Improving the reading comprehension of primary-school students at frustration-level reading through the paraphrasing strategy training: Amultiple-probe design study

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of “RAP” [RAP is a three-step strategy: Read-Ask-Put], a paraphrasing cognitive strategy training, associated with a self-regulatory model, on the development of reading comprehension among fourth-grade students. All participants were selected on the basis of initial reading comprehension measures and consisted of three male students who were identified as being at a frustration-level reading. A multiple-probe design across participants was used. As a result, the participants showed significant improvements in the text recall and an enhancement their reading comprehension skills. Two of the participants were able to maintain their improvements and generalized each step of the strategy in the “RAP” to different content-area texts. The remaining participant made remarkable improvements with respect to the baseline phase, but did not maintain and generalize the strategy. Suggestions were made for improving future research investigating the effects of RAP paraphrasing strategy