A Study on Readability of Social Study Textbooks and the Sixth-Grade Students'''''''' Reading Comprehension

• Main Author: 賴明貞
• Other Authors: 鄭麗玉
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/31786072067487582259

碩士 === 國立嘉義大學 === 國民教育研究所 === 92 === The purpose of the present study was to investigate the readability of the different-edition textbooks, reading comprehension of the sixth graders on the subject of social study, the criteria teachers used to evaluate and choose the textbooks, and the teachers’ and students’ responses and suggestions after using them. Four editions of the social study textbooks were analyzed and the students and teachers who used them were drawn to study from Chia-yi city and country. There were totally 242 sixth graders taking the reading comprehension test of social study and six teachers and 32 students being interviewed. One way ANCOVA was used to compare the differences between students of different learning levels from different school locations, with the score of the verbal ability test as covariate. The results of this study were as follows: 1.Teachers seldom considered the readability of the social study textbooks before choosing and evaluating them. 2.The defects of different editions were incoherence in sentences and paragraphs, and overestimating students’ prior knowledge. 3.There was no significant difference on reading comprehension of students from school locations, but there was significant difference of different learning levels except the edition of Nan-I. 4.The teachers’ opinions were the terms used in the textbooks were too many, and not understandable enough, the contents were not related to students’ experiences, and the pictures or graphs were not appropriate or not explained clearly. Few students would preview the textbooks, mainly because they did not have time or they could not understand when they read by themselves. The major reasons why they could not understand were there were too many contents, they did not know the mail points, and the sentences were too difficult to understand. Finally, this study also provided some suggestions to editors, selectors, teachers for editing, evaluating, adjusting contents or designing instructional plans.