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AND LITERATURE) 

 Vol. 1 No. 2, 2020 

Available online at https://jurnal.iainponorogo.ac.id/index.php/eltall 
 

 

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TEACHING THE LESS-SKILLED COMPREHENDERS BY USING 
“THE FAB FOUR” 

 

Fenty Andriani, M.Pd 
  Institut Agama Islam Negeri Ponorogo 

 

Abstract 
This study investigates how the “Fab Four” strategy implemented to teach the less-skilled readers 
in State Institute of Islamic Studies of Ponorogo.  The design of this study is qualitative. Twenty-
seven English department students of the third semester are the subjects of the study. The Fab Four 
strategy is applied by having the lecturer model four comprehension strategies (summarizing, 
questioning, predicting, and clarifying) through guided group discussions. Using this strategy, 
improvements have been noted in students reading comprehension. The result of this study 
indicates that the “Fab Four” is a great strategy to teach the less-skilled comprehenders as they are 
trained to determine important ideas from a reading text while discussing vocabulary, developing 
ideas and questions, and summarizing information. 

Key words: the Fab Four, Less-Skilled Comprehenders 
 

INTRODUCTION 
The teaching-learning process of reading has a particular importance as reading is a 

basic skill to learn something and very fundamental for students. Unfortunately, in fact, 
many students consider that reading is a tiring and difficult activity as they not only have to 
read the text but they also have to activate their prior knowledge and match them with the 
information they get in order to achieve comprehension. Without comprehension, reading 
is just an activity to decode printed materials with no understanding. However, in the case 
of comprehending texts, no matter how good ability they have, occasionally still face 
comprehension failure when reading text. Then, if the proficient readers still face 
comprehension failure how about the less-skilled comprehenders are. 

In the case of comprehending text, it seems reasonable if most of the students have 
difficulty since they are only asked to read a certain text then answer the questions. In this 
case, actually, the process happening cannot be called as a strategy to teach reading, but it 
is appropriate to be called as a way to test students. As a matter of fact, asking students to 
answer such questions after they have finished reading is really a testing strategy rather 
than a teaching one. This is actually evidence that the teaching strategy of reading 
comprehension is not successful yet. 

Based on the explanation above, therefore, the writer offers a teaching strategy that 
may be able to solve the problem in comprehending texts, especially for the less-skilled 
comprehenders. It is the the “Fab Four” strategy. This strategy, based on Palincsar and 
Brown (1984) identifies four basic strategies (predicting, clarifying, questioning, and 
summarizing) that help students recognize and react to sign of comprehension breakdown.  

The objectives of this research are to give description and explanation about the 
implementation of the “Fab Four”strategy and the students’ responses toward the 
implementation of this strategy. 

 
 

 



 

 

ELTALL (ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING, APPLIED LINGUISTICS  

AND LITERATURE) 

 Vol. 1 No. 2, 2020 

Available online at https://jurnal.iainponorogo.ac.id/index.php/eltall 
 

 

68 

 

METHOD 
In conducting this study, the researcher used the descriptive qualitative as the 

research design. Descriptive research is a research to describe a situation which is 
conducted without manipulation or giving special attention to the subject as all of the 
activities run nature. Qualitative study is designed to describe the observed phenomena 
with words rather than with number. Twenty-seven English department students of the 
third semester in IAIN Ponorogo were the subjects of the study.  
 

FINDINGS 
The researcher described the implementation of the “Fab Four” strategy in teaching-

learning process and the students’ responses toward the implementation of this strategy 
below.  
 

A. The Results of the First Observations 
The researcher observed the process of how the “Fab Four” strategy implemented 

by the help of observation checklists and field note. 
The lecturer started the lesson by greeting the students then checked the 

attendance list to make sure that all of the students were present. Before starting 
implementing the strategy, she reviewed little bit the previous lesson. Afterward, the 
lecturer made the students be more enthusiastic to learn since she told that they were 
going to learn a way to comprehend texts easily. This strategy was called the “Fab 
Four”strategy. The lecturer explained that there were four steps in the implementation of 
this stategy, namely  predicting, generating questions, clarifying, and summarizing. She 
added that by conducting those four steps, the students could not only practice to speak 
English, but they could also learn how to overcome their comprehension failure, such as: 
new vocabulary, unclear reference words, and unfamiliar concepts.  

