ABSTRACT

This study investigated the effect of Reciprocal peer tutoring and Think-pair-share instructional strategy on senior secondary school students’ academic achievements and retention in English language. The study which adopted a quasi-experimental, pretest posttest non-equivalent control group research design was carried out in Abia state. Eight research questions and hypotheses respectively guided the study. A sample of 110 secondary school (SSII) students drawn from three public co-educational secondary schools in the state was used for the study using purposive sampling technique. The three intact classes were assigned into each of the two experimental groups and one control group respectively. Data were collected using a 34-multiple choice questions titled: Reading Comprehension Achievement Test (RCAT). The instrument was developed by the researcher and subjected to face and content validation. The validation was carried out by five experts, two in Curriculum and instruction, Reading Comprehension Education and one in measurement and evaluation all from Michael Okpara university of Agriculture Umudike, Abia state Nigeria and two seasoned English teachers. The instrument was tested for reliability and subjected to analysis using Kuder Richardson (K-R₂₀) formula to determine the internal consistency which yielded an index of 0.71. Before and after the treatment that lasted for six weeks, the copies of the instrument were administered to the students by their regular English language teachers. The data collected from the students were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions, while the Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the null-hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results showed among others that Reciprocal peer tutoring and Think-pair-share had statistically significant and increasing effect on students’ academic achievements in Reading Comprehension than the lecture method. Based on the findings and conclusion of the study, it was recommended among others that teachers should use Reciprocal peer tutoring and Think-pair-share more regularly in teaching Reading Comprehension to the students especially the identified weak and less-achievers instead of the use of conventional lecture method.