4.1 Results
4.1.2 Results of the self-report form
This self-report form was designed to monitor the participants’ reading progress, to detect their subtle attitudinal change during the experiment, and to collect the data about what makes an English e-book popular and worth reading, including its genre, length, content, and features.
Amount of Reading. The goal of this e-book ERP was originally set at four e-books per week for each participant; therefore, the teacher-researcher made 4,360 copies of the self-report form, put them in 109 files and then delivered the 40-page file to every participant. However, due to the heavy load of studies in the last year of
junior high school, the participants did not really have much free time to do things other than studying. Most of their time was occupied with regular schooling and extracurricular cramming, so, at the end of this e-book reading activity, the teacher-researcher could only retrieve 2,436 copies. Even though the amount of reading in total only reached 55.87% of the goal, more than two thousand copies of the self-report form could reveal what the participants thought as a good English e-book. What was encouraging is that ten participants (9.17%) achieved the goal by reading more than 40 e-books in ten weeks and the top four read 58 to 60 e-books;
namely, almost six e-books in each week. The results of the amount of reading for the participants are presented in Table 4.2, showing that the divide of the amount of reading was 20 e-books.
Table 4.2. Amount of Reading for the Participants
Amount of Reading Numbers of People Percentages
40 or more than 40 e-books 10 9.17%
30~39 e-books 16 14.68%
20~29 e-books 28 25.69%
10~19 e-books 48 44.04%
Less than 10 e-books 7 6.42%
As Table 4.2 shows, around 50% of the participants (49.54%) read more than 20 e-books while the other half (50.46%) failed to do so. Those who achieved the goal of reading 40 e-books as well as those who read less than 10 e-books are regarded as those with certain reading preference or distinct reading attitude. Their responses to the reaction questionnaire after the posttest received special attention with the purpose of checking if the amount of reading has any relation to the attitudinal change.
When the amount of reading was analyzed from another angle by weekly counts, its curve within the ten weeks revealed some interesting information (see Figure 7).
WEEK
Figure 7. The amount of reading by weekly counts.
The amount of reading in Week 2 suddenly dropped because that Monday was off due to the school schedule; therefore, the participants did not have a chance to go to the computer classroom, but they could only read e-books on their own at home. In Week 5, the amount clearly increased mainly because the teacher-researcher announced the top ten readers in the past four weeks, which stimulated the participants to compete with their peers by reading more. In Week 6, the amount of reading reached its peak. Then, in the following two weeks, the amount decreased as the passion faded out. However, during the last two weeks, it rose again and seemed to be steady at the number of around 300. The average amount of reading for each participant is 2.23 e-books per week.
Reading time. As for the span of reading time, on average, it took 6.57 minutes (S.D.=5.22) to read an English e-book and each participant spent 13.84 minutes reading e-books every week; namely, each student in this study read two e-books a
week. The average reading time per week may not be long, but everyone had to read e-books for a whole class period of 45 minutes on Mondays during the experiment and 34 participants (31.19%) had the experience of continuous reading for 10 minutes to an hour in their free time at home. After a hard and busy day at school or cram school, 49 participants (44.95%) were willing to read e-books for fun and for learning at night or even midnight, which accounted for 80.6% of reading time (see Table 4.3).
Not only during the weekdays but also on the weekends did they spend some time reading e-books as a pastime, and the percentage of reading time on the weekends to weekdays was 37.7% to 62.3%. With regard to the weekdays, it was interesting to note that they were more willing to read e-books on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays than on Mondays and Fridays.
Table 4.3. Percentages of When to Read
When to Read Counts Percentages
Morning 1 0.75%
Afternoon 25 18.66%
Night & Midnight 108 80.60%
Total 134 100.00%
Monday 12 6.86%
Tuesday 29 16.57%
Wednesday 32 18.29%
Thursday 24 13.71%
Friday 12 6.86%
Saturday 24 13.71%
Sunday 42 24.00%
Total 175 100.00%
Content of e-books. Content, in this section, refers to genre, length and the way the text is presented. Figures from calculating frequency and analyzing correlation among variables are listed in tables and critical comments from the participants are
grouped into several aspects to explain why they preferred certain e-books to the others.
