Implementing Choral Reading in Learning Descriptive Text: A Case Study at Karawang Senior High School

Abstract

Reading comprehension remains a significant challenge for EFL students in Indonesian secondary education, particularly due to limited vocabulary, low motivation, and lack of confidence when reading aloud. This qualitative case study investigates the implementation of Choral Reading within the Teaching Learning Cycle (TLC) framework and explores students' responses toward the activity in learning descriptive text at a senior high school in Karawang, West Java, Indonesia. Data were collected through classroom video recordings, semi structured interviews with six purposively selected students, and students' reflective journals across three instructional meetings. The findings indicate that Choral Reading was implemented progressively through five TLC stages: Building Knowledge of the Field, Supported Reading, Modelling and Deconstruction, Joint Construction, and Independent Construction. Students' responses revealed five emergent themes: anxiety reduction and confidence building, teacher modelling as a driver of pronunciation accuracy, vocabulary acquisition and text comprehension, transfer of choral reading experience to independent writing, and tensions related to pacing, synchronisation, and individual learning preferences. The findings suggest that integrating Choral Reading into the structured stages of the Teaching Learning Cycle was perceived by students as supportive of their reading fluency, pronunciation confidence, generic structure awareness, and preparedness for writing, although these outcomes were not verified through objective pre-test/post-test measures. The study also reveals that learner variation in pace and reading format preference requires adaptive teacher management.