There has been research concerning the use of picture books in EFL elementary education;
few studies, however, have emphasized the applications to learners in secondary schooling in a foreign language context. The present study delves into the effectiveness of using picture books as supplementary reading materials in a junior high school in Taiwan. Also, through a picture book program, this research seeks to involve older learners, that is, junior high school students, in the experience of reading with picture books. With students from different grades participating, the effect of picture books could be better understood, the values of a picture book program appreciated by more individuals, and the applications of both further
developed. In addition, it is hoped that the picture book program described here could serve
as a practical guide, readily accessible and easily understandable, for language teachers interested in implementing such instructional programs. Educators are therefore provided with a viable method of reading instruction, the adoption of which is hoped to broaden students’ reading experience.
1.5 Definitions of Key Terms
To achieve clarity of the central concepts in the present study, the following three terms, reading comprehension, picture books, and reading motivation, are carefully defined.
1.5.1 Reading Comprehension
Most researchers agree that reading is an interactive process between a text and a reader (Carrel & Eisterhold, 1988; Goodman & Goodman, 1983; Sakai, 2008), which comprises decoding and reading comprehension (Block & Parris, 2008; Goodman & Goodman, 1983;
Pearson, 2002). The two constituents occur simultaneously in the process of reading and interrelate in dynamic ways. Therefore, as Bråten (2007) defines it, reading comprehension indicates that meaning is extracted and constructed through interaction with the text. It also exhibits the extent to which readers process and understand the written language (Block &
Parris, 2008; Pearson, 2002).
1.5.2 Picture Books
Short on pages but long on meaning (Culham, 2001), picture books represent a unique genre of children’s literature different from illustrated books. Within approximately 32 pages
and 200 words, a picture book is defined as a storybook that is “a fiction book with a dual narrative, in which both the pictures and the text work interdependently to tell a story. It is a tale told in two media, the integration of visual and verbal art” (Bishop & Hickman, 1992, p.
2). The words and images in picture books carry equal weight, telling at least four stories:
one from the text, another of the pictures, another through the interaction of the two, and still another with the addition of readers’ imagination (Grundvig, 2012; Jalongo, 2004). Picture books “create a playing field where the readers explore and experiment with the relationship between pictures and words” (Driggs & Sipe, 2007, p. 274), which engages learners of all ages in the experience of learning and enjoyment (Murphy, 2009). The pictures themselves also “extend, clarify, complement, or take the place of words” (Shulevitz, 1985, p. 15). In other words, they possess particular significance in facilitating readers’ interpretations of the text and their understanding of the comprehensible concepts usually included in picture books.
1.5.3 Reading Motivation
According to Guthrie and Wigfield (2000), reading motivation was defined as “the individual’s personal goals, values, and beliefs with regard to the topics, processes, and outcomes of reading” (p. 405), which implied that learners can be driven to read for various reasons. Numerous studies also described a direct connection between reading motivation and reading achievement (Guthrie et al., 2007; Taboada et al., 2009; Unrau & Schlackman,
2006; Wang & Guthrie, 2004). In the present research, students’ reading motivation
development is examined by the pre- and post-test of Motivations for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ), a commonly used measure to assess a wide variety of potential aspects of reading motivation.
CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW
With the aim of examining the effect of a picture book reading program on EFL learners, this chapter begins with a review of the first language reading development and continues with that of L2 reading development and instruction. The influential approaches will be mentioned and an adjusted stance will be adopted as the pedagogical framework for the present study. Subsequent to the first section is a discussion of the reading materials used in ESL/EFL settings. As the focus of this study, more picture books will be introduced,
including the values, the selection criteria thereof, and their application in ESL/EFL contexts.
The chapter ends with learners’ reading motivation, which is another matter of concern in the study.
2.1 L1 Reading Development
According to Krashen (2004), good reading habits could expedite the development of good reading skills. Further, reading skills of the mother tongue were transferable to a second language, for they were essentially the same and were becoming more directly affected by individuals than by languages. Similar transference also existed in the pleasure of reading habits from the first language to that of the second. As a result, he claimed that it was essential for students to be encouraged to continue reading in their mother tongue. As time passed, they would develop not only the first but also the second language much more
effectively.
