Taiwanese Elementary School English Teachers’ Practices and Views of Selecting Picture Books as Teaching Materials: A Qualitative Case Study

• Main Authors: Jheng, Cheng-Jyun, 鄭晟均
• Other Authors: Chao, Chin-Chi
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/7h5s86

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 英國語文學系 === 107 === As more and more attention is paid to the use of English picture books and graded reading instruction in language education, teachers are now seeking possibilities of making the best use of books resources in the school library in order to improve students’ English reading ability as a whole. The main purpose of this study is to investigate three experienced EFL elementary school teachers’ practices and views of grading English books for the school library and adopting picture books as additional teaching materials in their classroom. In this study, two forms of interview, including focus-group interview and individual interview were conducted to collect their narrative data. The study indicated that: (1) The three teachers graded the English books in the library based mainly on “text difficulty”, taking “age-appropriateness” and “culture” into consideration for some situations. Besides, they indicated that categorizing books by “themes” is going to greatly help teachers find suitable books as supplementary teaching materials. (2) The three teachers’ criteria on selecting books as teaching materials are consistent with previous studies, focusing on the “richness and variation in writing styles”, “cultural elements”, “students’ language ability” and “themes”. (3) Based on various reasons, the three teachers considered that although Lexile Framework for Reading has it benefits, a thorough examination is necessary before adopting the framework in the EFL context. Last but not least, it is indicated by the three teachers that they all encountered difficulties and limitations during the process of using picture books. In light of this, the present study attempts to deal with the issue with the concept of “Teacher Autonomy”. It is hoped that classroom observations can be included into future studies to explore the issue further.