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The Impact of Reciprocal Collaborative Pedagogy in ESP Reading Comprehension Skills: Reducing Anxiety and Improving Self-Efficacy

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14 January 2024

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15 January 2024

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Abstract
This study investigated whether reciprocal collaborative pedagogy significantly impacts Indonesian electrical engineering polytechnic students in reducing reading anxiety and improving self-efficacy in ESP reading comprehension skills. Fifty Polytechnic students were equally assigned to two groups. Control groups learned in the traditional reciprocal teaching method individually. Experimental group engaged in reciprocal collaborative pedagogy. Each group received a 6-week reading strategy training. E-learning platforms were used in this study as a complementary tool to distribute ESP reading materials, announcements, and the experiment details being taught. The quantitative and qualitative results demonstrated that the tasks in reciprocal collaborative pedagogy positively affects Indonesian electrical engineering polytechnic students' learning experience and outcomes. This pedagogy promotes a productive learning environment through peer interaction, active engagement, and peer group discussions of the whole learning activities, reducing feelings of anxiety and building confidence in ESP-specialized text.
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Subject: Social Sciences  -   Education

1. Introduction

With globalization, there is an increasing demand for English proficiency skills, not just for excellent academic performance but also for today’s jobs required in the marketplace [1]. This challenge led to the need to prepare electrical engineering polytechnic students to meet English requirements in job competitive applications by integrating English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses in their language learning domain-specific content for professional careers. ESP courses aim to meet the demands of specific students who want to employ English professionally [2]. Reading comprehension is considered a fundamental skill of ESP [3]. The students need reading comprehension skills to engage with ESP texts, which connect the balance between specific skills and language proficiency for academic success focused on their competence and apply it to future learning that contributes to their intellectual development [4].
However, some research reveals that students at the college level are unsatisfactory proficient enough to read and comprehend ESP texts, which are often complex and specialized [5] and frequently result in difficulties in learning content from ESP textbooks with technical texts and vocabulary terms [4]. Such issues were also experienced by Indonesian electrical polytechnic students, which caused these students to lose interest, producing fear, worry, and frustration related to comprehending ESP’s various texts. Accordingly, to address these deficiency issues for better comprehension and engagement with ESP technical texts, an efficient approach in reading strategies practice is needed to decrease their reading anxiety, which can hinder their progress and improve their reading self-efficacy to manage and facilitate belief in their reading ability.
The common method of reciprocal teaching (RT) has demonstrated its effectiveness in enhancing students' ability to comprehend text in four ways: prediction, clarification, questioning, and summarization [6,7]. However, despite the evidence showing that RT is a good approach, some studies show the different effects of the various aspects of RT on students' capabilities [8]. RT students still face anxiety in implementing each stage of learning in their reading comprehension skills [8,9,10]. Nevertheless, the RT strategy affects student anxiety in applying all stages or each stage of learning from a text. Monitoring student comprehension in four RT methods shows that students still find the strategy steps of the learning process to be dull, uninteresting, and anxiety-producing, as they are afraid of making mistakes [11,12]. Qualitative analyses [9,10,13] showed that RT could not be separated from student reading anxiety. Emerge difficulties like fear, panic, discomfort, and worry in implementing and practicing the RT stages influence the learning experience.
To improve this situation, RT is put to good use mainly for Asian students labeled as more passive, knowledge receivers, shy, reluctant to be creative or critical, and rarely taking the initiative in classroom discussions [14] so such students can perform well in each RT stage in monitoring comprehension of ESP texts. Hence, this study adopts collaborative learning (CL) as a new pedagogy approach to minimize issues of reading anxiety experienced by Asian students, mainly English learners. Learning collaboratively can expose these electrical polytechnic students with diverse English proficiency to potentially reduce anxiety in ESP texts by fostering shared insights, experiences, and responsibility, creating a non-judgmental environment, and providing collective problem-solving. At the same time, collaborative interactions could promote students’ reading self-efficacy through encouragement, constructive feedback, influence, and learning from each other to develop a more positive self-image regarding increased confidence in reading comprehension abilities.
Collaborative learning in tertiary education institutions is used more commonly nowadays [15,16]. CL allows students to engage in group tasks in the immediate classroom, drives the development of higher-order thinking skills, and interactive learning encourages them to overcome complex issues, learn to interact with others, and create innovative ideas [17]. Therefore, dynamic discussion in collaborative groups enhances learning. It brings students actively into the educational process to become independent and critically involved in the learning process. Accordingly, placing these electrical students in learning collaboratively promotes them to succeed in comprehending the ESP texts through peer group interaction that engages in text discussions involving a wide range of effortful problem-solving impact on reducing reading anxiety and belief in their capabilities increase their reading self-efficacy. Success ultimately comes unless everyone works together.
Furthermore, to promote and facilitate learning in ESP reading courses for electrical students and make use of digital technology in this study, e-learning can be used as an excellent alternative for the distribution of teaching content, and the effectiveness of teaching can be improved. This system allows for efficient data saving, sharing, and updating [18], providing electrical students with positive learning opportunities. The convenience offered by e-learning has transformed the perception of teaching and learning in the modern environment. E-learning design emphasizes students' autonomy and connectedness in learning [19]. E-learning represents a revolutionary progression in learning through the flexibility of occurring anywhere, at any time, and reduced costs [18]. Accordingly, to enhance the quality of learning for electrical students and optimize access to all ESP materials, courses, announcements, and the experiment details being taught, one of the various e-learning forms, the Learning Management System (LMS), namely ELIA, implemented by the institution to manage e-learning, as an effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, was used by the English teacher to store and share learning materials. Electrical students can relate the material to a personal experience both inside and outside the classrooms and learn more effectively since all material is available any time of day or night via this system.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Anxiety and reading comprehension

