International Journal of English and Education ISSN: 2278-4012, Volume:2, Issue:1, January 2013 191 Copyright © International Journal of English and Education | www.ijee.org The Effects of Reciprocal Teaching vs. Think-Aloud on Reading Comprehension of Pre- Intermediate Students in Iran Manoochehr Jafarigohar 1 Department of Foreign Languages, Payame Noor University, POB: 19395-4697, Tehran, I.R. Iran, Tel: +989121951943 jafari@pnu.ac.ir Hassan Soleimani 2 Assistant Professor, Payam Noor University, Nejatollahi St.Sahand Ave .Tehran, Iran, Tel: 98-21-88904311 arshia.soleimani@gmail.com Zahra Soleimani 3 M.A Student of English Language Teaching in Payam Noor University, Tehran, Iran xaraslm@yahoo.com Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of reciprocal teaching strategy and think-aloud strategy on the English reading comprehension of Iranian students. Three pre-intermediate level classes were selected and randomly assigned into three groups: two experimental groups and one control group. One experimental group received think-aloud strategy, the other one received reciprocal teaching strategy and the control group received a placebo. Reciprocal teaching involves four main reading strategies: predicting, questioning, clarifying and summarizing. Think-aloud involves prediction, forming mental pictures, connecting what they read to what they have already read, creating analogies, verbalizing confusing points, and using fix-up strategies. There were pretest and posttest for these three groups. The findings indicated that the two experimental conditions of think-aloud strategy and reciprocal teaching strategy had significantly positive effects on the reading comprehension of pre-intermediate EFL learners; however, think-aloud strategy enhanced English reading comprehension better than reciprocal teaching strategy. Keywords: Reciprocal Teaching, Think-aloud, Reading Comprehension, Cooperative Learning, Reading Comprehension Strategies 1- Introduction Comprehension is one of the five core components of reading, which has been a hot topic for the last few years (Cassidy & Ortlieb, 2011; Cassidy, Valadez, & Garrett, 2010; Dymock,