Afterward, the lecturer distributed the texts and asked the students to read the title. 
Stimulating the students’ background knowledge dealing with the title, which was going to 
discuss, was the next activity the lecturer did. She asked whether or not the students had 
known the text before. Some of the students said “yes”, but most of them replied “no”. The 
lecturer, then, modeled the four steps of the “Fab Four” strategy, namely predicting, 
generating questions, clarifying, and summarizing one by one. She started by giving 
instruction to the students as follows. 
Lecturer: Now, let’s see if this is what really the author wrote. Read the first sentence of the 

story: Walter Crane was a rich merchant. What do you think the author is going to 
tell us? 

It showed that the lecturer dis not only started the class by building or stimulating the 
students’ background knowledge but also conducting a predicting step. Then, the following 
utterance was the example for  questioning step. 
Lecturer :  Read the first sentence of the story: Walter Crane was a rich merchant. What do 

you think the author is going to tell us in the first paragraph? 
For the third step: clarifying, the lecturer used context clues to explain the meaning 

of a certain word. She did not directly tell the meaning instead gave a chance to the 
students to look at the context of the sentence.  

After modelling the example of how to predict, generate questions, and also clarify 
difficult words, the lecturer explained that those were the examples of conducting the three 



 

 

ELTALL (ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING, APPLIED LINGUISTICS  

AND LITERATURE) 

 Vol. 1 No. 2, 2020 

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steps in Reciprocal teaching. Then, she continued discussing the next paragraph with the 
same strategy: asking questions related to the content of the paragraph and clarifying the 
difficult or new words. Besides, she also asked what the students have learnt from the first 
and second paragraph, which could be called as summarizing step. In the case of 
summarizing step, the lecturer stimulated the students to add comment or information by 
giving reward for the ones who could answer the question.  

Next, the lecturer appointed one student to be “the lecturer” to practice leading the 
discussion of the second paragraph in front of the class. During the student “lecturer” 
performance, it was found that there were such difficulties faced in guiding the student 
“lecturer” to speak English. After doing the activity, the lecturer challenged the students to 
ask questions related to the activity had already been done.  

After performing how to implement the strategy, the lecturer divided the class in a 
mix ability group of three to discuss the last paragraph by applying the strategy. As there 
were 27 students, 9 groups were formed. The lecturer told the student “lecturer” to write 
the word “lecturer” beside his name in his group task paper to indicate that the role of the 
lecturers would really change on the next meeting. 

During the discussion, the lecturer monitored, kept on track, and helped the 
students overcome the obstacle. She moved around to check each group whether or not the 
students really could implement the strategy. The condition of the class was quite noisy. 
Most of the students had difficulty in speaking English and clarifying difficult words. Thus, 
they often asked for the lecturer and dictionary help.  

After practicing the strategy, the lecturer had the students report the activities 
which had already been done in the group task sheet. In this case, they had to answer three 
instructions: generate questions, clarify difficult words, and also summary the text.  

At the end of the lesson, the lecturer discussed the students’ difficulties during the 
activities. Then, she asked the students to answer some questions. The lecturer gave final 
feedback and told her students to get ready for the next meeting as they were still going to 
learn by using the “Fab Four” strategy.  
 

B. The Result of the Second Observation 
Like the first meeting, the lecturer started handling the class by checking the 

attendance list. The lecturer reminded the students the four strategies of the “Fab Four” 
strategy. She continued distributing the texts and the students’ tasks to each student in 
each group. Here, it should be noted that the group tasks were used to report the activities 
which already had been done. Different from the first meeting which asked the students to 
answer three instructions in the group task: generating questions, clarifying difficult 
words, and summarizing the text, the second meeting had the students answer four 
instructions: predicting, generating questions, clarifying difficult words, and summarizing 
the text.  

The lecturer asked her students to directly discuss the text given by applying the 
four steps of the “Fab Four” strategy. She reminded that the role of “lecturer” should be 
rotated so that the one who had been the “lecturer” in the first meeting had to be the 
students in the second meeting. Since the order of the “lecturer” had been decided in the 
first meeting, the students “lecturer” could directly lead the discussion. 

Unfortunately, when finally the lecturer asked the students who were going to be 
the students “lecturer”, there were only some students who raised their hands. The others 



 

 

ELTALL (ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING, APPLIED LINGUISTICS  

AND LITERATURE) 

 Vol. 1 No. 2, 2020 

Available online at https://jurnal.iainponorogo.ac.id/index.php/eltall 
 

 

70 

 

were afraid of being the students “lecturer”. Therefore, the lecturer supported them by 
helping them in leading the discussion. The students looked braver to lead the discussion.  