Studies report anxiety as a problem for foreign language learners in reading comprehension learning [20]. However, only a few studies have addressed anxiety and reading comprehension [21,22,23]. Students encounter problems comprehending in a non-native language. They have to learn the content and the language simultaneously. Scholars [24,25] revealed that anxiety or emotional intelligence significantly influences how students interact with the text while processing its meaning to understand unfamiliar scripts or topics, unfamiliar writing systems, struggle with comprehension, unknown vocabulary terms, fear of mistakenly, and nervousness about the reading tasks. Highly anxious students in a non-native language tend to recall less text content, which causes lower reading comprehension performance [23]. Thus, providing reading strategies to reduce students’ anxiety in integrating information from reading different texts or purposes is essential in English language learning since the result of the reading strategy is comprehension [26]. Educational research has exhibited that teaching and using a combination of reading comprehension strategies reduce non-native students’ anxiety toward English text, resulting in better learning outcomes, and increases their confidence and academic performance in comprehending main ideas, word meanings, and textual references [27].

2.2. Self-efficacy and reading comprehension

Reading research literature frequently describes developing reading self-efficacy as essential for students because it relates to a belief in one's capabilities in completing diverse reading tasks [28,29]. Reading self-efficacy motivates college students to promote their self-perception of capabilities and skills to comprehend the text correctly [30]. Some students were perhaps confident in their ability to recognize words in a text but had difficulty comprehending the exact text. Low self-efficacy students undermine their interest in making an effort to comprehend. In contrast, high self-efficacy students make more effort and persist in facing difficulties that arise to accomplish reading tasks [31]. Research has indicated that using reading strategies instruction has become one of the methods to improve reading comprehension performance and, as a direct result, to foster high self-efficacy [25,29,32]. Such strategies can regulate students' self-efficacy to perform complex tasks successfully, monitor learning performance, and comprehend the texts that connect their reading with their prior knowledge [32]. Few studies have been investigated to explore a strong relationship between using a combination of reading comprehension strategies and self-efficacy [27,33]. They found that this new trend yields effective learning, resulting in high self-efficacy and great control over their learning to improve comprehension performance.

