Oral Reading And Reading Comprehension Performance English Language Essay

Reading ability has always been considered as a critical measurement in language education. It involves both reading behaviours and reading comprehension. Among all the different reading behaviours, there are many debates around whether oral reading has any influence on the reading comprehension performance or not. Hence, this study has been focused on the relationship between oral reading and the comprehension performance of second year students in Shandong Normal University, China. The grades of participants who participated in two reading comprehension tests, before and after a 6-week oral reading practice experiment had been measured and compared. Results had revealed a significant correlation between everyday oral reading practice and reading comprehension performance in late-teen and early-twenty EFL/ESL university students. The practice of oral reading showed significant influence on reading comprehension performance in the test. Most of groups showed that oral reading practice had positive influence on the reading comprehension performance. Feedback suggested that oral reading experiment was successful because it helps in improving the scores of the reading comprehension test. It is recommended that English as foreign language or second language (EFL/ESL) teachers and students use oral reading as a practicing method and reading method during English learning. And also employ it as a reading method in reading comprehension outside examination. Beside the benefits of the oral reading method on reading comprehension performance, a clear “bottleneck” was also observed in this method during the investigation. As a consequence, to improve reading comprehension performance in EFL/ESL study, more factors such as vocabulary capacity, analysis ability of sentences and the understanding of the background culture would need to be taken into consideration, apart from the oral reading practice.

1. Introduction

1.1 Background

Reading methodologies take an important part in both first language and second/foreign language learning (Alshumaimeri, 2005; Grabe, 1991; Jackson & Coltheart, 2001; McCallum, Sharp, Bell, & George, 2004; Prior & Welling, 2001). In general, there are three reading methods used in language learning and teaching, oral reading, silent reading and subvocalization. Oral reading usually refers to the act of reading aloud, either to oneself or to audience. Silent reading, as stated in the phrase itself, it is the act of reading to oneself without pronouncing words out aloud. Subvocalization, which is similar to silent reading, however, is defined as the internal speech made when reading word, thus allowing the reader to imagine the sound of the word while reading (Carver, 1990). The term refers to the movement of muscles associated with speaking originally. But most subvocalization is undetectable even by the person using it (Carver, 1990; Rayner, et al, 1994).

Reading comprehension refers to the ability of understanding of a written text or message (Keith, et al, 2001). This understanding of the writing comes from the words themselves, and the knowledge outside the written text can be triggered (Keith, et al, 2001). Reading comprehension performance is one of the essential criteria in language education (Bernhardt, 1991). There are many different methodologies of teaching reading comprehension throughout the centuries (Adams, 1994; Keith, et al, 2001). Modern methodologies usually stressed on using model strategies to analyse or interpret the passages (Pressley, 2006). There is no definitive set of strategies, but general ones include summarizing what you have read, monitoring your reading paragraphs, and analysing the structure of the text (Pressley, 2006). Some programmes teach students how to self monitor whether they are understanding and provide students with tools for fixing comprehension problems. These kinds of methods have also been highly used in English education in China, in order for students to target high reading comprehension scores in the examination. This study was focused on the influence of reading behaviour on reading comprehension performance; hence, these technical strategies and their effects on the reading comprehension performance of EFL/ESL students would not be discussed further in this dissertation.

1.2 Previous literatures and researches on Oral Reading

Previous studies on the effects of reading methods on the comprehension performance had shown significant differences between the different reading methodologies. Oral reading had the best effect on comprehension performance among the three reading methods (Alshumaimeri, 2011). In Alshumaimeri’s research, all groups stated that oral reading was the most preferred reading method with the most of students reporting it was the best method to support reading comprehension. Feedback suggested that this method was preferred “because it helps in memorizing words and texts, concentration, and practicing and pronouncing words for real world encounters” (Alshumaimeri, 2011).

For decades, investigators have stressed the importance of oral reading to children in first language teaching situations in many cultures, not only as a method of encouraging children to read, but also of developing their reading comprehension ability (Alshumaimeri, 2005; Grabe, 1991; Jackson & Coltheart, 2001; Juel & Holmes, 1981; McCallum, Sharp, Bell, & George, 2004; Prior & Welling, 2001; Rowell, 1976, Yang, 2008).

Oral reading has been considered as an essential approach in teaching pronunciation, vocabulary recognition and memorisation, during the early stages of foreign or second language (EFL/ESL) learning. There are many debated around the topic for decades. With the fast-developing technologies involved in the teaching activities, traditional teaching and learning strategies like oral reading, had been considered as an out-dated methodology, and discouraged by some EFL/ESL teachers (Amer,1 997). Hill and Dobbyn pointed out in their research that oral reading could be a waste of class time in 1979 (Hill & Dobbyn, 1979). This situation is especially is especially critical in China’s education system, since the focus is generally on improving the examination grades, rather than using a language practically. Another reason for oral reading has been overlooked by many teachers is because of lacking scientific instructions; consequently, students could not use oral reading as an efficient method to practice a foreign language after class in a non-native speaking environment (Yang, 2008). On contrary, researches had demonstrated that oral reading with scientific techniques could be beneficial in proof-reading, pronunciation practice, and fluency of conversations (Cho & Choi, 2008; Gibson, 2008; Rennie, 2000; Reutzel, Hollingsworth, & Eldredge, 1994; White, 1982). A survey conducted by BBC on the influences of oral reading on EFL/ESL at the EFL/ESL forum (Gao Xia, 2006), in which 98% of the 314 EFL teachers thought that oral reading had essential functions on English learning (Gao Xia, 2006) The majority of EFL/ESL teachers suggested oral reading as an essential English learning method based on teaching experiences (Gao Xia, 2006; Yang, 2008)