The sum of the e-books that are recommended by the teacher-researcher is one hundred and forty, and the number of the e-books under each genre is as follows: 67 Stories (47.86%), 52 Nonfiction (37.14%), 14 Fairy Tales and Fables (10.00%), 4 Poems (2.86%), and 3 Plays (2.14%). When these figures are compared with the frequencies of each genre being read during the experiment, popular genres for the participants will emerge. Stories were read 1,266 times, which accounted for 51.97%
of the whole amount of reading while Nonfiction accounted for 26.15%, Fairy Tales and Fables, 14.57%, Poems, 3.41%, and Plays, 2.91%. Since the percentage of the frequencies being read is larger than that of the numbers being provided in Stories, Fairy Tales and Fables, Poems, and Plays, these four kinds of genres were more popular than Nonfiction, and, to some extent, Stories and Fairy Tales and Fables were much more attractive to the participants among all of the genres. This phenomenon is understandable in that these two genres contain plots to build the atmosphere and bring the participants in, especially they are 15-year-old teenagers. One thing that needs to be noticed is that, originally, the participants almost read these two genres only; however, after they gained some interest and confidence through reading, they started to appreciate nonfiction during the last three weeks of this e-book ERP because this kind of genre not only taught them English vocabulary, grammar and sentence patterns but also advanced their reading ability to another level. After all, English articles which they encounter in daily life are usually in the form of prose, not stories.
In general, the participants like the genre of the e-books they selected (90.02%) and they reported different reasons. Most of the reasons were not directly related to the genre but related to the features of the e-books, the feelings they had and what
they learned after reading; thus, these reasons were discarded, and only those reasons describing genres were analyzed. They were grouped into five main categories as Table 4.4 shows:
Table 4.4. Reasons for Liking a Certain Genre
Reasons Counts Percentages
It contains plots. 411 88.01%
It contains a moral. 39 8.35%
It contains couplets or similar patterns. 13 2.78%
I just like it for no reason. 2 0.43%
In this genre, I have many choices. 2 0.43%
Total 467 100.00%
In Table 4.4, it is clear to see that plots and moral played very important roles in determining a favorable genre, and it is confirmed again that Stories as well as Fairy Tales and Fables were more popular genres for the participants in this experiment than the other three. As for the genre, Poems, it was judged at the two extremes: the participants either praised it as the best or despised it as the most boring one. Those who favored Poems thought this genre was beautiful, poetic and rhythmic, and, usually they would rank it quite high while those who disliked Poems thought stories were much more interesting than poems since the former had plots.
In terms of the length of e-books, most of the responses (75.44%) reported that the length of the e-books is suitable (see Table 4.5). As for the average length, it was 12.59 screen turns or pages long (S.D.=7.00), with the minimum of 3 pages and the maximum of 50 pages. After analyzing the participants’ responses to the suitable length, the teacher-researcher found that it could range from 10 pages to 25 pages.
The e-books with less than 10 pages were usually regarded as being too short while those with more than 25 pages were thought to be too long. However, this is not always the case. What the suitable length is, to a certain degree, was related to the participants’ English proficiency. Higher-proficient participants (upper 25.69%; top 28) in the present study, loosely judged from their scores on nine monthly exams during the past two years by the teacher-researcher, thought 40 pages were suitable for them while lower-proficient participants (lower 25.69%; bottom 28) thought 3 pages were already too long.
Table 4.5. Percentages of Comments on Length
Comments on Length Counts Percentages
Its length is suitable. 1,748 75.44%
Its length is too long. 291 12.56%
Its length is too short. 278 12.00%
Total 2,317 100.00%
As for the way that the text is presented, most of the responses were positive (80.99%) with different reasons in four aspects (see Table 4.6). Some of them were related to overall feelings after reading, some were related to the structure of content itself, some were related to the features of the e-books and some were related to the learning of language, other school subjects, knowledge, common sense or moral lessons in life. As for the negative responses, the percentage was much lower (19.01%) and most of the reasons conformed to the four aspects of positive responses.
Additionally, one aspect of negative responses was related to the computer technology, the speed of accessing web pages. These various reasons were categorized into five aspects, with the aim of exploring what good and attractive content should contain
and avoid.
Table 4.6. Reasons for Liking or Disliking the Way That the Text Is Presented Reasons for Liking Reasons for Disliking Aspects
after reading 249 13.04% 100 22.32%
low speed
Technology
3 0.67%
Good content is successful in building a certain atmosphere to bring readers in and, for the participants in the study, they seemed to enjoy experiencing positive feelings rather than negative ones. They disliked the stories which describe a passive protagonist, who worried about the falling sky every day. The e-books connoting the notion that boys were better than girls or presenting the ugly, unpleasant reality were not popular, either. Though these stories may still be considered as good ones in
content, they may be just too heavy for teenagers to appreciate. Therefore, the so-called good content in their mind should bring them positive feelings, such as interesting, lovely, innocent, touching, warm, novel, and exciting, instead of negative ones like harsh, boring, childish, or odd. Many of them also mentioned that they liked the content because the stories sent them back to their childhood, reminded them of their lost grandmothers, or gave them the feeling that they were listening to a bedtime story read by their mothers.