Next, the lecturer distributed a piece of paper containing a conversation between 
students and lecturer which could be used by the students as a guideline in acting as a 
lecturer as many of them got some problems before. 

Finally, the students started discussing the text. During the discussion, the students 
still got problems to speak English and clarify difficult words. However, the lecturer 
patiently explained again how to clarify difficult words that before looking at the 
dictionary, they could use the context clues to identify the meaning of new vocabularies as 
had been explained before. She explained that the students should guess the meaning by 
looking at the preceding and following of the difficult word. However, she did not ask any 
follow-up question to enrich the students’ conversation.  

The students, then, answered the group’s task which consisted of four instructions. 
Individually, the second and third instruction had each student write down his own 
predictions about what the author might discuss, and also had them generate questions 
related to the text they had discussed. The third and fourth instruction had to be discussed 
together with their group. It was related with clarifying difficult words and what they had 
learned from the text. It was crucial that each student cited reference points in the texts 
that were the evidence to clarify or support  questions and/or commentary. 

At the end of the lesson, the lecturer gave feedback to the students’ activity after 
implementing the “Fab Four” strategy. Different from the first meeting which spent much 
more time, the second meeting could be finished on time as the time well. 

 
C. The Result of the Questionnaire 

The questionnaire given to the students was meant to find out the students’ 
responses toward the implementation of the “Fab Four” strategy. The researcher included 
four possible answers which indicated different agreement: 
A= Very B = Quite C = Less D = Not 
Then, in order to gain reliable interpretation from the data got, the researcher classified the 
questions into three parts. They were as follows: 

1. Questions 1-3 dealt with the material. 
2. Questions 4-8 dealt with the teacher’s role in the classroom. 
3. Questions 9-17 dealt with the strategy. 

 
Table 1. The Result of Questionnaire 

No  ANSWERS 
 A B C D 
1 20 7 - - 
2 - 18 9 -- 
3 - 26 1 - 
4 3 17 7  
5 3 22 2  
6 3 20 3 1 
7 2 20 5 - 
8 3 21 3 - 



 

 

ELTALL (ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING, APPLIED LINGUISTICS  

AND LITERATURE) 

 Vol. 1 No. 2, 2020 

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9 5 18 2 2 
10 - 17 7 3 
11 3 8 14 2 
12 7 16 4 - 
13 4 17 6 - 
14 6 16 3 2 
15 3 11 10 3 
16 4 8 13 2 
17 15 8 2 2 

After classifying all of the data gained, the frequency of each number was counted to know 
the proportion of each part of questionnaire. It was calculated by using this formula: 

The sum of students’ responses of one question X 100 % 
  The number of the students 

 
1. The Students’ Opinions about the Texts. 

No. A B C D 
1 67,57 % 32,43 % - - 
2 - 62,17 % 37,83 %  
3 - 83,78 % 16,22 % - 

From the students’ responses, it was revealed that most of the students felt the texts 
were so interesting (67,57 %). Most of them comprehended the texts (62,17 %). Yet, some 
students thought that the texts were difficult. Meanwhile, more than 80% students agreed 
that the texts could motivate them to read (83,78 %).   
 
2. The Students’ Opinions about the Lecturer’s Role in the Classroom. 

No. A B C D 
4 8,10 % 59,46 % 32,43 % - 
5 10,81 % 83,78 % 5,40 %  
6 8,10 % 75,67 % 13,51 % 2,70 % 
7 5,40 % 75, 67 % 18,91 % - 
8 8,10 % 83, 78 % 8,10 % - 

From the table, it can be seen that the lecturer’s role really affected the students’ 
motivation and participation. The students admitted that the lecturer gave understandable 
explanation (59,46 %). Most of them also agreed that the lecturer supported them to 
participate actively in the class (83,78 %). The lecturer explained the strategies step by 
step clearly (75,67 %). Besides, it was clearly seen that the lecturer guided both the 
students “lecturer” (75,67 %) and the other students (83,78 %).  
 