2.3. Reciprocal Collaborative Pedagogy in ESP Reading Comprehension Skills: Reducing Anxiety and Improving Self-Efficacy

Developing reading comprehension skills in ESP is a crucial and complex ability that demands significant investment in time and resources [3]. It involves students’ ability to read rapidly, ensuring a flow of information to establish essential connections and inferences for comprehension of domain-specific texts. Research has indicated that using instructional strategies is the main factor affecting reading comprehension skills. Its strategy must entail active engagement, dialogue activities, and independent autonomy that helps students monitor and foster comprehension and language skills [32,34]. To researchers, integrating various reading strategies has become a new trend that benefits from rich, diversified learning content and instructional activities to tackle complex texts and tasks, improving students’ comprehension skills [27].
Accordingly, this study integrating reciprocal teaching with collaborative learning reinforces each other as reading strategy practice to equip electrical polytechnic students to meet their need to comprehend ESP-specialized texts. Learning collaboratively facilitates electrical students to organize and influence each other understand specialized engineering topics, grasp specialized vocabulary on technical terms, and effectively communicate within a specialized domain where students with diverse English proficiency purposefully learn and work together. Several studies have revealed that collaborative learning helps students reduce reading anxiety in classroom activities [15,26]. In collaborative groups, students combine information from multiple sources of knowledge, perspectives, and experiences to enhance creativity and the quality of solutions stimulated by group members' ideas to create a product of their learning [35]. CL assists students in developing the value of respect for others, boosts academic achievement, and peer interactions can efficiently accept information and ideas that enable them to find new solutions for completing learning tasks [36]. Scholars [37,38] have found that CL positively enhances students’ reading self-efficacy. The more students interact and discuss with peers in sharing the load of processing complex texts, the more confidence they obtain in rapidly ensuring better content comprehension. As [39] note, self-confidence naturally increases when the chance and consistency of sharing increase.
Considering that collaborative learning facilitates learning outcomes, this study will argue that integrating these two approaches is essential, so this type of enrichment results in reduced anxiety and improves self-efficacy of electrical engineering polytechnic students in ESP reading comprehension skills, which is likely to yield considerable pedagogical benefits. In group work, learning collaboratively in implementing the four RT methods in an ESP-specific domain allows students to be involved in dynamic learning in engineering topics. They engage in text discussions, peer teaching, and problem-solving, leading to reduced anxiety. Students encourage each other, share experiences, and provide positive feedback, facilitating confidence building in learning ESP reading. This pedagogy environment promotes a sense of community in which students can confront problems, raise questions, and discuss challenging issues through multiple problem-solving efforts, such as exchanging ideas, dialogue, and knowledge construction to encounter feelings of anxiety and growth of self-efficacy in the ESP texts and tasks during the learning process.
Additionally, most research on reciprocal teaching methods has been conducted in General English contexts, with limited attention given to English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in tertiary institutions. However, there is a lack of research specifically focusing on the application and effectiveness of exploring how integrating reciprocal teaching with collaborative learning affects anxiety reduction and self-efficacy improvement in the context of ESP reading comprehension among Indonesian engineering polytechnic students.
With regard to the utilization of technological platforms that provide modern learning in the classroom as substantial progress in the educational context in the 21st century [40], e-learning in the forms of LMS is capitalized on this study in favor of its utility, effectiveness, and positive impact in accessing learning content. This system affords a safe and trusting sphere to optimize electrical students related to the ESP course materials, documents, assignments, and all the experiment details being taught put on it, allowing students to access and learn them anytime, anywhere, at their own pace. Moreover, the availability of a course management system supports flexibility for electrical students to work independently to enhance their learning engagement and experience with the ESP reading comprehension lectures.

2.4. Purpose of the Study and Research Questions

In brief, the study aims to explain the impact of reciprocal collaborative pedagogy to equip students with the reading strategy to help anxiety reduction and self-efficacy improvement among Indonesian electrical polytechnic students on ESP reading comprehension skills. To this end, this study investigated whether or not the effectiveness of integrating reciprocal teaching with collaborative learning reinforces each other to reduce anxiety in these electrical students’ work while processing textual meaning in exploring and enjoying ESP specialized texts and then positively improves self-efficacy in negotiating difficulties toward the ability to control and face challenging ESP tasks despite unfamiliar material. Thus, three research questions guide this study:
  • Does the reciprocal collaborative pedagogy reduce students’ anxiety in ESP reading comprehension?
  • Does the reciprocal collaborative pedagogy improve students’ self-efficacy in ESP reading comprehension?
  • How do the students respond to implementing the reciprocal collaborative in ESP reading comprehension associated with anxiety and self-efficacy?