To read more efficiently, Goodman (1983) emphasized the learning of reading skills or strategies in the process of comprehending. By applying different reading skills to reading, readers appeared to involve themselves in a guessing game where they reconstructed messages encoded by writers. The strategies they used facilitate the process of reading.
Unlike L2 learners, native-speaking children already have a large vocabulary bank for early reading before they begin learning to read. With a good command of the patterns and knowledge about reading materials and styles, they are read to many stories and eager to learn how to read. The main purpose of their reading, however, lies not in equipping themselves with the ability to read, but in interacting with the stories and storytellers and being educated and entertained during the process (Nation, 2008). The books native learners read, as Nation pointed out, have some common characteristics as follows: interesting,
well-illustrated, and not too long. There is also a lot of repetition in the texts, with predictable yet funny storylines.
In reading instruction, much attention is given to comprehension and enjoyment.
Techniques centered on meaning, such as shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading, are therefore employed in teaching reading. In shared reading, the teacher reads stories to learners while exhibiting pictures and words from a very large book. By making the learners predict and comment on the storylines, the teacher engages them in reading.
Occasionally, the learners can even read aloud the texts together. The whole procedure of the shared reading activity is an attempted imitation of a parent-child bedtime story reading.
After the reading, the learners participate in follow-up activities, including drawing, writing, or some language studying of the story. Shared reading aims to have the learners derive pleasure from the interesting stories as well as the interaction with the teacher in making predictions of and comments about the story. As for guided reading, it generally follows the procedure of reading, discussing, and then predicting. The teacher and the learners talk about the book title first, making sure each word is understood. Then, similar to shared reading, they discuss the visual images in the story and predict the storylines. The learners’
background knowledge about the topic, if any, is also shared before actual reading. Some ideas and important words in the story are mentioned and clarified as well. With these ready, the learners then start to read. Last, in independent reading, the learners read a book with their own choices silently.
To summarize, since the purpose of L1 reading is to interact, entertain, and educate, native learners, who have an advantage of much linguistic knowledge and experience, are encouraged to continue reading. Involving themselves in short, interesting stories with nice illustrations and predictable plots, the learners are able to improve comprehension and to find enjoyment. Their reading habits, pleasure, and skills can be further transferred to second language reading.
2.2 L2 Reading Development and Instruction
Over the past thousands of years, reading instruction has gradually evolved and been actively discussed, with different approaches dominating different phases. Generally, English reading programs designed for native English speakers have been inextricably intertwined with ESL reading instruction (Gunderson, Odo, & D’Silva, 2013). In other words, L2 learners learn how to read mostly through courses developed for native-speaking students. It turned out, however, that not a single approach or method was superior to another, and that a combination of various instructional approaches would be more effective than constant dependence on one. More importantly, individual learners’ needs, abilities, and backgrounds should be considered as crucial factors in adopting different approaches to reading (Connor, Morrison, Fishman, Schatschneider, & Underwood, 2007). The following paragraphs present the characteristics of some of the commonly known reading instructional approaches.
As Ferdman and Weber (1994) stated, models applied to ESL or EFL reading included linguistic, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic approaches. Focusing on how readers read, the linguistic approach emphasizes the bottom-up skills needed for comprehension. Learners build meanings by processing the various units, such as letters, words, phrases, or clauses in the texts. In other words, word recognition occurs in advance of comprehension, whose process is driven by all the information in the texts. Learning to read thus becomes a process of skill acquisition (Gunderson et al., 2013). Different from the linguistic model, the
psycholinguistic approach concentrates on what readers comprehend. Learners apply their background knowledge about both form and content to construct personal and contextual meanings. Smith (1994) stressed particular significance on learners’ background knowledge in meaning construction, stating that “Knowledge of relevant schemes is obviously essential if we are to read any kind of text with comprehension” (p. 15). Many other researchers also recognized the importance of background knowledge in ESL students’ comprehension (Carrell, 1981; Hudson, 1982; Johnson, 1981, 1982). Reading becomes a psycholinguistic guessing game, where readers interact with their thought and language during the process (Goodman, 1976). Goodman also proposed four specific processes in reading, including predicting, sampling, confirming, and correcting. Readers guess the meaning of the text first, obtain some of the information to confirm the guesses, and then reexamine them. Reading in this way is an active process. This top-down model influenced many teachers to provide more meaningful materials and those closer to students’ experience with the world. Having been adopted by many ESL experts as a good model for L2 reading instruction, the
psycholinguistic model, however, with little evidence, is not proved to be a superior approach (Gunderson et al., 2013).
