| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 96 === The purpose of the study is to investigate the effect of the Readers Theater (RT) on seventh-graders in junior high school. First, the student responses to the English teaching materials before and after the RT instruction were compared. After that, the students’ English reading and speaking performance and their responses to RT scripts and RT activities were probed and analyzed. Finally, the students’ suggestions to the RT instruction were examined in this study. The subjects of this study were 68 seventh-graders in Hsiang Shang Junior High School in Taichung City. The RT instruction of the students lasted for 12 weeks. Before the RT instruction, the students took an English speaking pretest, answered the pretest questionnaire and took the first monthly English exam as the English pretest. During the RT instruction, the subjects needed to read the five RT scripts by doing five RT activities, including primary reading, round robin reading, instant reading, cooperative reading, and staged reading, and finish writing the RT worksheets after each activity. When the RT instruction was completed, the subjects took the English speaking post-test, answered the post-study questionnaire and took the final monthly English exam as the English post-test. After collecting data, the researcher quantitatively compared them by samples-paired t-tests. In addition, the student responses to the open-ended questions in the questionnaire were analyzed qualitatively. Based on the data analyses, the findings of the study are summarized as follows: 1. There is no significant difference between the student responses to their English teaching materials before and after the RT instruction in the study. However, based on the mean scores, the students enjoyed the adapted RT scripts and found the content of the English textbooks suitable for them. 2. After the implementation of the RT instruction, the students considered RT beneficial to prompting English learning, lowering learning anxiety, and fostering interpersonal relations. Of the five RT activities, primary reading was at the top of the students’ favorite RT activity. In addition, the students’ best gain and difficulty in the RT instruction was learning the new English words. 3. There is no significant difference between the students’ English reading performance before and after the RT instruction in the study, but there is a significant difference between the students’ English speaking performance before and after the study. Nonetheless, according to the mean score, the students’ English reading performance was slightly improved after the study. 4. After the RT instruction, the students suggested that besides the adapted RT scripts from the English textbooks, various RT scripts and more RT activities should be implemented in the English class to prompt the students’ English reading motivation and to improve their English reading performance. On the basis of the study, some pedagogical applications are suggested. English teachers in junior high school can apply RT instruction in their English class to enhance the students’ interest in English learning, particularly English speaking. Moreover, teachers can design more RT activities and RT scripts than before in their class to facilitate English reading. Besides teacher-oriented script adaptation, English teachers can encourage their students to adapt their own RT scripts from their English textbooks. In this way, the students’ English writing competence can be improved and the functions of the English textbooks can be positively promoted.
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