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Research design and procedures

A mixed-methods approach was used; a quantitative process with a quasi-experimental research design and a qualitative was undertaken through interviews. Fifty electrical engineering students (38 men and 12 women) from a polytechnic in Eastern Indonesia participated. They were assigned to two groups of students to experience different learning interventions. Control group (n=25) learned using the traditional RT method to comprehend ESP texts, which was responsible for individually completing the reading worksheet task. In contrast, experimental group (n=25) adopted reciprocal collaborative pedagogy involving peer interactions in group work collaboratively. Experimental group involved heterogeneous teams based on the Study Preferences Questionnaire [41]. Heterogeneous collaborative teams enable students to leverage team members’ differences as resources to enhance learning [42]. These electrical students were enrolled in ESP reading courses in the second year of specialization (third semester). They had taken General English courses in their first year. The same English teacher taught the two groups to ensure consistent treatment instruction and avoid biases. Table 1 illustrates the characteristics of experimental groups.
Before the learning activity, students were introduced to the experimental procedure and completed the pretest via a course management system. The two groups received learning methods for six weeks, respectively. Each group lasts for two hours (100 min). In week 6, students completed the posttest after the experiment. The experiment was conducted in the fall semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. The learning material comprised six topics of ESP texts and was adapted from English for Electrical and Electronics Engineering of Lac Hong University Press. Both groups had the same ESP texts delivered to the students weekly in sequence (Table 2). The texts were presented at an intermediate difficulty level based on their semester.
Experimental students were divided into five groups, each of five (three holists and two serialists students), composed of men and females, working collaboratively to comprehend ESP texts by completing the same reading worksheet task. To create effective learning in a vivid classroom atmosphere on reciprocal collaborative pedagogy, some tasks were provided to (1) prevent students from being passive, (2) help them better organize in the learning process, (3) assist students more independent through interaction, and (4) enhance their learning activeness. These tasks consist of reading worksheet tasks to evaluate students’ learning pace in comprehending ESP texts on the four RT techniques (Appendix A1). The preface assists students’ curiosity in quickly predicting the content in the unread sections (Appendix A2). The “help sheet” is used by the group leader to lead text discussions. Its sheet also guides group leaders in independently organizing and directing members’ reading activities. Each member had the chance to practice a “help sheet” (Appendix A3). Lastly, a reciprocal collaborative group activity handout will reinforce each member’s engagement in textual discussion and keep students active in rapidly better content comprehension of ESP texts (Appendix A4). Figure 1. illustrates diverse learning scenarios assigned for both groups.
Both groups were administered a survey questionnaire before and after the proposed method was completed. Its survey was examined to identify variations in student reading anxiety and self-efficacy. Then, interviews were conducted in four students (two holists and two serialists) of experimental group to confirm the findings obtained from the quantitative results. Figure 2 illustrates the experimental procedure.
Since e-learning has become an essential part of today’s learning [18], it was used in this study primarily to deliver or upload ESP teaching materials, announcements, experiment documents, and make discussion forums available. This system adds flexibility and time efficiency and keeps track of electrical students' work; students can review what they were learning on ESP texts. This course management system facilitates students' learning in making discussions by allowing these students to post comments, send notes, files, links, and assignments, and send a direct message to the teacher. Students of both groups can easily access course materials anytime through the URL https://elia.pnk.ac.id/. This study distributed the course's teaching material as a section of digital textbooks. See Figure 3 to get an overview of the course management system details.

3.2. Instruments

The questionnaire survey of The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) developed by [43] was adopted to measure students reading anxiety. The survey has five items to assess student anxiety over worry and emotional components. These items were rated by a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 5 (strongly agree) to 1 (strongly disagree). Cronbach's alpha for the above questionnaire was .848, indicating that the MSLQ has good reliability and internal consistency for this study.
An eight-item survey questionnaire of a well-known scale designed by [43] measured students’ reading self-efficacy in the beginning (pre-efficacy) before the proposed method and after the learning activity was completed (post-efficacy). Students were asked to rate the responses on a 5-point Likert scale. The scale assessed self-efficacy for learning and performance on expectancy for success in task performance and self-efficacy assessing ability to complete a task and belief in their competence to perform it. Cronbach's alpha for the above questionnaire was .825, indicating that this survey has good reliability and internal consistency for this study.
Interviews were undertaken after the intervention was completed. Several questions were modified from [44]. These questions were used to assess student responses perceived from the pedagogy and whether they noticed any change in reading anxiety and self-efficacy regarding ESP reading comprehension skills. Four experimental students (two holists and two serialists) were randomly invited.