1.2.1 Oral reading in English Learning

In China, or other countries where students learn English as a foreign language, the input of the target language is very low in daily life. The output of a language requires the understanding of large amount of the input first (Krashen, 2009). Oral reading is generally considered as an essential and effective way of the foreign language input. In China, the purpose of learning English as a second language has moved from understanding and using the language, to target high scores in various examinations in order to gain high grades, or get into and graduate from universities. As a consequence, the most of English teachers in China, especially the ones in secondary schools, colleges and universities, focus the English teaching and learning on the grammar, writing skills and reading comprehension test skills. Few teachers are actually taken oral reading or reading aloud as a regular teaching strategy during classes or as a regular practicing method for students. The lack of oral reading practice in long term could result in a lack of the language input in a non-native speaking environment. Therefore, many students in China who have learnt English for many years have a good amount of vocabulary and well understanding of the grammar, and had passed many examinations including CET-4 and CET-6, still have troubles to use English fluently when needed. The lack of the language input during foreign language learning would result in lack of the scenes of the target language. Therefore, as suggested by many educators, oral reading is an effective, concentrated, and enhanced input route for language information. It could help EFL/ESL students to enrich their information pool of the target language and also provide the base of imitating and expressing the language for students’ language output. From imitating the reading material, the information in the texts would be converted into their natural and fluent expression and communication.

Educators suggested that there are several reasons why oral reading takes an important part in English teaching and learning. Firstly, oral reading is a method to improve pronunciation and speaking ability. With the correct direction from English teachers, students could be benefit from oral reading practice for their pronunciation, voice tone. Additionally, during the oral reading behaviour, students’ eyes, mouths, and ears can all be involved. It can enhance the corresponding area in the brain to process the sound. So effective reading aloud practice is also a good foundation for listening. Thirdly, oral reading can improve the sense of phrase during foreign language learning in a non-native speaking environment. The process can also help student to concentrate on the text and memorise vocabulary (Alshumaimeri, 2011). With all the advantages of oral reading practice above, as suggested by Halliday in his “An introduction to Functional Grammar”, reading texts aloud would help the reader to understand complicated contents (Halliday, 1994). Moreover, it has also been suggested that oral reading to help foreign language learners to improve their written communication skills. By imitating the language during oral reading, students could overcome the effect of their first language on the writing skills.

Correct guidance of oral reading is essential in English learning. Reading aloud without wise strategies would not have any positive input in the learning process, which is a great waste of time and energy. As suggested by researchers, ESL/EFL teachers should pay attention to oral reading during the class to inspire students’ interests in oral reading. Teachers should also provide clear demonstration of the correct pronunciation and tone. And also explain the differences between the first language and foreign language. In addition, students are encouraged to practice oral reading regularly outside the class spontaneously. Furthermore, the reading materials should be well-selected. Articles, passages or books written by the native speakers of the target language with approximately 5% of new vocabulary are suggested to be suitable reading materials.

To sum up, oral reading is an essential methodology that can improve many skills in English learning, including pronunciation, vocabulary, intonation, voice tone, and the sense of the language. Many researchers and educator believe that oral reading can improve the reading comprehension performance. Therefore, this study would like to investigate the relationship between oral reading practice and the reading comprehension performance of Chinese university students, through a series of designed oral reading practicing experiment.

1.3 Previous literatures and researches Reading Comprehension

The research of reading comprehension has begun to increase rapidly in 1970s (Thorndike, 1973). It has then increasingly become the main standard in language understanding. As mentioned above, reading comprehension is described as the level of understanding of a content or text. In this thesis, the word “text” is used to refer to the written materials, which have specific meanings in semantics, informative in pragmatics, coherent in logic and cohesive in linguistics; it carries out the communication functions and conveys the interactive purposes between the writer and the reader; it depends on context, linguistic or non-linguistic, in which the textural meaning can be perceived by the reader.

1.3.1 Reading Comprehension of Text

Reading comprehension is generally a fundamental mean for people to get information. Readers integrate and comprehend the text information on the basis of al parts of information. They complete their comprehension according to part and whole understanding of the text. Therefore, reading comprehension relies on the interaction of meaning between local and whole information.

Text theory has become central to contemporary linguistic sciences. Text is considered as central to the construction of reality as entities are brought into existence, given meaning and significance. The purpose of reading is to uncover the meaning underlying in texts, and to examine the pattern of text and to link them to social backgrounds. Through the past few decades, the research on reading comprehension of text has been made more progress through the efforts of many text linguists (Gao, 2010).

