A study compared the effectiveness of four instructional procedures designed to teach four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. The four procedures were (1) reciprocal teaching/corrective feedback, which requires that initially the teacher do a considerable amount of instruction about and modeling of the four strategies using dialogue with the students; as the days of instruction proceed, the students are given more responsibility for initiating and sustaining the dialogue while the teacher guides this practice, using modeling and corrective feedback specific to each student; (2) reciprocal teaching/practice, identical to the procedure just described, with the exception that after the first four days, students continue to practice the strategies by writing summaries, questions, points to be clarified, and predictions on assigned segments of text, while teacher feedback is minimal; (3) demonstration, which requires the teacher to demonstrate each strategy; and (4) treated control, in which the students are given worksheet activities regarding the four strategies. Subjects were seventh grade students in developmental reading classes. All groups used the same materials. Results indicated that the most effective of the four instructional procedures was reciprocal teaching with corrective feedback, followed by reciprocal teaching with practice, and the control treatment. The findings suggest the importance of such instructional components as the need to work within the zone of proximal development (the "region of sensitivity to instruction") and to use a scaffolded and proleptic approach (transfer of responsibility for learning from teacher to student). (Examples of reciprocal teaching dialogue are appended.) (FL)