The Effects of Comic Strips on EFL Learners' Reading Comprehension in Taiwan 洪歆瑜、陳建志
E-mail: [email protected]
ABSTRACT
Educators in the field of English teaching have often suggested that English teachers could apply pictures or illustrations to the written texts. However, not many studies have brought the concept of comic strips into teaching English at present. Therefore, the main purpose of the present study attempts to investigate the effects of comic strips on EFL students’ reading comprehension in Taiwan. 160 third-year junior high school students’ English reading proficiency were estimated, and they were divided into high English reading proficiency class and low English reading proficiency class based on a placement test. The participants with different English reading proficiency class were further randomly categorized into the text only group and the comic strips group. The participants in each group were presented with easy and difficult texts only or easy and difficult comic strips. After the experiments were completed, the questionnaires were conducted to facilitate the researcher to look into the correlation between the participants
’ reading anxiety and reading comprehension. The findings of the study were summarized as follows: (1) The participants’
reading comprehension in the comic strips group performed better than those in the text only group. (2) There was a significant interaction among English reading proficiency, reading materials, difficulty levels, and reading comprehension. (3) The students with high English reading proficiency whatever in the text only group and in the comic strips group outperformed the students with low English reading proficiency in the same groups. (4) Reading anxiety had negative relationship with EFL students’ reading comprehension.
Keywords : Comic Strips、English Reading Proficiency、Difficulty Levels、Vocabulary Knowledge、Story Grammar、Reading Anxiety
Table of Contents
English Signature Page Signature Page Abstract ……….iv Chinese Abstract ………v Acknowledgements ………
………...vi Table of Contents ………
…..vii List of Figures ………x List of Tables ………
………..xi Chapter I. Introduction ………
………….. 1 1.1 Background and Motivation ……….. 1 1.2 Purpose of the Research
………. 3 1.3 Research Questions ………
………. 3 1.4 Significance of the Research ………... 4 1.5 Organization ………
………. 5 Chapter II. Literature Review………
……… … 7 2.1 Reading Comprehension ………. 7 2.1.1
Vocabulary Knowledge ………... 8 2.1.2 Sentence Comprehension ………
………. 9 2.1.3 Discourse Comprehension ………. 10 2.2 Factor that Influence Reading Comprehension ………. 12 2.2.1 Vocabulary Size ………
………. …... 12 2.2.2 Anxiety ………... 13 2.3 Comic Strips
……….. 14 2.3.1 The Characteristics of Comic Strips ………
……….. 15 2.3.2 Comic Strips as a Teaching Material in English Class ……….... 18 2.3.3 Comic Strips in Taiwan ……….. 19 2.4 Other Studies Relating to the Present Research ………
……… 19 2.4.1 The Impact of EFL Students’ Vocabulary Breadth of Knowledge on Literal Reading Comprehension: Chen (2011) ……… 20 2.4.2 The Effect of Story Grammar Instruction on EFL Students’ Comprehension of Narrative Text: Amer (1992) ………. 21 2.4.3 Effects of Comic Strips on L2 Learners’ Reading Comprehension:
Liu (2004)……… 22 2.5 Summary ………
…………... …23 Chapter III. Methodology ………... 25 3.1 Hypotheses ……
………. 25 3.2 Research Design ………
……… 26 3.3 Participants ……….. 26 3.4
Instruments ……….. 28 3.4.1 The Placement Test ………
………. 28 3.4.2 Texts Only ……… 29 3.4.3 Comic Strips ……… 30 3.4.4 Reading Comprehension Tests …………
……….. 31 3.4.5 Questionnaires ………. 31 3.5 Procedure ………... 32 3.6 Data Analysis ………
……….. 32 3.7 The Pilot Study ………...
33 Chapter VI. Results and Discussion ………. 36 4.1 The Analysis of Variance among English Reading Proficiency, Reading Materials, Difficulty Levels, and Reading Comprehension ……… 36 4.1.1 The Interaction of English Reading Proficiency, Reading Materials, and Difficulty Levels with Reading Comprehension ………
………... 37 4.1.2 The Simple Interaction Effects of English Reading Proficiency, Reading Materials, and Difficulty Levels on Reading Comprehension …………. 38 4.1.3 The Simple Simple Main Effects of English Reading Proficiency, Reading Materials, and Difficulty Levels on Reading Comprehension ………….. 40 4.2 Correlation between Reading Anxiety and Reading
Comprehension ………… 49 4.3 Conclusion ………. 51 Chapter V.
Conclusions ……….. 52 5.1 General Discussion ………
………...52 5.2 Limitations of the Study ……… 54 5.3 Pedagogical Implications ……….54 5.4 Suggestions for Further Study ………
……….55 References ………
57 Appendix A The Young King (Text Only) ……… 65 Appendix B Hiding in Plain Sight:
Animal Camouflage (Text Only) ………... 67 Appendix C The Young King (Comic Strips) ………
…... 69 Appendix D Hiding in Plain Sight: Animal Camouflage (Comic Strips) ………. 74 Appendix E The Young King (Reading Comprehension Test) ……….. 78 Appendix F Hiding in Plain Sight: Animal Camouflage (Reading Comprehension Test)……… 82 Appendix G Questionnaire One ………
……….. 86 Appendix H Questionnaire Two ……… 88 List of Figures Figure 2.1 Twilight Illustrated by Young Kim (2010) ……… 16 Figure 2.2 Helmet Illustrated by Fabio Visntin (2003, p. 17) ………. 17 List of Tables Table 2.1 The Constituents of Thematic Roles ………
………. 10 Table 3.1 Reading Proficiency Distribution of the Participants ……… 27 Table 3.2 Text Only and Comic Strips with Difficulty Levels ……….. 28 Table 3.3 Flesch’s Reading Ease Scale ………
………... 29 Table 3.4 Results of Three-way ANOVA Repeated Measures of the Pilot Study …... 34 Table 4.1 Results of Three-way ANOVA Repeated Measures ……… 37 Table 4.2 Results of Simple Interaction Effects ……
……….. 38 Table 4.3 Mean and Standard Deviation of Reading Materials with Difficulty Levels in the Individual Reading Proficiency ………. 41 Table 4.4 Summary and Posterior Comparison of Reading Proficiency and Reading Materials in the Easy Level ……….. 41 Table 4.5 Summary and Posterior Comparison of Reading Proficiency and Reading Materials in the Difficult Level ………
…... 42 Table 4.6 Summary and Posterior Comparison of Reading Proficiency and Difficulty Levels in the Text Only Group …
……… 44 Table 4.7 Summary and Posterior Comparison of Reading Proficiency and Difficulty Levels in the Comic Strips Group ……… 45 Table 4.8 Summary and Posterior Comparison of Reading Materials and Difficulty Levels in the High Reading Proficiency ……….. 47 Table 4.9
Summary and Posterior Comparison of Reading Materials and Difficulty Levels in the Low Reading Proficiency ………
……….. 47 Table 4.10 Correlation between Reading Anxiety and Text Only ………. 49 Table 4.11 Correlation between Reading Anxiety and Comic Strips ………... 50
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