Reading comprehension of the text requires perceiving auditory and visual inputs, process these inputs in their highly complex cognitive systems (Anderson and Pearson, 1984). Reading comprehension began with the studies on memory and representation. The current researches of reading comprehension involve in the study on the retrieval of central concepts, different dimensions of situational models and different processing of text information. English reading comprehension theories developed from the earliest Grammar-Translation theory to current situational model theory. Through the empirical researches and English reading teaching theories, the above two research fields tend to draw together. Both fields had developed from linguistic micro aspect to semantic macro aspect.

In the field of psycholinguistics, reading comprehension of text refers to the capacity to construct new knowledge from the written text (Anderson and Pearson, 1984) and apply the acquired information to new situations (Kinstch, 1998). The Propositional Theory, the Schema Theory and the Mental Models are considered as the three most influential psycholinguistic theories of reading comprehension of text (Gunning, 1996).

1.3.2 Brief Comparison between Reading Comprehension Theories

The three main reading comprehension theories identified by Gunning in 1996 will be described and compared briefly in this section.

Propositional Theory:

According to Gunning, the Propositional Theory engages the reader constructing a central idea as they process the text. These central ideas are organised in a hierarchical pattern with the most important factors given the highest priority to be memorised (Gunning, 1996).

Schema Theory:

Schema, came from Greek which means “shape” or “plan”. The term has been introduced into education by Bartlett in 1932 (Bartlett, 1932). According to Bartlett, a schema was defined as a complex knowledge structure which groups all the information an individual knows about or associates with a particular concept. The term was linked with reconstructive memory by a series of experiments demonstrated in Bartlett’s work (Bartlett,1932). By presenting participants with information that was unfamiliar to their cultural backgrounds and expectations and then monitoring how they recalled these different items of information (stories, etc.), Bartlett was able to establish that individuals’ existing schemata and stereotypes influence not only how they interpret “schema-foreign” new information but also how they recall the information over time.(Wikipedia) The Schema Theory in had been studied and developed by many researcher ever since. In 1980, Rumelhart had taken an important breakthrough of the schema theory in reading comprehension, by portraying individuals’ understanding of tales and stories (Rumelhart, 1980). Later, the schema in text theory refers to content schema, where the the readers’ understanding of the text might depend on having a clearly established context for the text. Gunning (1996) defines a schema as the organized knowledge that one already has about people, places, things, and events. Kitao (1990) says the schema theory involves an interaction between the reader’s own knowledge and the text, which results in comprehension. This schema, as Gunning defined, can be very broad, such a schema for natural disasters, or more narrow, such as a schema for a hurricane. Each schema is “filed” in an individual compartment and stored there. In attempting to comprehend reading materials, students can relate this new information to the existing information they have compartmentalized in their minds, adding it to these “files” for future use. Based on the Schema Theory, depending on how extensive their “files” become, their degree of reading comprehension may vary. (website) For instance, the researches of reading comprehension sometimes term as formal schemata, which reveal previous experience of a certain text type. For instance, readers usually expect to see an abstract, a background review, a methodology and analysis and discussion of data in a scientific paper. This kind of schema provides the expectation about the style of the text.

Schema could also be used to represent the meaning representation built up by a reader during processing a particular piece of text. People begin to read texts with expectations about the content, which can be derived from the title or from the purpose of the texts. These enable people to develop a text-specific schema even before reading. More information might be added to the original schema, or the initial schema might be revised during the reading. (Sample Paper)

Schema is different between languages. There are three possible changes of schemata. The change is involved when small adjustment is made temporarily in order to confront immediate needs. Accretion modifies a schema gradually but when new information is acquired or repeated examples of contrary evidence are accumulated, the schema may be changed. Restructuring occurs when a sudden insight or new piece of knowledge leads to radical reorganisation of existing knowledge structures. (Sample Paper)

To sum up, the schema theory, as the mental representations of typical situations, are used in text processing to predict the contents of the particular situation which the text describes. The idea is that the mind which is stimulated by key words or phrases in the text, or by the context, activates a schema of knowledge, and uses this schema to understand the text.

Mental Model Theory (Dominican.edu website)

Another major theory we would like to discuss is the Mental Model. This model can be thought of as a mind movie created in one’s head, based on the reading content. Gunning gives a detailed description of this process, stating that a mental model is constructed most often when a student is reading fiction. The reader focuses in on the main character and creates a mental model of the circumstances in which the character finds him or herself. The mental model is re-constructed or updated to reflect the new circumstances as the situation changes, but the items important to the main character are kept in the foreground according to Gunning, (1996).

Perkins (1991) identifies that sometimes misconceptions about important concepts reflect misleading mental models of the topic itself or the subject matter within which it sits. There are, however, interventions the teacher can do to help the reader to stay on track and create a more accurate picture. One suggestion is for the teachers to ask the students to disclose their mental models of the topics in question, through analogy, discussion, picturing, and other ways. This information gives the teacher insight on the student’s knowledge gaps and misconceptions, therefore allowing them to help students reconstruct a more accurate picture.

