Abstract: This paper charts my classroom use of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) communication techniques and subsequent adaptation of Reciprocal Teaching (RT) tools to encourage deeper reading in the classroom. I share a detailed account of my action research in the Advanced Acting section of The Gaiety School of Acting, Cork, from January 2003 - May 2003. Significantly, the RT tools are dialogical and language based and, therefore, relevant to foreign language learning where they provide a cognitive scaffold for students' talk, thinking and actions. With the NLP and RT learning tools the students consciously engaged metacognition: thinking about thinking. In applying the metacognitive strategies of NLP and RT, their assumptions and hypotheses regarding text were challenged and this aided them in a transition from apprentices to self-regulated performers.