The Impact of Blended Literacy Instruction with Decodable Texts on Preschoolers' Acquisition of Decoding at Home

• Main Authors: Chih-Wen Chen, 陳智文
• Other Authors: Ai-Chun Yen
• Format: Others
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/81202831047070967487

碩士 === 國立東華大學 === 英美語文學系 === 103 === This study aimed to explore the impact of practice with decodable text within blended early literacy instruction on two 5-year-old preschoolers’ acquisition of decoding skills in a rich home literacy environment. A mixed-methods case study was employed in the paradigm of narrative inquiry. The researcher further utilized pretests, posttests, and delayed tests to examine the participants’ development of decoding ability to supplement in narrative interpretation. The participants of this study were two five-year-old fraternal twin sisters as young L2 learners in an environment of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The program lasted for about thirty to fifty minutes each day over a twenty-week period. The qualitative data were collected through video observation, anecdotal notes, and researchers’ reflective journals. The quantitative data were collected through PAT2 pretest, posttest, and delayed test. The conclusion drawn from the recent study might moderately provide parents and teachers with implications and suggestions of literacy instruction to prepare children for their further English learning in elementary schools. The results indicate that the blended literacy instruction with decodable texts promoted the twins’ fundamental skills of decoding: phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge, letter knowledge, and lexical knowledge. Thus, the twins achieved the age equivalency of >10, and a percentile rank of >99 in both decoding posttest and delayed test total. In addition, the positive impact made by the blended literacy instruction with decodable texts enhanced the twins’ reading aloud one month after the lessons when the home literacy environment was kept.