1.3.3 Reading Comprehension in Foreign Language Study

Reading comprehension is one of the critical teaching objectives in all foreign languages education. The ability of reading comprehension is also an important factor to evaluate the learners’ language competence.

Studies on first language learning showed that the comprehension performance is better when reading silently (Bernhardt, 1983; Leinhardt, Zigmond, & Cooley, 1981; Wilkinson & Anderson, 1995). Nevertheless, recently study from Teng suggested that reading comprehension results had no significant difference between oran and silent reading (Teng, 2009). In EFL/ESL learning, Al-Qurashi et al had proposed that oral reading was only beneficial in acquisition; for reading comprehension, silent reading is better strengthened (Al-Qurashi, Watson, Hafseth, Hickman, & Pond, 1995). While researchers continue to explore the effectiveness of oral reading on both language acquisition and comprehension, many questions remain unanswered. Further research on the relationship between oral reading s and reading comprehension is needed in order to enhance EFL teaching methodologies and to improve learning outcomes. This research furthers understanding of the relationship between oral reading and comprehension performance at later stage of EFL/ESL learning. As such, findings would assist colleges or universities, the EFL/ESL researchers, educators and students.

1.3.4 The Previous Research on the Correlation between Oral Reading and Reading Comprehension

Oral reading and reading comprehension are different reading activities that are related and interact to each other. Research had been done on the two aspects from various perspectives, including psychological linguistics, neurological linguistics, cognition and the functions in foreign language education.

Oral reading is a reading activity that expresses the emotions using reading skills, such as stress, rhythm or tone, in the linguistic materials. It involves reading out aloud the words, sentences or passages, with eye sight focusing on the texts. It is different from a mechanical word-to-word articulating process. Oral reading is a more complex and cognitive process which engages not only pronouncing, reading, and listening, also language perception, comprehension and production of the reader. Previous research suggested that oral reading represented a complicated and dynamic performance that indicate the individual’s sensorial skill at automatically recognising orthographical representations, unitising those components into recognisable wholes and automatically accessing lexical representations, processing meaningful connections within and between sentences, relating text meaning to prior information, making inferences to supply missing information, and his production skill— the formulation and execution of speech plan, the performance on which characterises the reader’s overall language proficiency (Gao, 2006). The psychological process of oral reading had also been investigated. During the activity of oral reading, the reader could formulate the phonetic plan and convert it into vocal sound after comprehending the text (Gao, 2007). Then the input of information could activate the lemma in the mental lexicon ¼ˆYang, 2008¼‰.

Text is a language phenomenon based on psychological activites and also a product of psychological process. Reading comprehension of the text involves how people recognise auditory and visual inputs, process and understand the input information in the highly complex cognitive systems. In the field of psycholinguistics, reading comprehension of the text refers to the capacity to construct new knowledge from the written text (Anderson and Pearson, 1984) and apply the acquired information to new situations (Kinstch, 1998).]

Furthermore, the performance of reading comprehension is an indicator of the foreign language students’ competence. If one has difficulty in the comprehension of reading, his or her execution of phonetic plan, mechanisms of articulation and monitor cannot work together simultaneously and effectively. His or her oral reading performance could be stumbled and mistaken as well. Thus, the process of both oral reading and reading comprehension are relevant to cognition and psychology of human.

1.4 Significance and Aims of the Study

The main aim of this study is to analyse the relationship between oral reading and comprehension performance. Previous literatures suggested that the oral reading method is correlated to the comprehension performance during language studies among young children and teenagers (Alshumaimeri, 2005; Rowell, E.H. (1976).). Alshumaimeri ‘s research on “the effects of different reading methods on the comprehension performance” in 10th grade Saudi male students indicated that, reading comprehension performance could be benefited from oral reading method because it could help students to concentrate on the passages and memorise new vocabulary (Alshumaimeri, 2011). The research from Alshumaimeri was conducted among teenagers. Additionally, the experiment was designed to investigate the reading comprehension performance after oral reading the passages (Alshumaimeri, 2011), i.e. the immediate effect of oral reading on comprehension performance. However, the experiment was designed differently in this study to investigate the “long-term” effect of oral reading on reading comprehension performance.

Therefore, this study has been carried out among second year students in Shandong Normal University in China, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. This study has aimed to investigate the influence of oral reading practice on reading comprehension performance, in ESL/EFL students with relatively long English learning history and who already have relatively higher ability in English. Because with the development of English teaching and learning strategies, and the ability of self-learning and gaining resources by students, oral reading is more neglected with the age increasing as well, especially for college and university students, who despise oral reading as a leaning method because it is time consuming, childish and shows no immediate improvements in examination grades. Therefore, the ability of reading comprehension would be measured by two designed multiple-choice tests, before and after a 6-week oral reading practice experiment. The scores from both tests would be analysed to investigate the relationship between oral reading practice and the reading comprehension performance.

Besides the quantitative data comparison from the reading comprehension tests, the opinions from both students and English teachers participated in this research on oral reading and reading comprehension would be collected by questionnaires. This aimed to investigate the attitude of oral reading and reading comprehension from both learners and teachers’ point of views during EFL/ESL education. These results would be valuable for future English as a foreign language education.

