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Major Findings

The results of this study showed substantial support for using an extensive reading program with elementary English underachievers.

First, the ER program had positive influence on the remedial students’

English performance, including their letter and word knowledge, reading speed and accuracy rate. Their changes in English performance were positively correlated with the amount of reading in the program. In addition, the results also revealed that the more frequently the words occurred in the book collection, the higher

Juan & Cheng: Using Extensive Reading with Elementary School Remedial Students

possibility that the remedial students would gain the word knowledge.

Second, reading in the ER program improved remedial students’

motivation and attitudes toward English learning. After participating in the ER program, all three of the remedial students were actively involved in the learning activities of their regular English class.

Additionally, the ER program enhanced the remedial students’

confidence in learning. The data indicated that they were more willing to display their English ability by answering the teacher’s questions and by even trying to pose one sometimes. Moreover, two of the remedial students’ interest in learning English increased from dislike to fondness, and both attributed such a change to the ER program all or in part.

Pedagogical Implications

The findings of the study have the following pedagogical implications for implementing ER with elementary school remedial students. First, for reading to actually take place without being impeded by the remedial students’ vulnerable English knowledge background, each of them is to be assigned a more advanced reading partner. The reading partner should have several characteristics: (1) English proficiency: clear and accurate pronunciation, reading fluency, and a large vocabulary size; (2) personality: enthusiastic and patient;

(3) commitment: persistent in fulfilling their jobs. Moreover, before these advanced students can become reading partners, some training sessions to model and practice partner reading should be provided.

Second, before the remedial students can read independently, relatively easy skill-building readers, such as phonics and high-frequency word readers, can be provided first. By doing so,

students’ decoding ability and sight word knowledge necessary for dealing with other books can accumulate at a faster pace. In addition, providing a reading checklist for each series of skill-building readers can make the learning goals more specific and save students from spending too much time on selecting suitable books.

Research Implications

Based on limitations of this study, some suggestions for future studies are proposed. First, due to the nature of qualitative research design in this study, the number of participants under study was limited. Researchers who attempt to undergo similar studies can recruit a larger sample of remedial students, possibly covering the entire group of remedial students from the same grade to see the differences in their linguistic gains.

Second, the duration of the current study may not be long enough to manifest ER’s effectiveness sufficiently. Further studies can be conducted with a longer time frame.

Third, the study focused on investigating the effectiveness of ER on the remedial students’ linguistic growth without comparing it with other practices. Future studies can then compare reading paper books with electronic readers or web-based texts. Other researchers can also compare ER with direct instruction of phonics or a balanced approach that combines phonics instruction and extensive reading.

Fourth, the assessment adopted in this study limited itself to test the remedial students’ letter and word knowledge. Further studies can expand the measuring tools to cover the assessment aimed for testing students’ reading comprehension. Thus, a more comprehensive

Juan & Cheng: Using Extensive Reading with Elementary School Remedial Students

understanding of the remedial students’ changes can be obtained.

To sum up, the results of this study suggest that ER can and should be an option of remedial instruction for elementary school underachievers provided that the program is well planned, the reading partners are appropriately chosen and matched with the remedial students, and suitable reading materials are provided. Reading extensively, even for elementary school remedial students, can be an achievable goal.

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