國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
and he gained a positive attitude because he was familiar with the content and vocabulary. He chose the characters that suited his reading level, and he had many opportunities to do repetitive readings. Those successful reading experiences
reinforced his willingness to do more readings. Third, Kevin enjoyed the autonomous learning atmosphere created by RT activities. For example, he asked questions
spontaneously after choosing the characters he liked, and he was allowed to discuss different interpretations of lines with peers. Hence, in the interview, he expressed his eagerness to learn autonomously during RT activities. Fourth, he enjoyed group activities while playing RT games, but he did not like to be a group leader, which might have been because he was afraid of misleading his group members.
6.2 Implication
It has been found that RT instructions were beneficial to the young learner’s reading fluency and learning motivation. Reading fluency is composed of accuracy, expression and volume, phrasing, smoothness, and pace. Teachers often provided mini-lessons of each part for each student individually, so that each student could develop the required awareness and ability gradually. First, for struggling readers, the teacher would probably integrate phonics instructions with RT scripts to facilitate students’ word recognition and pronunciations. In the book named Readers Theater in the Classroom, Tsou (2005) designed RT scripts specifically for training students’
phonemic awareness, so that students who were suffering from mispronunciations like the deletion of final consonants could be assisted. Second, students could receive expression training at the very beginning. In ordinary English classes, training of
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
prosodic readings usually appeared when students arrived at an intermediate or advanced level. Kevin’s English ability belonged to the beginner level, but he was able to learn expressive reading skills. Hence, beginners might also learn prosodic features with simple English. For example, teachers could use the letters AB, C. D! E?
to train students to pause shortly, after a comma, and pause for a longer time after a period; show surprise while encountering an exclamation point, and uncertainty or a rise in tone while encountering a question mark; and show stress while encountering the boldface letter (Hook & Jones, 2002). Third, teachers could provide visible cues to remind students about phrasing. Teachers could first use the letters ABC DE FGH IJKL to help students practice chunking, and also put slashes between chunks on scripts. What was more, lines on scripts had to be arranged properly to avoid cutting the words within the same chunks into two lines. Fourth, if rhythmic reading was more difficult for students to learn, the teacher should spend more time practicing or preparing some easier chants for beginners.
The implementation of RT had positive impacts on the young learner’s learning motivation in terms of authentic performances, an increase of self-efficacy, and creating an autonomous and cooperative learning atmosphere. First, students were motivated to learn, especially when they had a real purpose for learning. For example, Kevin was willing to practice reading again and again because he knew there would be a real performance afterwards. Therefore, teachers were encouraged to provide students with authentic audiences while training the students’ four English skills.
Second, students were more willing to learn when the tasks were a little challenging, but achievable. Kevin thought the scripts were not too difficult to read, so he was
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
willing to practice and learn them. The idea was similar to Krashen’s i+1 principle, in that the comprehensible input should be a little above students’ present level (Krashen, 1982). Hence, teachers could modify the new reading materials from students’
familiar topics or textbooks, and then add some other new information. Third,
teachers could empower students more by enabling them to make their own decisions during the whole learning process. Kevin was encouraged to express his own opinions in RT classes, and that’s one of the reasons he preferred RT to the ordinary English classes. In RT English courses, teachers could give students more freedom by allowing them to choose the topic and the book they wanted to read, and even the instruction they preferred to receive. Fourth, students enjoyed cooperative learning, because they were able to benefit from scaffolding from more competent peers and learn social skills at the same time. Kevin was a social individual, so he enjoyed doing group activities most of the time. Therefore, teachers could adopt more group
discussion activities while directing English courses. However, Chinese students were likely not used to autonomous learning, or were not familiar with group activities, so teachers had to give them more concepts and principles before implementing this style of learning. For example, Kevin sometimes didn’t know how to discuss with others; one reason might have been because he seldom had group activities before, and the other reason might have been because he wasn’t confident enough in his English ability. Therefore, teachers had to guide students step-by-step while doing group activities, and then make sure students had acquired the sufficient knowledge or skills to finish the tasks.