Without strictly adhering to either the linguistic or the psycholinguistic model, most researchers and teachers have currently accepted an interactive reading model, indicating that readers use both bottom-up and top-down approaches to processing reading. Reading is then
seen as a two-way communication, tapping into not only the learners’ background knowledge and higher-order mental processes but also the characteristics of the texts themselves. Connor et al. (2007) also concluded that different approaches must be applied considering individual learners’ needs, capabilities, and backgrounds. Moreover, Graves and Fitzgerald (2005) stated that, as an instructional approach, the scaffolded reading experience could be used to assist students with effective reading and comprehension. What constitutes the experience is planning and implementation. In the planning phase, teachers consider students’ needs, the text difficulty, and the purpose for reading. During implementation, teacher-planned lessons and pre-, while-, and post-activities are incorporated. According to Salsbury’s review (2005), scaffolding reading for English learners is supported by a large body of research, showing beneficial effects not only for before-reading activities but for during- and after-reading activities of various kinds as well.
To help students become independent readers, the procedure in reciprocal teaching developed by Palincsar and Brown (1986) could be adopted. The training and use of four strategies that could be employed paragraph for paragraph to the text include: First, predicting the content prior to reading; second, questioning the main ideas; third,
summarizing what is read; last, clarifying some of the complicated aspects. As the teacher models the procedure, it is expected that students can gradually learn to work on it with their peers, and on their own in the end.
Considering the above-mentioned features of different approaches, the picture book reading program in this study will adopt a more eclectic instructional approach, ensuring the learners’ active participation in reading instruction.
2.3 Reading Materials in EFL/ESL Contexts 2.3.1 Textbooks
Textbooks, usually full of vocabulary words, grammatical rules, and dialogues, are used as the main reading materials in most ESL or EFL classrooms. They ensure structure,
consistency, and logical progression of the presentation of the official knowledge of school subjects. They not only guide teachers through the course and activity design but also provide students something specific to work on and to study further after school (Wang, Lin, & Lee, 2011). The content in textbooks becomes the major source on which the evaluation of the students’ comprehension is based. The textbook English, however, has been evidenced by research with a problem of foreignness, reflecting language or situations considerably different from that in the real world (Kennedy, 1998; Mindt, 1996; Shrum, 2015).
2.3.2 Picture books
Not until the late twentieth century were picture books regarded as a serious type of literature to study academically (Grundvig, 2012). Combining the visual and the verbal as two forms of communication, picture books are a stimulating type of children’s literature (Maria & Carole, 2006) in which the words and images influencing each other, “each one
becoming the environment within which the other lives and thrives” (Lewis, 2001, p. 48, 54).
“Sophisticated, abstract, or complex in themes, stories, and illustrations” (Lynch-Brown &
Tomlinson, 2005, p. 83), picture books are suitable for readers of all ages. From elementary school students to high school learners, picture books can be interpreted differently, hence their appeal. In EFL classrooms, however, picture books are seldom found as reading materials. Teachers misunderstand that students may have them at home, or they are
underestimated as books merely for entertainment (Grundvig, 2012). In fact, young children are aware of the subtleties in picture books and they find their awareness enjoyable (Kiefer, 1995). Nevertheless, Kiefer found that teachers did not spend as much time on the visual representations as on the written texts. That is to say, students were unable to discover more about what they enjoy with the teacher’s instruction. The potential of picture books was underdeveloped as a result.
With the many strengths the pictures bring out, teachers should encourage the use of picture books in class. For instance, the illustrations convey essential information and give readers a more comprehensive perspective of the text (Lewis, 2001; Nikolajeva & Scott, 2006;
O’Neill, 2011). Also, as Lo (2008) stated, “any exclusive focus on the linguistic narrows the communication experience in the classroom” (p. 79). In other words, L2 literacy should not be just learning to read and write, but learning the language in the words and in the
illustrations as well. With pictures, readers’ engagement with the text is also increased
because of their visualization capabilities. Reluctant readers in particular may benefit from the pictures, which perform a motivational or affective function to make the readers’ reading even more enjoyable (Hibbing & Rankin-Erickson, 2003).