3. The Students’ Opinions about the Strategy. 

No A B C D 
9 13,51 % 75,67 % 5,40 % 5,40 % 
10 - 72,97 % 18,91 % 8,10 % 
11 8,10 % 35,13 % 51,35 % 5,40 % 
12 32,43 % 56,76 % 10,81 % - 
13 10,81 % 72,97 % 16,22 % - 



 

 

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14 29,73 % 56,76 % 8,10 % 5,40 % 
15 8,10 % 43,24 % 40,54 % - 
16 16,22 % 35,13 % 43,24 % 5,40 % 
17 56,76 % - 8,10 % 5,40 % 

  
From the above result, it was known that more than 70 % students gave positive 

responses and high interest. They said that the strategy applied was interesting (75,67 %) 
and easy to be done (72,97 %). At first, before the strategy was implemented, the students 
had difficulty in comprehending texts (51,35 %), but after the lecturer implemented the 
“Fab Four” as a strategy, it was easier for them to understand the texts (56,76 %) and the 
others (32,45 %) stated that it was very easy to comprehend the texts. Besides, there were 
also some other positive effects gained after implementing the strategy, such as: it 
motivates the students to speak (72,97 %) and study English (56,76%). Besides, this 
strategy could also enrich their vocabulary items (43,24 %). However, sometimes they still 
found difficulty to do the strategy if the lecturer did not guide them (43,24 %). In short, 
most of the students really wanted to apply this strategy again (56,76 %). 
 

DISCUSSION 
The purpose of this part is to relate the results of the study and the theories. It was 

conducted to prove whether the results described above support, develop, or contrast with 
the theories. It was divided into two sections: the implementation of the strategy, and the 
students’ responses toward the implementation of the strategy.  

 
A. The Implementation of the “Fab Four” Strategy 

In the first meeting, the top-down model of reading was performed since the 
lecturer started the class by stimulating the students’ background knowledge, making 
predictions, and confirming to the text whether the predictions hypothesized were correct 
or not. In other words, the students started with a complex problem then worked down 
toward the smaller elements. As stated by Nunan (2003) that a top-down model begin with 
the largest elements and works down towards smaller elements to build comprehension of 
what is being read Thus, here, it proved that the Fab Four strategy uses top-down models 
of reading since the students begin with complex problems to solve and then work out or 
discover (with the teachers’ guidance) the basic skills required (Slavin, 2000). Then, since 
in constructivist learning theory, the top-down model of reading is used, it means that the 
Fab Four strategy can be called as a well kind example of constructist learning theory 
(Palincsar & Brown in Slavin, 2000).  

Moreover, in the first meeting, the lecturer also modelled how to implement the 
strategy with very short pieces of literatures. He started by discussing paragraph by 
paragraph. It means that a suggestion stated by Rosenshine and Meister (1994) in order to 
start this strategy with very short pieces of literature or short sections of a larger work (a 
chapter or section of a novel, biography, etc.) was well conducted. This activity allowed 
students to practice their skills before moving on to longer readings. After being showed 
how to implement the four comprehension strategies by the lecturer, the students were 
grouped into small groups of three to apply the strategy independently. Here, the lecturer 
assigned individual student to take turns "teaching" and "modelling" the strategies in their 
small group. This metacognitive exercise encouraged students to think about their own 



 

 

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AND LITERATURE) 

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thought processes when using reading strategies (Palincsar and Brown, 1984). It was a 
great way to make the students be more enthusiastic in following the conversation.  

Based on the explanations above, it showed that in the first meeting, the lecturer 
followed both the stages of reading, namely pre-reading, whilst reading, and post-reading 
activity, and the procedures in implementing the Fab Four strategy. However, 
unfortunately, the teacher chose the student “lecturer” who modelled the four strategies in 
front of the class with the one whom she thought wanted to be a lecturer in the future, not 
the one whom she thought had less difficulty in conducting the activity. As suggested by 
Slavin (2000) that actually it is better if the lecturer starts with the student whom s/he 
thinks will have less difficulty with the activities. In this case, the researcher believes that 
there would be some expected effects, such as:  

1) The time could be managed well since the lecturer did not have to spend much time 
to guide the student “lecturer” performed in front of the class. 

2) The students could see a good example to apply the four strategies so that they 
might not ask so many questions how to implement the strategy. 
The teaching-learning activities in the second meeting were the same with the first 

one. Here, the students discussed the texts with their group by implementing the four steps 
of the Fab Four, namely predicting, generating questions, clarifying, and summarizing, 
Besides, they also changed the role of the students “lecturer” orderly so that all of the 
students could be the leader of the group. This activity was an important part of the 
process (Rosenshine and Meister, 1994).  

