Action Research on the Effectiveness of Remedial Instruction with Passages of GEPT Reading Comprehension Testson Low Achievers By Min-Shin Cheng

NA3C0012

林月鳳 Ephone Lin

IntroductionIn a normal English class, the abilities of students are very different.

The situation not only brings great

challenges to English teachers but it

also causes a sense of depression

and helplessness to low achievers.

From the grades of the exam of the vocational high school graduates, the researcher found the teaching material is not really appropriate to every student.

Chen (2009) noted that most school

English teachers face the following

teaching difficulties: (a) a mixed

proficiency class leading to the

bimodal distribution, (b) students with

low English proficiency struggling to

learn English, and (c) the inability to

take care of students with mixed

proficiency levels at the same time.

The researcher hoped to offer a meaningful context to low achievers to improve their English abilities.

Research Questions1.What are the participants’ perspectives

on the remedial instruction?

2.Is it effective to include the passages of

GEPT reading comprehension tests

(the basic level) in the remedial

instruction on low achievers?

3.What are difficulties and problems

encountered by the participants and the

teacher in the remedial instruction with

passages of GEPT reading

comprehension tests (the basic level)?

Lierature Review

Remedial Instruction:

It is an effective way to provide low

achievers with remedial instruction to

enhance their competence they

ought to be equipped with (Li, 1996).

Tu,2001,showed that strengthening

students’ basic degrees is the

principal goal of remedial instruction.

Studies Related to Remedial Instruction:

Numerous studies have explored the

positive effect of remedial instruction on

elementary school students and junior

high school students (Fang, 2012; Ho, 2011;

Lin, 2010; Lin, 2011; Lin, 2013; Tseng, 2012;

Wang, 2013).

Moreover, Chen, Hsiou, Teng, Tsai, and Yang (2011) conducted a study to explore the effects of remedial English programs at a technical college.

Models of Remedial Instruction:Model I: Three Steps of Remedial Instruction.

Model II: Five Steps of Remedial Instruction.

Model III: Three Phases of Remedial Instruction.

Types of Remedial Instruction are1.Pull-Out Remedial Instruction: They are

resource classes and after-school

programs.

2. Pull-In Remedial Instruction: It’s to assist

low achievers in regular classes. Chen

(2003) suggested teachers adopt some

strategies in class to timely help improve

students learning problems, like

cooperative learning, ability grouping and

peer-tutoring.

Definitions of Reading: There are a variety of definitions of reading from different perspectives. In short, to facilitate learners’ English ability development, reading is the indispensible basis.

The process of reading involves not only decoding of vocabulary, phrases and grammar, but also readers’ prior knowledge and experience.

Thus, the material should be according to their English level, interests, experience and background.

The researcher thought the passages of GEPT reading comprehension tests are appropriate learning materials for remedial instruction.

The learning curve will look something:

Models of Reading Process: Bottom-up Models, Top-down Models

and Interactive Models.

Reading Comprehension:

According to Richards and Schmidt (2002), based on the different reading purposes, there are four reading comprehension styles:

1. Literal comprehension

2. Inferential comprehension

3. Critical or evaluative comprehension

4. Appreciative comprehension

Inevitably, the four levels of reading

comprehension can be applied to the

instruction at the same time.

The General English Proficiency Test (the GEPT):

1.Background and description of the GEPT.

2. The Use of the GEPT.

3. Research related to the GEPT.

Action Research:Lewin, K. (1946) is a US founding father of action research; he developed a theory of action research as a spiral of steps that proceeds from planning, acting, observing and reflecting (see Figure 2.6).

Action Resarch

Figure 2.6. Action Research Cycle (Lewin, 1946)

This approach was also used widely by Stenhouse (1980) and later by Elliott (1981, 1991).

According to Lomax, McNiff,and Whitehead (1996), action research can help teachers improve their professional fields.

In summary, action research is conducted through cycles of planning, action, observation and reflection.

The purpose of action research is to make the situation the researcher would like to improve better and make the problem solved through reflections and actions.