Instead of being used as textbooks, picture books should be made use of as aesthetic literature together with textbooks to motivate students “to read across a variety of types of texts,” thus enhancing their reading ability (International Reading Association & National Middle School Association, 2001, p. 3). In EFL classrooms, picture books can also introduce processes engaging students’ imagination. As the students negotiate meanings and
interpretations with the teacher’s scaffolding, they gain the experience of successful self-expression in the foreign language context. They then become more motivated and self-confident, which achieves one of the positive effects of EFL reading (Bland, 2013).
2.4 Reading with Picture Books 2.4.1 Values of Picture Books
Since numerous studies have recorded the significance of visuals in people’s daily life, developing visual literacy becomes a competence in life. Picture books therefore act as a fundamental role in learning to read. The values of picture books can be discussed mainly in three perspectives: the value of the language, the value of the story, and the value of the pictures.
First of all, picture books offer language learners a meaningful context. Words or phrases
they learn in textbooks can be reviewed and easily remembered in contextually meaningful content. The stories can also remind learners of some words or patterns they learn in the texts.
In some EFL teachers’ points of view, they benefited from picture books as well as students (Sheu, 2008). Specifically, with two modes of communications constantly interacting in picture books, they developed the productive skills functionally and communicatively together with the students in an EFL classroom.
Second, for EFL students, who already learn the reading conventions of their native
tongue, stories have the ability to assist them in connecting with their background knowledge, thus making the EFL context less foreign. Unlike textbooks, picture books are like variety shows providing language learners with various entertaining topics. The learning is therefore more unique, productive, and enjoyable.
Last, pictures hold the value to promote comprehension and to stimulate imagination.
They repeat what the words say or supplement what the words hide. When learners’
comprehension of the text increases, they feel more confident and positive about themselves, and become more willing to set aside time for further reading. Pictures also allow students to develop their own interpretations in language learning. Tolerance of different ideas may follow and increase as students’ opinions continue to form through discussions.
2.4.2 Criteria for Picture Book Selection
The criteria for selecting picture books are many. Basically, four facets and the
interactions thereof need to be considered. The following elaborates further on the book itself, the instructional objectives, the students, and the teachers.
First and foremost, the picture books should tell good stories. The content, both words and pictures, should be appealing, motivating, and appropriate for the age of the target students (Grundvig, 2012). The length and complexity of storylines should also be dealt with (Giorgis
& Hartman, 2000). Readers, to some extent, can relate to the stories or the characters in them.
Second, to present a focused and effective lesson, the purposes of using certain books to meet course objectives are of great importance (Costello & Kolodziej, 2006). If possible, teachers should choose books that not only achieve instructional purposes but can also be incorporated into other academic areas, for an integrated curriculum makes learners’ comprehension of abstract ideas and their intellectual development thrive (Van, Strahan, & L’Esperance, 2001).
Third, when selecting picture books, teachers should consider the students’ needs and interests. A variety of topics should also be covered to encourage diversity in the language classroom (Costello et al., 2006). Last but not least, teachers’ own enthusiasm for the books leads to students’ interest and curiosity (Patrick, Hisley, & Kempler, 2002). That is to say, how teachers perceive the picture books used influences students’ motivation to read.
2.4.3 The Use of Picture Books and Reading (or Literacy Development) in L1 Setting
Based on student’s written comments and scaled responses, picture books are generally effective tools for learning improvement. In Meyerson’s study (2006), picture books aspleasant means provoked emotions and formed affective bonds between undergraduates and theories. Both the pictures and the words increased students’ comprehension and later recall.
With teachers’ detailed guidance, middle school students can also benefit from picture books by exploring multiple interpretations of the text, developing inference skills, and eventually becoming critical readers (Bainbridge & Pantaleo, 2001)
2.4.4 The Use of Picture Books and Reading (or Literacy Development) in ESL/EFL Settings
The applications of picture books have received much attention from EFL researchers with
The applications of picture books have received much attention from EFL researchers with