The Effects of Group Size of Cooperative Learning on Word Recognition and Reading Comprehension Skills in Students with Different English Abilities

• Main Authors: Hsin-Yi Hsu, 徐心怡
• Other Authors: Chin-Fen Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/76308764876723441639

碩士 === 國立臺北教育大學 === 兒童英語教育研究所 === 94 === Abstract Reading has been viewed as major means of learning new information and a valuable source of language input. However, the number of students in an English class is so large that it is hard for English teachers to take care of the need of every student. Since reading activities are hard to carry out in such a big class, cooperative learning method has been strongly recommended by educators. Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC), has been proved an effective method to improve students’ reading performance either in the United States or in the ESL context. Therefore, this study aims to adopt this teaching method to facilitate elementary school students’ abilities in English word recognition and reading comprehension in Taiwan context and investigate whether the group size affects the students’ English reading performance, and whether the different levels of students contribute to different achievements. The results of this study are summarized as follows. Firstly, the group size is not a vital factor that affects students’ performance in word recognition and reading comprehension. Secondly, the different levels of students contribute to different achievement: the low achievers in both groups (pair-work group and teamwork group) make significant progress in terms of word recognition and reading comprehension while the high achievers in both groups do not show significant process either in word recognition or in reading comprehension.