The participants favored the structure of content when its length and difficulty were suitable for them to read and it needed to contain creative plots as well as pleasant characters. Texts that are too long, too short, too difficult or too easy were not acceptable to them and those with ordinary plots or unpleasant characters were not popular with them, either. Moreover, they despised illogical, exaggerated plots or characters, which would make the texts too stupid or childish to be appreciated.
With regard to the features of e-books, multiple and substantial features were more popular with the participants. Most of the features, for example, pictures, oral reading, animations, highlighting, music and sound effects, were indispensable to a popular, successful English e-book according to the participants’ responses. Those minor features, such as printing and British English, might be important to few participants as well. What was noteworthy is that some of the participants emphasized interactivity and controllability in e-books. They particularly liked the e-books with interaction between the text and the reader, for instance, games or activities, and the e-books which allowed them to control over the features of the e-books, including the speed of oral reading, automatic play of animations and the function of pause as well as pronunciation of a single word.
Just as reading in a native language, reading in a foreign language can give readers something other than language learning itself, which is unexpected to the participants
before the experiment. They were surprised and satisfied to find that they not only learned English but also other subjects through reading English e-books. What is more, they could also gain some common sense and learn moral lessons in life and these great benefits consequently enhanced their interest in reading in English. Therefore, those e-books without educational meanings and a learning focus or theme related to either English or life were regarded as e-books lacking content. As for repetition in the text, too much repetition in sentence patterns or the structure triggered the participants’ boredom and impatience, though it helped lower-proficient participants comprehend the text and learn the language.
The last reason was about technology, the Internet itself. Although nowadays the network is with broadband transmission and should be fast enough, those e-books on the website of BBC could not be smoothly and readily accessed in the computer classroom during the experiment. Many times the participants had to wait for several minutes to display one page, which might greatly ruin their interest in reading or encourage the spectator stance as Lefever-Davis and Pearman (2005) observed.
Most frequently-read & popular e-books. The top five most frequently-read e-books were No. 107 (read 45 times), No. 138, 141, 302 (read 41 times, respectively), and No. 305 (read 40 times). Three of them belonged to the genre of Stories and the other two were categorized as Fairy Tales and Fables, which corresponded to the results of the frequencies of each genre being read. When ranking of e-books was taken into consideration, popular e-books must at least receive a score higher than the average at 3.45, their standard deviation should be less than the average at 0.9712 and, to be more comparable, their frequency of being read needed to be above the average at 17.4 as well. Among the e-books which conformed to these three criteria, eight of them belonged to Stories, six of them belonged to Fairy Tales and Fables, and the other five belonged to Nonfiction. Again, the frequency of being read and popularity
of e-books seemed to be identical. No. 107, 141 and 305 are especially recommended since these three e-books had been read over 40 times and still received high ranking as well as low standard deviation. As for No. 241, though being read relatively fewer times (18 times), it had the highest ranking at 3.89 and the lowest standard deviation at 0.5830, which also made itself worthy of recommendation. Details of these four recommended e-books are explored and discussed later in section 4.2.2.
Features of e-books. In this section, the results related to the features of e-books are presented in two tables concerning popular, unpopular, helpful and unhelpful features (see Table 4.7-1 & 4.7-2). Percentages of popular, unpopular, helpful and unhelpful features were adjusted because the raw data collected from the self-report form could not directly reflect the real percentages of what the participants think of the features. Take music/sound effects for example (see Table 4.7-1), among the listed e-books suggested by the teacher-researcher, 20.71% of them consisted of this feature and the data from the 2,436 copies of the self-report form showed that 30.42% of the e-books selected by the participants to read during the experiment had music/sound effects. This feature was thought popular in 614 out of 2,436 copies of the self-report form so that its percentage of being popular was 25.21%. However, it should be noted that only 30.42% of the selected e-books contained music/sound effects, so adjusting the original percentage is necessary. The adjusted percentage of music/sound effects, therefore, resulted from dividing the percentage of “popular” by the percentage of
“selected e-books.” In this way, the percentage of being popular with regard to music/sound effects became 82.87%, instead of the original percentage at 25.21%.