Theoretical exploration and quantitative analysis would be illustrated in the thesis; experimental data would be processed with SPSS to support the theory as well.

2. Methodology

The study mainly focused on discovering whether the students’ performance of oral reading would have any positive influence on student’s reading comprehension performance. Additionally, the work of EFL/ESL teacher in China put in teaching correct oral reading techniques to improve their ability in reading comprehension performance. In order to get reliability and validity data and results, both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used in this research. In the foreign language education field, quantitative research is objective, noticeable, and outcome-oriented, which can be generalised. On contrary, qualitative research is more subjective, contextual and process-oriented, during which the process is based on systematic methods. In this section, the key questions involved in this study would be discussed, followed by research subjects (university teachers and students), research procedures (experimental design, implement process and data collection), and measurements (pre-test, post-test, questionnaires and teaching experiments).

2.1 Research Questions

The study was designed to investigate the influence of oral reading practice on reading comprehension performance, and the relationship between the two. The key questions in this study are as follows:

How to use oral reading as an effective teaching method in English classes regularly?

How often do students use oral reading as an exercise technique in their self-study time?

What is the relationship between oral reading and reading comprehension performance?

Would the oral reading experiment have positive influence on the reading habit of students?

The research of these questions would be illustrated in the “Results” section, and the answers to these key questions would be discussed further in the “Discussion” section.

2.2 Research Subjects

The experiment around the topic was carried out in second year student in Shangdong Normal University, China. A full-time university could be used to represent the majority of universities in China. A group of 120 non-English department students were chosen as the research subject in this study. They could represent most of the English learning students in China. As second year university students, they usually have a good understanding in English by passing the National Entrance Examination of China, and had leant English for approximately 9 years since the fourth grade in primary schools. The average age of the chosen students was around 19 to 21; and participants were selected from both genders. More importantly, they have similar education background and English level in the reading comprehension. The non-English-specialised College English Test “Band 4” (CET-4), which is a national English as a Foreign Language test in China, could be used as a standard to measure the ability of the participants in the reading comprehension study. The purpose of the CET is to examine the English proficiency of undergraduate students in China and ensure that Chinese undergraduates reach the required English levels specified in the National College English Teaching Syllabuses (NCETS). The level of CET-4 could be considered as around 5.5 to 6 in the International English Language Testing System (IELTS).

The 120 participants were selected from 300 non-English-specialised students from different departments who join the research on their own will. Their scores were fall between 25% and 40% in the pre-experimental reading comprehension test (details in the next section). This score range represents a group of students who have certain understanding in English but with lower level in the reading comprehension. As a consequence, there is a big gap to see the improvements in this study. After the selection, there were 79 female students and 41 male students were chosen for the next step experiment. The reason for the difference in genders was due to that the female student proportion was naturally higher in this University. However, since the purpose of this study was not focus on the effect of oral reading on reading comprehension performance between genders, this big difference could be accepted in this research. The gender proportion information is illustrated in Tabe.1 below.

Gender

Number

Percentage

Female

79

65.83%

Male

41

34.17%

Total

120

100%

Table.1. The gender distribution of the participants

As the table 1 indicates, 79 female students were selected from the pre-experimental reading comprehension test and the rest were male students. The ratio of female students over male students is approximately 2:1.

Another group of research subjects in this study are the English teachers in the Shandong Normal University. Five teachers with age range from 25 to 45 years old has involved in this study. They have participated in a questionnaire session to provide their opinion of oral reading method in current English teaching; and also acted as supervisors and advisers during the oral reading practicing experiment.

2.3 Research Procedures

The research had been conducted for 6 weeks from June to July in 2012. The reading comprehension performance of students was measured by two written tests before and after the 6-week oral reading practice. In addition, questionnaires were designed to investigate EFL/ESL teachers’ opinions and feedbacks on this matter.

2.3.1 Pre-experimental Test / Selection Test

The selection test, or called pre-experimental test was designed to choose the suitable candidates for the research. The questions in reading comprehension test were taken from the reading comprehension section of CET-4 in 2005 (Enclosed as Appendix I). CET is an important English test taken by all Chinese university students to measure the English ability of students. So the quality and reliability of the chosen reading comprehension passages and questions were validated. Questions in CET-4 were designed for EFL/ESL students by experts. The chosen section from the CET-4 paper was appropriate for the participants’ English level. Furthermore, the reading comprehension section in CET-4 in 2005 contained two parts: quick reading comprehension and normal reading comprehension. The CET examination had been reformed since 2005. Hence, this format of reading comprehension section was only used in CET examinations before 2005. Current CET-4 examination is designed in a different format. Therefore, although the selected students had been prepared and took the CET-4 examination in mid-June of 2012, it has a very small chance for any student who had ever practised the questions used for this research.

