%0 Journal Article %T Negotiated Interaction: A Way out of Cul-de-sac in Reading Classrooms %A Seyed Yasin Yazdi Amirkhiz %A Parviz Ajideh %J English Language Teaching %D 2008 %I %R 10.5539/elt.v1n2p96 %X hypothesized that hermeneutical nature of passage interpretation could create ¡°affordances¡±, Van Lier¡¯s (2000) term, or ¡°interactional opportunities¡± which are psycholinguistically and developmentally valuable crucibles for ¡°negotiated interaction¡± and subsequently enhancement of reading comprehension. To this end, 24 randomly-selected intermediate-level English learners, having been divided into two equal homogeneous scaffolded (experimental) and non-scaffolded (control) groups, were subjected to 15 half-an-hour reading activities. Whereas the non-scaffolded group proceeded individually, the scaffolded groups did reading tasks interactively; they read the passages for themselves, publicized their reading problems, discussed the difficulties with each other, and wrote a joint summary. On the 15th session a post-test (unseen texts) was administered. Pretest and posttest results were compared using Wilcoxon Match Pairs Signed Ranks Test, indicating that scaffolded reading enhanced the reading ability of the readers. %U http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/elt/article/view/455