| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立台北師範學院 === 兒童英語教育研究所 === 90 === English has been incorporated into elementary curriculum since 2001. We agree to the importance of developing oral proficiency in a foreign language. However, when considering the fundamental deficiency of environment for FL learning, we believe that integration of reading and oral skills to learn a foreign language is more practical and reciprocal. Therefore, this study was designed to investigate the reading process and the utilization of cue systems by a group of young beginning learners in Taiwan.
Nineteen fourth graders who did not learn English at language cram schools received extra English reading instruction from November 2001 to Spring 2002. The tests of reading words in lists were conducted at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the study. At the end of the study, all the subjects were asked to orally read and think aloud a reading material. The obtained data were analyzed according to four categories: (1) the use of cue systems within words, (2) the use of cue systems in the flow of language, (3) the use of cue systems within readers, and (4) the use of cue systems external to language and readers. After that, the different performances of the above-average readers and the below-average readers were compared.
The results indicated that four types of cue systems all contributed, though in different degrees, to the reading process of the EFL beginning learners. Among the four groups of cue systems, the systems in the flow of language, which benefit L1 readers a lot, could not provide many cues for the EFL beginning readers. A more bottom-up model appeared in the EFL beginning learners’ oral reading. However, in the process of comprehension, the readers’ schemata and the illustrations compensated the readers’ weakness on language competence.
Also, the data of this study revealed that the above-average readers outperformed the below-average readers: (1) they made fewer miscues and had more vocabulary to substitute; (2) they were more sensitive to the language and made more syntactic and semantic acceptable sentences.
The results reveal the importance of both word recognition and language sense for FL reading. Therefore, to build up EFL learners’ word recognition skills and to build up their language sense through integrated and holistic EFL instructions are recommended. Also, the results exhibit the importance of the readers’ schemata and illustrations for reading comprehension. More studies are invited to examine the effects of texts with or without illustrations, and the effects of texts on different topics.
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