3.3. Data analysis

The quantitative data obtained in the pre and post-survey were run using SPSS 25. Analysis of covariate (ANCOVA) examined the post-survey to control for potential between-group differences by considering the pre-survey. Pre and post-survey on anxiety and self-efficacy results were compared using a paired t-test to assess the enhancement. Interview data were analyzed and transcribed on a specific influence on the students’ experience during the proposed method in the learning process.

4. Results

4.1. Reducing Students’ Anxiety in ESP Reading Comprehension

The (Sig.) value in Table 3 indicated that control and experimental groups reported no significant difference in the final results. After both groups had received the intervention, the posttest means scores of experimental groups reported a more significant reduction in anxiety than those of the control group (t (24) = −15.816, p = .000 < .05; Table 4). It demonstrated that reciprocal collaborative pedagogy was conducive to reducing reading anxiety of experimental students in ESP texts; it implies that involving peer interaction in group work collaboratively might be more effective at fostering a friendly and supportive learning environment.

4.2. Improving Students’ Self-Efficacy in ESP Reading Comprehension

ANCOVA and a paired t-test were performed for both groups to measure the reciprocal collaborative pedagogy enhanced students’ self-efficacy. Table 5 indicated that the (Sig.) value of the two groups, control and experimental, showed a significant difference in the final results.
After the intervention, a statistical analysis exhibited a significant difference between the two groups (t (24) = −4.988, p = .000 < .05; Table 6). The posttest means scores revealed that experimental group was significantly higher than control group. It demonstrated that the value of group dynamics discussions of peer interaction in reciprocal collaborative pedagogy influences experimental students’ self-efficacy improvement. Students with higher self-efficacy tend to be less anxious and develop more effort during the learning process. It positively impacts other group members’ belief that success depends on everyone working together, resulting in their comprehension proficiency.

4.3. Students respond to Implementing the Reciprocal Collaborative in ESP Reading Comprehension Associated with Anxiety and Self-Efficacy

The interview data analysis concluded that reciprocal collaborative pedagogy greatly benefits electrical students’ ESP reading comprehension skills. The interviewee reported that learning collaboratively in heterogenous group discussions has led to positive effects, including (1) creating a friendly and supportive learning environment, (2) increased motivation, responsibility, and active engagement, (3) opportunities to cultivate other language skills (4) improve problem-solving skills, (5) reduce anxiety, and (6) create confidence and energy in a relaxed atmosphere. The interviewee described their learning experience as follows:
Serialist students 1:
  • “The pedagogy helps me enjoy learning together. The course management system was easy to use. The course materials available, and I can read them independently. It enhances the performance of participating in the text discussions. I feel no tension being afraid of mistakenly grasping ESP-specialized content.”
Holists students 1:
  • “The pedagogy promotes active engagement. I receive positive comments and support when sharing text interpretation. I feel motivated in dynamic discussions. Working together gives a sense of shared responsibility, non-judgemental, and purposeful learning.”
Serialist students 2:
  • “Its pedagogy tasks equip me to cultivate other language performance, i.e., speaking, listening, and writing beyond just reading comprehension skills. I have a chance to lead text discussion, speak out, learn to listen, and write short summaries of a text.”
Holists students 2:
  • “Diverse competency, creativity, and experiences assist me in tackling challenges collectively on ESP complex texts and rapid completion of ESP tasks. All engaged in problem-solving and developed a critical analysis. No one feels underestimated.”
Serialist students 1:
  • “Peer interaction fosters warm and productive learning. I did not feel anxious in ESP texts. All members pleasantly complement each other in a relaxed sphere.”
Holists students 1:
  • “I used to keep silent in ESP reading course. Working in groups changed everything. I bravely engage in ESP texts and task discussions. Supportive feedback and encouragement improve confidence in my reading abilities.”

