This study aims to investigate reading beliefs and processes of Korean 6th graders in both Korean and English and assess whether or not their reading views and processes can, in turn, influence their preferences and criteria of the multiple stories be...
This study aims to investigate reading beliefs and processes of Korean 6th graders in both Korean and English and assess whether or not their reading views and processes can, in turn, influence their preferences and criteria of the multiple stories before and after reading.
It has been widely believed that reading instructions influence children's beliefs about reading, reading strategies, and self-confidence as a reader. Reading instruction is often categorized into three major models: (1) sub-skills or phonics model that views reading as a process of establishing relationship between letters and sounds; (2) the skills or eclectic view that defines reading as a hierarchy of skills; and (3) the whole language or holistic view that looks at reading as a holistic process that places more focus on understanding meaning rather than individual skills required for reading. These three models share a rather evolutionary relationship. The first steps of learning to read include learning to pronounce words as defined by the phonics model. The skills or eclectic view, on the other hand, equates reading to teaching all the reading skills such as words, grammar, and meaning, but teaching them separately. Finally, the whole language view reflects a much more complete view on reading; readers bring meaning upon text in order to understand it. Readers with a whole language view enjoy reading itself because they create meaning from the text. Readers of the phonics or eclectic model, on the other hand, cause them to lack self-confidence because the major characteristic of a good reader is errorless performance.
For the purpose of the research, reading beliefs, strategies and previous reading experiences, and self-confidence of three high-level Korean 6th graders were investigated in both Korean and English, using reading interview protocols originally written by Goodman, Watson, and Burke (1987). As a second procedure, they were asked to read three short stories of Korean and rank-order them in order of their preferences with the criteria. The same procedure was repeated in English.
While all the participants were top-level students in their respective schools, their views of reading in both Korean and English varied. According to the interview protocols, when they came across something they did not know while reading Korean stories, they guessed its meaning within the context of the entire sentence and the story. From this, it could be concluded that when reading in Korean, these students prioritize meaning; hence the results suggested that most of the participants possess the view of Whole Language model. On the other hand, the results showed that the Eclectic Model rather than the Whole Language Model better describe the participants' reading view of English. The participants focused on word and phrase levels and tended to use dictionary to understand the words they were unfamiliar with.
In addition, such reading beliefs and behaviors in both L1 and L2 seemed to have received heavy influence from previous reading experiences such as home literacy and instructions at school, private institutes, etc. "Perfectionist" approaches such as the Phonics and Eclectic Model affected students negatively by taking away from their confidence, while whole language view helps students enjoy reading and develop positive self-confidence. Overall, it can be concluded that school instructions and home literacy greatly affect the way the participants understand reading and ultimately their future reading behaviors.
Finally, the results showed that the students' story preferences and criteria were also affected by their beliefs about reading. A student who approaches reading with ideas of Phonics or Eclectic Model prioritized elements of the book such as images, design and linguistic difficulty of the story when selecting a book to read. On the other hand, a student who followed the Whole Language Model chose books according to their personal interest. In today's educational materials development, grading books is unequivocally determined by the linguistic difficulty of the content such as grammatical and vocabulary difficulty. Findings of this study, however, suggest that such an approach may be in need for a reform. That is, instead of categorizing reading levels in terms of linguistic difficulty, it may be necessary to create a matrix of more sophisticated classification using criteria such as design, linguistic motivation, and interest in order to more effectively understand reading education in foreign languages.
본 연구는 현재 초등학교 학생들을 대상으로 모국어 읽기와 영어 읽기에 대한 이해와 의미 생성이 어떻게 다른가를 비교하여 분석하는 것이다. 궁극적으로 이 연구의 목표는 어떤 식으로 영...
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