All the tests were taken by the students during the same time period to avoid cheating. The time allowance of the test was set as 35 minutes, which was 10 minutes longer than the suggested time in the standard CET-4 reading comprehension section. The reason for extended time allowance on the pre-experimental test was to minimise the random answers giving by students under stress, and to find out their accurate performance on reading comprehension. 310 sets of test papers were prepared and 300 of them had been passed out. 294 test papers were collected within the time limit. All the questions are designed as multiple-choice questions. Each correct answer would be given 2 points and the full score of the pre-experimental test was 40. There was no negative mark on wrong answers. The reading comprehension performance test consisted of 4 articles and 20 questions in total. 120 participants were selected based on the scores of the pre-experimental test. As stated above, their correct rate was between 25% and 40%, i.e. the scores were between 10 and 16. The 120 participants were then divided into 20 groups with a balanced mixed-ability.

2.3.2 Questionnaires

Two versions of questionnaire was prepared before the pre-experimental test, one set for participated students and one set for English teachers. The questionnaire for the students was designed to get the idea of students’ reading habits and opinions on the subject. The student questionnaire consisted of 7 multiple-choice questions and 1 short answer question. The questions were focused on their oral reading habit, their chosen reading materials, their interests in the subject and their tendency of using oral reading as a strategy to improve reading comprehension. The student questionnaire was written in both English and Chinese to ensure students giving accurate answers. The questionnaire used in this study has been enclosed in Appendix II. Questionnaires were handed out to students after the pre-experimental reading comprehension test, to ensure the feedback amount and quality. Students were informed that the data would be used for this study only and were encouraged to answer all the questions in the questionnaire honestly to make sure the data was valuable for the study.

Another set of questionnaire was designed for English teachers in Shandong Normal University about their opinions on oral reading and reading comprehension. 20 English teachers from 25 to 45 years old had been invited to answer the questionnaire. All the 20 questionnaires were answered genuinely. The teacher questionnaire consisted of 7 questions in total, 6 multiple-choice questions and 1 short answer question. The questions were focused on their teaching habit, choices of teaching materials, and their tendency of applying oral reading into current teaching methods. The teacher questionnaire was also written in both English and Chinese as the student one. The questionnaire for teacher used in this study has been enclosed in appendix III.

In addition to the 2 questionnaires before the 6-week oral reading practice experiment, a feedback slip was also given to the participated students after completing the post-experimental test (details of the test would be discussed later). The purpose of this feedback slip was to investigate the influence of oral reading experiment on students’ opinion of this reading method, and also to verify whether oral reading could be accepted as a future teaching strategy or learning method to improve reading comprehension performance for EFL/ESL students and teachers. The feedback slip included 3 questions and attached as Appendix V.

2.3.3 Oral Reading Experiment

The 6-week oral reading experiment was the most critical part in this study. 4 English teachers from the university had involved in the oral reading experiment with me. The oral reading experiment lasted for 6 weeks. The 120 participants were divided into 20 groups with balanced mixed-ability. The participants could represent the target population of Chinese students in terms of English level, interests, and age. The 20 groups of participants were instructed to practice oral reading everyday at an assigned time period from 10 minutes to 105 minutes with 5 minutes difference from each group. One person in each group was chosen to be responsible for the quality of the daily oral reading practice of the group, to ensure the reliability of the experiment. Four teachers and I were assigned to 4 of the 20 groups randomly to provide the correct techniques and guidance of oral reading for the participants and supervise the groups. Additionally, teachers were responsible for introducing the advantages and importance of oral reading in English learning process, to attract students’ interests in this study. The reading materials in the experiment were carefully selected from classic English books, original English journals, and current news articles. This was aimed to ensure the quality of the oral reading practice for the participants.

2.3.4 Post-experimental Test

The second reading comprehension test, termed as “post-experimental test” in this thesis, was carried out after the 6-week oral reading experiment. This test was designed to test whether there would be any improvement in students’ reading comprehension performance scores after the oral reading practice. To ensure the quality and level were similar to the pre-experimental test, the reading comprehension section in 2004 CET-4 examination were used for the post-experimental test (Appendix IV). It consisted of 4 passages and 20 questions in total as the previous one. Again, all the questions were multiple-choice questions, with 2 points for each correct answer and no negative mark. Hence, the test results, difficulty of the questions and the distribution of grades would be the same as those in the pre-experimental test. So, the grades of students in the second reading comprehension test could be applied as independent data to show the performance of their reading comprehension after the 6-week oral reading experiment. The results of the post-experimental reading comprehension test were also compared with those in the first one to study the influence of oral reading practice on students’ performance in reading comprehension. Moreover, the average score of each group was analysed with their assigned oral reading time, to investigate the relationship of oral reading practice and reading comprehension performance.

To ensure the objectivity of the data, all the participants were separate-seated and under supervision to exclude any chance of cheating. The time limit for the second test was also assigned as 35 minutes. All 120 sets of test papers were collected within the time limit.

Furthermore, the feedback slips for students mentioned in “2.3.2 Questionnaires” section had been given to the students after the post-experimental test. All the distributed feedback slip had been collected back this time.