5. Discussion

The study results revealed that reciprocal collaborative students exhibited significantly higher learning experiences than those in the control group with traditional RT. It means that reciprocal collaborative pedagogy helps electrical polytechnic students reduce reading anxiety and improve self-efficacy in ESP-specialized texts and task completion. The study results may echo the features and benefits of learning collaboratively in peer interactions for ESP reading comprehension skills.
Reciprocal collaborative pedagogy provides a safe and supportive environment in group work. Reciprocal collaborative students revealed that in peer group discussions, they feel secure, comfortable, well prepared, active in small participation, trust, and depend on each other to minimize reading anxiety in learning the technical and specialized content in ESP materials. Learning collaboratively with diverse abilities gives these students advantages in that they can discuss complex concepts, ask questions, and share their uncertainties, enhancing group members’ learning experience. Sharing and reflecting allow them to create fresh solutions for tackling ESP-specialized text anxiety in a warm and productive learning environment. Guided discussion and deliberate practice of the tasks in reciprocal collaborative pedagogy promote these electrical students’ interactive learning with all members in a relaxed, communicative, organized, and responsible sphere. Reciprocal collaborative pedagogy led them to learn to work as part of a team that creates meaningful relations with one another in processing ESP-specialized texts. The study results emphasized that learning collaboratively proves that working together, keeping together, and coming together enhances the quality of students learning outcomes to decrease ESP reading anxiety, which creates a comfortable, non-stressful environment and growth of self-efficacy. The results align with [15,23,26], which affirm that collaborative learning approach reduces anxiety in reading comprehension.
Additionally, the interviewed students acknowledged the pedagogy equips them with reading strategies practice. Peer group interaction and active engagement in text discussions could manage their reading anxiety to discover ways to reduce, cope, and compensate for its effect on the growth of comprehension proficiency. Students emphasized working together is pleasant. They receive more academic support, energy to learn, positive feedback, and assistance from peer groups, contributing to decreases in the experience of feeling anxiety and fear of negative evaluation, which develop into creative work and growth of reading self-efficacy. Similar to these results [20,23,25,32] concluded that reading instruction strategy is crucial for students to reduce anxiety and improve self-efficacy in English reading comprehension.
The study results revealed that reciprocal collaborative students have more confidence in performing ESP texts and tasks and believe they have control over their achievement than the control students with traditional RT. Reciprocal collaborative students demonstrated self-efficacy improvement in ESP reading comprehension skills as the positive effects of learning collaboratively in groups during the learning process. These students highlighted that peer encouragement and feedback play a crucial role in their learning and affect their belief in their reading ability. The more students interact with their peers in the learning process, the more they influence and learn from each other to put in an effort to enhance their present abilities, and success is fetched because they feel competent and ready to learn. The awareness of collective efforts increases more productive interaction and meaningful dialogue. It creates high-quality work in achieving group expectations, triggering all members to be active in successful ESP reading and academic outcomes. Thus, when a group works collaboratively, it frequently develops a sense of community among students, allowing them to address problems, pose questions, and discuss challenging issues together, which results in placing trust and receiving support that positively impacts their reading self-efficacy. Reciprocal collaborative pedagogy tasks influence these electrical students to engage in fully productive learning and opportunities to develop and depend on each other in positive interdependence, which establishes familiarity, energy, and comfort in the growth of their self-efficacy beliefs. Accordingly, this study corroborates prior research on collaborative learning groups improving students’ reading self-efficacy, which enhances comprehension proficiency [37,38].
Regarding interview results, students emphasized the tasks featured in the reciprocal collaborative pedagogy reinforce each other and facilitate learning. In addition, they stated using e-learning to access course materials anytime encourages preparing them for self-paced learning at class meetings. Learning collaboratively in groups gives them an advantage in alleviate reading anxiety and building confidence in ESP reading comprehension.

6. Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Further Research

This study has several limitations. First, the number of participants (50 students) is small; future studies should involve more participants. Second, the experiment was short-term (6 weeks). Future studies should be conducted over a longer time (16 weeks) to investigate the long-term effects of collaborative and individual self-efficacy and to determine how different anxiety levels (low, medium, or high) affect learning outcomes in ESP contexts. Last, there were more male participants than female: there may be gender differences influencing the learning style. Future studies should explore which types of groups (e.g., homogenous or heterogenous) best help students reduce their anxiety in ESP courses.

