| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 95 === ABSTRACT
The main purpose of the study was to compare the effect of the bottom-up and the top-down reading strategies on junior high school students’ reading comprehension. In particular, changes in the students’ English reading comprehension and comparison of the student responses to English vocabulary learning and English textual reading were examined and analyzed. Additionally, the students’ responses to the selected bottom-up and the top-down reading strategies were probed.
The subjects of the study were 68 ninth-grade students from two classes in Fen Xi Junior High School, located in Fensan, Kaohsiung County. Thirty-four students in Class A were served as the Bottom-up Group (BUG), receiving the 12-week bottom-up reading strategy training (BURST). Word recognition, grammar-translation and scanning were administered. By contrast, thirty-four students in Class B were served as the Top-down Group (TDG), receiving the 12-week top-down reading strategy training (TDRST). Text-mapping, making inferences and summarizing were instructed. Before the study, the subjects were requested to take the English reading comprehension pretest and pre-study questionnaire. During the study, the subjects of both groups needed to finish 12 texts. After the study, the subjects were asked to take the English reading comprehension post-test and post-study questionnaire. The data were computed and compared by a t-test, an ANCOVA and A Chi-square test and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. On the basis of the data analysis, the major findings of the present study are summarized as follows:
1. Both types of reading strategy training facilitated students’ English reading comprehension. In particular, the TDRST helped the TDG make more remarkable development in English reading comprehension than the BURST did to BUG. specifically, In terms of the individual bottom-up reading strategy use, scanning seemed more effective than word recognition and grammar translation on improving the BUG’s reading comprehension. On the other hand, in terms of the individual top-down reading strategy use, the TDG appeared to perform best in text-mapping, followed by making inferences, and summarizing.
2. Both of the BUG and the TDG had an obvious positive change of responses to English vocabulary learning after the reading strategy training.
3. The BURST did not greatly change most of the BUG’ original responses to English textual reading, while the TDRST did influence most of the TDG’s.
4. Most subjects in both the BUG and the TDG generally revealed a positive response to the overall and individual effects of the strategy training on English reading after the study. In addition, the top two difficulties hindering both the BUG and the TDG from successful reading comprehension are the same -- many unknown words and understanding complicated sentence structures in the text.
Based on the study findings, it is suggested that the educators should apply the two types of strategy training in their reading class. In other words, students can develop both bottom-up recognition strategies and top-down interpretation strategies at the same time for the purpose of achieving reading accuracy and fluency. What’s more, instructors should focus more on vocabulary development and grammatical skills. In that case, limited vocabulary and insufficient grammatical knowledge may not obstruct students’ reading comprehension, which enhances their interests in English reading.
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