In short, both meetings, based on the result of observation checklists and the 
researcher’s note, proved that the Fab Four strategy implemented by the lecturer was 
students-centered since the students actively learned by themselves. However, that the 
lecturer’s role in the teaching- learning process could not be ignored was important to be 
underlined. Here, the teacher guided, kept on track, and monitored the students’ activities. 
As stated by Rosenshine & Meister (1994) that the teacher should spend his/her time to 
move around the room to visit each group’s discussion. S/he also might ask a follow-up 
question to enrich the conversation.  

 
B. The Students’ Responses toward the Implementation of the Fab Four Strategy 

The students’ responses which were obtained from the questionnaire showed that 
most of them gave positive responses toward the implementation of the Fab Four strategy. 
Here, they agreed that this strategy could motivate them to speak English (72,97 %) with 
their group since the Fab Four strategy was designed as a discussion technique. The 
dialogue itself, as written by Palincsar, Ransom, and Derber (1989), is used as the medium 
because of two reasons. Firstly, it is a language format with which children are familiar (as 
opposed to writing, which may be too difficult for some struggling readers). Secondly, 
dialogue provides a useful vehicle for alternating control between teacher and students in a 
systematic and purposeful manner.  

In addition, most of the students stated that this strategy could also enrich their 
vocabulary items (43,24 %).  Besides, most of them also agreed to apply this strategy in 
reading the other kinds of texts (56,76 %) since they felt that this strategy could help them 
in enhancing comprehension and obtaining the detailed information of texts (56,76 %). In 
this point, their statements strengthened Palincsar and Brown’s statement in 1984 that the 



 

 

ELTALL (ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING, APPLIED LINGUISTICS  

AND LITERATURE) 

 Vol. 1 No. 2, 2020 

Available online at https://jurnal.iainponorogo.ac.id/index.php/eltall 
 

 

74 

 

Fab Four strategy was built on four strategies that good readers used to comprehend texts: 
predicting, generating questions, clarifying, and summarizing. 

In short, implementing this strategy is very useful and helpful for the students not 
only to comprehend the texts but also to speak English.  

 
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION 

The Fab Four is a students-centered strategy since the students actively learned by 
themselves by having the lecturer’s guide. As stated by Rosenshine & Meister (1994) that 
the lecturer should spend his/her time to move around the room to visit each group’s 
discussion. Asking a follow-up question to enrich the conversation is also needed. The 
lecturer follows the procedures in implementing the Fab Four strategy, namely predicting, 
clarifying, questioning, and summarizing. The teaching-learning activities  

The result of questionnaire proved that this strategy is very useful for students 
especially for the less-skilled comprehenders to comprehend English texts.  

However, it is suggested to choose the “lecturer” role with the one who has less 
difficulty with the activities. In this case, the researcher believes that there will be some 
expected effects. First, the time can be managed well since the lecturer does not have to 
spend much time to guide the student “lecturer” performed in front of the class. Second, the 
other students are able to see such a good example in applying the four strategies that they 
might not ask so many questions how to implement the strategy. 

Overall, the Fab Four is a great way to teach students how to determine important 
ideas from a reading text while discussing vocabulary, developing ideas and questions, and 
summarizing information. Therefore, it is strongly suggested that other lecturers or 
teachers would apply this strategy to teach the less-skilled readers in order to boost their 
reading comprehension.  

 
 

 
Bibliography 

 
Nunan, D. 2003. Practical English Language Teaching. New York: The McGraw-Hill 

Companies. 
 
Palincsar, A.S. 1986. http://www.mediawiki. org/http://wikimediafoundation.org/. 

Palincsar, A.S. & Brown, A. 1984. Reciprocal Teaching of Comprehension-Fostering and 
Comprehension Monitoring Activities. Cognition and Instruction, 1(2), pp. 117-175. 

Paliscsar, A.S, and Brown, A.L. 1986. Interactive Teaching to Promote Independent 
Learning from Text. The Reading Teacher, 39(8), 771-777. 

Rosenshine, B., & Meister, C. 1994. Reciprocal Teaching: A Review of the Research. Review 
of Educational Research, 64, pp. 479-530.  

 
Slavin, Robert E. 2000. Educational Psychology (6th edition). USA: Allyn and Bacon. 
 

http://wikimediafoundation.org/

