A Study of the Effect of Directed Reading and Thinking Activity Strategy on Elementary School Fifth Grade Students’ English Language Proficiency

• Main Authors: Chen, Chang-Ching, 陳長青
• Other Authors: 許炳煌
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/99753084609797172059

碩士 === 國立臺北教育大學 === 兒童英語教育學系碩士班 === 99 === Previous empirical studies in reading ability have indicated the positive effects of using reading strategy on elementary school students reading ability, especially on higher language proficiency students. However, in ESL or EFL contexts, there have been few relevant studies on the direct effect of reading strategy toward language proficiency. This study focused on one specific reading strategy, Directed Reading and Thinking Activity (DRTA), and the purpose was to investigate the effect of this strategy on English language proficiency development of fifth grade elementary students. Two classes of fifth graders of an elementary school in Da-an district in Taipei city participated in this study. A four-month reading course was employed and an English language proficiency test was conducted before and after the course. Test results were analyzed using an independent sample t-test. Major findings are as follow: (1) Significant differences were found in elementary school students’ language proficiency test between the DRTA reading strategy group and traditional teacher oriented teaching group. (2) Three is no significant difference between the performance of the boys and the girls of the two treatment groups as measured by the research tool. Different gender’s language proficiency level was not affected by the reading strategy. Conclusions and limitations of the current research as well as pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research are provided.