2.3.5 Data Analysis

The data collected from the 2 test and questionnaires had been processed with SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). The main comparisons were focused on two aspects. Firstly, the difference between the average students’ scores in the two tests, before and after the oral reading experiments. More importantly, the statistical relationship between the daily oral reading practicing time and the final reading comprehension performance (scores in the post-experimental reading comprehension test) would be analysed to see whether there was a correlation in between.

Apart from the raw data obtained by the two reading comprehension tests, three questionnaires (student questionnaire, teacher questionnaire, and student feedback slip) had also been process and analysed. This qualitative research was aimed to gain some understanding of the opinions from EFL/ESL learners and teachers on oral reading and reading comprehension in China. Therefore, the tendency or possibility of adding oral reading as a method to improve EFL/ESL students’ reading comprehension performance in the future would be discussed following the qualitative research results.

3. Analysis result

The data from pre-experimental test, student questionnaire, teacher questionnaire and post-experimental test would be illustrated and analysed in the section.

3.1 Analysis of Pre-Experimental Test Results

The pre-experimental reading comprehension test had used the passages and questions from 2005 CET-4 examination. 300 second year non-English-specialised students from Shangdong Normal University in China have participated in the test voluntarily. 294 sets of test papers had been collected after the test. The purpose of this pre-experimental test was to select suitable candidates for the next step oral reading experiments. So the scores from this test were mainly used for selection purpose. 120 students whose test results were between 10 and 16 points were chosen to join the following oral reading experiment. The target range was from 25% to 40%, so that there would be plenty of space for participants to improve on their reading comprehension performance later.

Because not all 294 participants’ scores were relevant to this study, the irrelevant results would not be illustrated and discussed further in this thesis. The chosen 120 candidates with an average score of 13.22 had been illustrated in Table.2 below. The participants were then been divided into 20 groups randomly, but with some adjustment to ensure the balanced mix-ability in each group.

Score

10

12

14

16

Number of participants

8

48

47

17

Table.2. The distribution of the selected 120 student in each score group.

The average score of the 120 participants was 13.22. Approximately 33% of the full score as a representation for their reading comprehension performance

3.2 Analysis of Student Questionnaire

The aim for the student questionnaire was to access the normal reading habits and the opinions on the oral reading method among the current university students. Although there were 300 questionnaire had been given to students at the end of the pre-experimental test, only 192 of them had contained valid answers for this research. The return rate was 64%. More than one third of the questionnaire was returned back as blank. This might be because some of the students would not like to fill the questionnaires after the test. Since the main purpose of this questionnaire was to have a general idea of current university students, 192 was still an acceptable number. However, the low return rate could be eliminated in future research by stressing on the purpose of the questionnaire and invited students to complete them as complete as possible.

In the designed student questionnaire, 7 key points were addressed to investigate the English learning habit of students in the chosen university. The key questions and results are illustrated in Table 3 below.

Key Points in the Questionnaire

Frequency (and Percentage) of Students’ Answers

How often do you practice oral reading in English?

Everyday

Regularly

Rarely

18 (9.38%)

43 (22.40%)

97 (50.52%)

How long do you spend on oral reading every time?

≤ 15

minutes

15-30 minutes

31-45 minutes

95 (49.48%)

74 (38.54%)

16 (8.33%)

Have you got any guidance on oral reading?

Many

Some

Rare

34 (17.71%)

53 (27.60%)

48 (25.00%)

Do you think oral reading is necessary in English learning?

Necessary

Neutral

Unnecessary

53 (27.60%)

78 (40.63%)

61 (31.77%)

What are your main reading materials?

Vocabulary

Textbook

Article/Journals

117 (60.94%)

43 (22.40%)

32 (16.66%)

Do you think oral reading can improve the sense of English?

Positive

Neutral

No effect

75 (39.06%)

62 (32.29%)

55 (28.65%)

Do you think oral reading can improve reading comprehension performance?

Yes

Neutral

No effect

22 (11.46%)

42 (21.88%)

128 (66.66%)

Table.3. Key Points and Students’ Feedback in the Student Questionnaire. Total number of questionnaires collected: 192.

According to the feedback collected through the questionnaire, only about 30% of the students had the habit of practicing oral reading (everyday + regularly); more than two thirds of the participants had practice oral reading in their normal lives. The majority of the students had practiced oral reading less than 30 minutes; and rarely any students had claimed that they practiced oral reading more than 45 minutes. Approximately 12% of the students would spend more than 30 minutes on oral reading every time or in a day. More than half of the students had not received proper guidance in using oral reading as a practical method during English learning. Less than one third of the students though that oral reading is necessary in their English learning; slightly more students considered that the oral reading method was not essential during the learning; most of the participants had neutral opinion on this matter. 39% of the students thought oral reading could improve the general sense of English, whereas approximate 29% considered it has no effect on improving the sense of English. The majority of the students did not think oral reading had any effect or could improve the reading comprehension performance, while only 11% believed that oral reading could be beneficial for reading comprehension.

3.2 Analysis of the Questionnaire for Teachers

Another questionnaire was designed to investigate the teachers’ opinions on oral reading as a teaching approach. The 20 participated teachers were university English teachers between 25 to 45 years old. All 20 questionnaires had been answered and returned back. The key questions and results are illustrated in Table 4 below.