Table 4.7-1. Percentages of Popular and Unpopular Features of E-books
Pictures 100.00% 100.00% 1,893 77.71% 77.71% 102 4.19% 7.47%
Animations 77.86% 76.85% 1,583 64.98% 84.55% 67 2.75% 3.58%
Oral reading 72.86% 73.65% 1,456 59.77% 81.15% 93 3.82% 5.19%
Highlighting 46.43% 54.19% 1,059 43.47% 80.22% 89 3.65% 6.74%
Music/Sound
effects 20.71% 30.42% 614 25.21% 82.87% 49 2.01% 6.61%
Printing 55.71% 56.12% 300 12.32% 21.95% 389 15.97% 28.46%
British English 25.00% 15.44% 80 3.28% 21.24% 25 1.03% 6.67%
All features 1,751 71.88% 39 1.60%
Table 4.7-2. Percentages of Helpful and Unhelpful Features of E-books
Helpful Unhelpful
Pictures 100.00% 100.00% 1,823 74.84% 74.84% 101 4.15% 4.15%
Animations 77.86% 76.85% 1,463 60.06% 78.15% 49 2.01% 2.62%
Oral reading 72.86% 73.65% 1,597 65.56% 89.02% 47 1.93% 2.62%
Highlighting 46.43% 54.19% 1,119 45.94% 84.78% 91 3.74% 6.90%
Music/Sound
effects 20.71% 30.42% 544 22.33% 73.41% 63 2.59% 8.51%
Printing 55.71% 56.12% 215 8.83% 15.73% 595 24.43% 43.53%
British English 25.00% 15.44% 58 2.38% 15.41% 6 0.25% 1.62%
All features 1,614 66.26% 46 1.89%
Note: 1. N = 2436
2. “Listed e-books” refers to the whole 140 e-books chosen by the teacher-researcher (see Appendix A).
3. “Selected e-books” means the e-books which were selected and read by the participants, and the data came from the results of each copy of the self-report form.
4. “Adjusted percentage” under “Popular” = “Percentage” under “Popular”/ “Selected e-books”
5. “Adjusted percentage” under “Unpopular” = “Percentage” under “Unpopular”/ “Selected e-books”
Generally speaking, the participants thought that all of the features of e-books were popular with them (71.88%). Animations, music/sound effects, highlighting, oral reading and pictures, in particular, were popular, with a percentage of over 77.
Moreover, their percentages of being unpopular were all relatively low (less than 8%).
These five features, therefore, might be important, if not essential, to a popular English e-book. As for printing and British English, these two features did not receive high percentages of being popular, only at around 20, and printing was regarded as an unpopular feature at a relatively high percentage (28.46%), which was even higher than its percentage of being popular (21.95%). This might result from the participants’
extreme viewpoints towards printing. The similar phenomenon showed in the percentages of helpful and unhelpful features, too. Printing and British English still received low percentages of being helpful at only around 15 while the percentages of the other five features were all above 73. Undoubtedly, the percentages of being unhelpful for the five features were low (all below 9%), but printing was thought as an unhelpful feature at a considerably high percentage (43.53%). Based on the results presented in Table 4.7, it might be proper to claim that pictures, animations, oral reading, highlighting, and music/sound effects were not only popular but also helpful to most participants; however, British English was not a crucial feature of e-books and printing could be excluded from the list of the features without much loss.
Reading behaviors. In addition to reading the text, the participants also reported
their other reading behaviors in the self-report form. Oftentimes, they would click on hotspots to activate animations to enjoy (65.15%) and sometimes they would repeat after oral reading of the e-books to practice pronunciation or intonation (39.49%).Scarcely would they print out the e-books to read again (0.49%).
Difficulty of e-books. Most of the participants judged difficulty of the e-books as
“suitable” (67.73%) while 3.49% of the responses reported that the e-books were hard
to understand and 18.06% mentioned that the texts were too easy.
Ranking of e-books. The ranking of e-books in the self-report form refers to the
degree at which the participants liked the e-books they read, ranging from 1 (I do not like it at all) to 5 (I like it very much). The average ranking of the e-books turned out to be 3.45 (S.D.=1.00), slightly towards the positive end. The scores of ranking only stood for the participants’ attitude towards a specific e-book, not for the whole e-books in general. Therefore, it is only for reference and triangulation; as for the participants’ general feelings towards e-books, the results of the reaction questionnaire reveal more direct and convincing details (see 4.1.4).What they learned & what they thought of reading in English. The last two sections of the self-report form were about the participants’ responses of what they learned and what they thought of reading in English after reading an e-book. Their responses were categorized into several groups as Table 4.8 shows; as for the correlation between what they thought of reading in English and their attitudinal change as well as that between what they learned and the features of e-books are discussed later in sections 4.2.1 and 4.2.2 respectively.
As Table 4.8 shows, the participants’ positive responses were far more than negative ones in terms of both what they learned and what they thought of reading in English. More than ninety-seven percent of the responses from the participants (97.90%) were positive in that they reported they learned something after reading.
As Table 4.8 shows, the participants’ positive responses were far more than negative ones in terms of both what they learned and what they thought of reading in English. More than ninety-seven percent of the responses from the participants (97.90%) were positive in that they reported they learned something after reading.