Thinking Aloud and Reading Comprehension Research: Inquiry, Instruction, and Social Interaction

This is a review of research on thinking aloud in reading comprehension that considers thinking aloud as a method of inquiry, a mode of instruction, and a means for encouraging social interaction. As a method of inquiry, the analysis of verbal reports provided by readers thinking aloud revealed the flexible and goal-directed processing of expert readers. As a mode of instruction, thinking aloud was first employed by teachers who modeled their processing during reading, making overt the strategies they were using to comprehend text. Subsequently, instructional approaches were developed to engage students themselves in thinking aloud. Such endeavors revealed facilitation effects on text understanding. Current efforts to engage students in constructing meaning from text in collaborative discussions seem to indicate a new direction for thinking aloud research, one in which social interaction assumes increased importance.