“Read the Text, as if!” The Reading Retention Strategy

Abstract

Students do not always read what is expected in college courses (Berry, Cook, Hill, & Stevens, 2010; Phillips & Phillips, 2007; Sikorski et al., 2002) or they read to cram for an exam or quiz (Clump, Bauer, & Bradley, 2004). The Reading Retention Strategy (RRS) is designed to motivate students to read and assist students in understanding the main points of the readings. The RRS includes students interacting with peers to reinforce and check their responses to prompting questions. Participants included two education professors and their 54 students enrolled in two sections of a four week summer course. The results of the study indicate that when the RRS was employed students recalled more information on essay and short answer questions than when the strategy was not implemented. In addition, only 2% of students reported that they did not complete the course readings.