semester-long study examined and compared the effects of two different types of prereading activities on the reading comprehension of college students of fourth-semester Spanish when reading texts about sociopolitical and historical issues. The prereading activities were guided cooperative versus textbook-based individual. Multiple-choice test findings indicated that guided cooperative prereading activities significantly increased participants’ comprehension. However, holistic results from a written recall protocol showed no difference between the two prereading treatments. Yet, the results confirmed that guided cooperative prereading activities prompted participants to remember a significantly high percentage of main ideas, but did not impact the recall of supporting ideas and/or minor details.