7. Conclusions

This study reveals that reciprocal collaborative pedagogy positively affects Indonesian electrical engineering polytechnic students' learning experience and outcomes. This pedagogy facilitates learning. It creates a dynamic and modern learning environment. Electrical students have an opportunity to support one another, share insight, and develop a sense of camaraderie that reduces feelings of anxiety. Then, peer encouragement and constructive feedback develop a more positive self-perception, improve confidence and competence in a warm and supportive sphere toward ESP texts, and rapidly complete tasks better. Using e-learning comforts electrical students access to interact with the course materials and allows them to learn anytime, anywhere, at their pace.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, O.D.B.; methodology, O.D.B.; software, Y.M.H.; validation, T.T.W.; formal analysis, O.D.B.; investigation, Y.M.H.; resources, Y.M.H.; data curation, Y.M.H.; writing—original draft preparation, O.D.B.; writing—review and editing, T.T.W.; visualization, O.D.B.; supervision, T.T.W.; project administration, O.D.B.; funding acquisition, T.T.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by The Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C, grant number MOST 110-2511-H-224-003-MY3 and MOST 111-2628-H-224-001-MY3.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the colleagues who helped in the experiment and the students who participated.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Appendix A

Table A1. Worksheet-based task.
Table A1. Worksheet-based task.
Reciprocal Collaborative worksheet
Name/Group:
Text Title:
What do you learn from the text?
Predicting:
Clarifying:
Questioning:
Summarizing:
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Figure A1. The preface.
Figure A1. The preface.
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Figure A2. Help sheet.
Figure A2. Help sheet.
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Figure A3. Reciprocal collaborative group activity handout.
Figure A3. Reciprocal collaborative group activity handout.
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Figure 1. Learning scenarios.
Figure 1. Learning scenarios.
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Figure 2. Experimental procedure.
Figure 2. Experimental procedure.
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Figure 3. ESP reading management system.
Figure 3. ESP reading management system.
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Table 1. Groups characteristics.
Table 1. Groups characteristics.
Characteristics Traditional RT Reciprocal Collaborative
Groups Control Experimental
Sample size 25 students (not required of SPQ form) 25 students (heterogenous students, two serialists and three holists based on SPQ form)
Age 20- 23 years 20- 23 years
Gender 19 males and six females 19 males and six females
Grade 3rd 3rd
Academic year 2021-2022 2021-2022
Table 2. Reading topics and time allocation.
Table 2. Reading topics and time allocation.
Week Meeting (s)/hours Duration Topics
1 1/2 @ 50 min Conductors, Insulators, and Semiconductors
2 1/2 @ 50 min Circuit Elements
3 1/2 @ 50 min DC Motors
4 1/2 @ 50 min Process Control System
5 1/2 @ 50 min Cathode Ray Tube
6 1/2 @ 50 min Circuit Symbols
Table 3. ANCOVA on between-group student anxiety.
Table 3. ANCOVA on between-group student anxiety.
Groups Mean Std. Error Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Partial Eta Squared
Control 3.264 0.163 0.771 1 0.771 1.338 0.253 0.028
Experiment 3.539 0.159
Note: sig. < 0.05.
Table 4. Paired t-test on student anxiety.
Table 4. Paired t-test on student anxiety.
Class Variable Pre-test Post-test t df p
Mean Std.
deviation		 Mean Std.
deviation
Experimental Anxiety 2.552 0.753 3.880 0.842 -15.816 24 0.000*
Control Anxiety 2.767 0.989 2.967 1.072 -1.155 23 0.260*
*p < 0.05.
Table 5. ANCOVA on between-group student self-efficacy (SE).
Table 5. ANCOVA on between-group student self-efficacy (SE).
Groups Mean Std. Error Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig. Partial Eta Squared
Control 4.124 0.095 4.297 1 4.297 20.305 0.000 0.306
Experiment 3.539 0.159
Note: sig. < 0.05.
Table 6. Paired t-test on student self-efficacy (SE).
Table 6. Paired t-test on student self-efficacy (SE).
Class Variable Pre-test Post-test t df p
Mean Std.
deviation		 Mean Std.
deviation
Experimental SE 4.240 0.436 4.760 0.308 -4.988 24 0.000*
Control SE 4.067 0.503 4.088 0.629 -0.186 23 0.854*
*p < 0.05.
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