The Effectiveness of Two Early Reading Training Programs on Reading Ability in Taiwanese EFL Young Poor Readers

• Main Authors: Wu Mei-Chi, 吳美琪
• Other Authors: Shu-hui Eileen Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/46165075101309326408

碩士 === 國立台北師範學院 === 兒童英語教育研究所 === 94 === The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of two early reading training programs in Taiwanese EFL young poor readers on overall early reading ability (including phonological awareness skills and word recognition). The subjects of this study were 33 fourth-graders with reading difficulty from an elementary school in Taipei City. They were divided into two groups: Training Program A with 17 students and Training Program B with 16 students. During the ten weeks of the experimental period, all subjects had two 30-minute English classes per week. The reading training programs consisted of two phases: phonological awareness (4 weeks) and phonics (6 weeks). In the first week of the reading training program, students in both groups received the same training: phonological awareness on word and syllable levels. From 2-10 weeks, students in Training Program A received phonological awareness and phonics instruction (word sort approach) focusing on onset-rime level while students in Training Program B received phonological awareness and phonics instruction (word box approach) focusing on phonemic level. All subjects received the pretest before the implementation of training. The pretest included phonological awareness tasks, and word recognition tests. Phonological awareness tasks consisted of five subtests: onset/rime blending, onset/rime segmentation, phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, and oddity task. Word recognition tests included word identification, reading out nonsense words and sentences. After the training programs, all subjects took the posttest, which was the same version as the pretest. The results of the study were as follows: By comparing within-group performance, Training Program A and Training Program B appeared to have significant merits on overall early reading performance (including phonological awareness, and word recognition) after the implementation of the reading training programs. By comparing between-group performance in the pretest, there were no significant differences between two groups before the implementation of the early reading training programs. However, in the posttest, students in Training Program B significantly outperformed those in Training Program A on measures of overall early reading ability and word recognition. As for the subtasks of phonological awareness, students in Training Program B significantly outperformed those in Training Program A in the subtask of phoneme segmentation. On the other hand, in the subtask of onset/rime segmentation, the mean score of Training Program A was higher than that of Training Program B. The findings revealed that Training Program A and Training Program B were effective early reading trainings to Taiwanese EFL young poor readers. Besides, Training Program B (focusing on phonemic level of phonological awareness and phonics instruction) was more effective than Training Program A (focusing on onset/rime level of phonological awareness and phonics instruction) on measures of overall early reading ability and word recognition. These findings can provide EFL teachers as reference resources to help students with reading difficulties.