MethodologyResearch Design:

1. This study was mainly conducted on a qualitative

research and the number of participants was six.

2. The data of this study would mostly derive from

the questionnaire, interviews, observations, field

notes and reflective journals.

3. The researcher used quantitative approach as

well to analyze the questionnaire and organize

the subjects’ pretest and posttest outcomes to

clarify their performance.

Participants: 1.The participants were six students in

their second year of vocational high

school, mainly studying in the Department

of Food and Beverage.

2.The six students had limited English

proficiency. According to the definition of

low achievers in the report released by the

MOE (2009), these students could be

regarded as low achievers.

3.All the six students were boys.

Teaching Material: the passages of the GEPT reading

comprehension tests published by Far East

Publishing Co., Ltd.

Instruments and Data Collection: multiple data sources were collected, including the pretest, the questionnaire, interviews and informal interviews, the posttest, classroom observations, field notes and the researcher’s reflective journals.

.

Procedures of the Study:

Data Analysis: 1.The qualitative data are from interviews,

informal interviews, observations, field

notes and the teacher’s reflective journals.

2.The quantitative data are from the

questionnaire, pretest, and posttest.

3.The three research questions, data

collection and data analysis are shown in

Table 3.4.

Results and DiscussionRQ1: What are the participants’ perspectives on the remedial instruction?

ResultsResults: The participants liked the teacher-student interaction, the atmosphere, the small number of the students in the remedial course.

The participants liked that the teacher instructed them at a slow pace, so they could raise questions at any time.

They hoped that the remedial course could

be prolonged.

RQ2: Is it effective to include the passages of GEPT reading comprehension tests (the basic level) in the remedial instruction on low achievers?

ResultsResults: The passages of GEPT reading comprehension tests (the basic level) are the appropriate teaching material for vocational high school’s low achievers.

The context should be emphasized when it comes to learning vocabulary.

The after-reading questions help draw students’ attention during the reading and strengthen their understanding.

RQ3: What are difficulties and problems encountered in the remedial instruction

with passages of GEPT reading

comprehension tests?

ResultsResults: The finite time span to carry out the remedial course was the most principal problem.

Few repetitive words appeared in the passages, and the participants often felt confused about the polysemous words.

The English words that looked alike usually puzzled the low achievers.

Struggling readers have developed many bad decoding habits.

ConclusionsEach participant benefited from the

remedial course.

1. the students liked the small group.

2. the remedial course promoted the

teacher-student interaction, making

the atmosphere in the class more

pleasant.

3. the remedial course also boosted

the participants’ confidence and

motivation.

Pedagogical Implications

Firstly, the passages of GEPT reading comprehension tests are highly effective.

Secondly, the difficulty which the students encountered was they failed to distinguish the visually similar words at times. Thus, the teacher can guide students to use mnemonic associations to promote identification of the words.

Thirdly, as for the vocational high school

low achievers’ behavioral problems,

such as being talkative and lazy, the

teacher can cope with them with

respect and concern.

Lastly, the repetitive words appearing in

the passages of GEPT reading

comprehension tests used in the

remedial course can be more so that

the students’ vocabulary memory can

be enhanced.

Limitations

The time constraint is the first limitation:

long-term remedial courses are available

for the study, more vocabulary, phrases,

grammar, and topics may be learned by

the participants.

The small sample size and the lack of diversity in the sample is the second distinct limitation: they are only six participants and from the same class.

Suggestions

In this study, the participants are only six students, and they come from the same school, so a large sample from different vocational high schools is needed to further study.

Lengthening the duration of the remedial course is recommended, and the quantity of the passages could be increased.

CommentThe study seems to be an easy model to

finish a thesis, because it always focus on

the items of the study’s title.

However, it didn’t have powerful numbers

or offer any teaching approach to support

the researcher’s point of the study.

The participants are only six students, it is

a very small size of subjects.

The figure 2.4, I think it seems a wrong

chart, because the meaning of the figure is

unreasonable.

Thanks for your attention. ^_^