Key Points in the Questionnaire

Frequency (and Percentage) of Teachers’ Answers

What is your main teaching strategy in class?

Textbook Focused

Exam Focused

Practice Focused

10 (50%)

7 (35%)

3 (15%)

How often do you use oral reading as a teaching method in class?

Always

Occasionally

Rarely

2 (10%)

15 (75%)

3 (15%)

Do you provide guidance on oral reading?

Always

Occasionally

Rarely

5 (25%)

10 (50%)

5 (25%)

What’s your opinion on oral reading in English learning?

Essential

Neutral

Unnecessary

18 (90%)

2 (10%)

Do you think oral reading is a way to improve the sense of English?

Yes

Neutral

No

20 (100%)

Do you think oral reading would be beneficial for students’ reading comprehension performance?

Beneficial

Neutral

Harmful

20 (100%)

Table.4. Key Points and Feedback in the Teacher Questionnaire. Total number of questionnaires collected: 20.

As shown inTable.4 above, 20 English teachers from Shandong Normal University were participated in this research. The majority of the teachers had chosen textbook or examination focused teaching methods in their classes; whereas only 3 teachers had focused their teaching on the practice of English in class. None of the interviewed teachers selected “interests” as their main strategy of teaching. Three quarters of the teachers had used or were using oral reading as a teaching strategy in the class. However, only 25% of them actually provided scientific guidance to student to guide them read in the classes and after the class. 90% of the English teacher considered that oral reading is necessary in English learning; and 10% of the participated teachers had neutral opinion on oral reading as a learning method in modern English education. However, although oral reading was not a favourable teaching method among current university English teachers, all of the participants had agreed that oral reading could improve the sense of using English. And all of them had agreed that practicing oral reading would be beneficial for students’ reading comprehension performance.

3.3 Results of the Post-Experimental Test

The post-experimental reading comprehension test had used the passages and questions from 2004 CET-4 examination. 120 second year non-English-specialised students selected from the pre-experimental test and joined the 6-week oral reading experiment had taken the second test. All 120 sets of test papers had been collected back within the 35 minutes time limit of the test.

SPSS was used to analyse the data obtained from the post-experimental test. The research subjects were chosen according to their grades in the pre-experimental test from 10 to 16, i.e. 25% to 40% of the full score. This range was considered as lower ability in reading comprehension but with significant space to improve. The grades from post-experimental test were put into SPSS and analysed as below.

Groups Number

Number of Student

Oral Reading Time (minutes) everyday

Mean Scores in pre-experimental test

Mean Scores in post-experimental test

1

6

10

12.67

14.33

2

6

15

13.00

13.33

3

6

20

13.33

14.00

4

6

25

13.67

15.33

5

6

30

13.67

17.00

6

6

35

13.00

17.33

7

6

40

13.67

20.67

8

6

45

12.67

22.33

9

6

50

13.00

23.00

10

6

55

13.33

24.00

11

6

60

13.67

25.00

12

6

65

13.33

26.67

13

6

70

13.00

26.00

14

6

75

13.00

25.33

15

6

80

13.33

27.00

16

6

85

13.67

28.00

17

6

90

13.33

29.67

18

6

95

13.33

29.33

19

6

100

12.67

28.67

20

6

105

13.00

28.50

Table.5. Mean score of each group in the post-experimental test.

The grade range had increased from 10 to 16 in the pre-experimental test to 14 to 32 in the post-experimental test. (Individual score was not illustrated in this table.)The oral reading showed certain degree of help in improving reading comprehension performance.

In the pre-experimental test, the average score of the selected 120 participants was 13.22, whereas the average score of the students in the post-experimental test was 22.75. The scores of the 6 members in each group had been drawn from the pre-experimental test data and the mean value of each group was shown in the above table. The mean scores of all the 20 groups were similar, approximately equalled to 13. Whereas after the 6-week oral reading practice experiment, the average score in all the groups had been increased from about 4 points the minimum to 16 points the maximum. From the result illustrated, it was clear that oral reading had shown certain level of help in improving the reading comprehension performance among university students. However, more accurate and reasonable comparison would have to take the oral reading practicing time into account, which is discussed in the following paragraphs.

To investigate whether there would be any statistical relationship between oral reading and reading comprehension performance, a scatter diagram was obtained through SPSS as Figure 1.

Figure.1. Scatter diagram of the average score from post-experimental test and practicing time. X-axis: length of oral reading period everyday in minutes; Y-axis: mean values of the post-experimental test grades in each group.

As illustrated in Table 5 and Figure 1 above, the performance of students’ reading comprehension appeared to be improved with the increase of oral reading practicing time every day. However, there was no significant increase in the reading comprehension grades with the daily practicing time below 30 minutes. The significant increase occurred during the practicing time period from 30 minute to 90 minutes in a day. With the oral reading time over 90 minutes, the improvement tended to be steady again.

Using the Curve Examination models in SPSS, the best-fit regression curve for the data tended to be quadratic as illustrated in Figure 2 below.

Figure.2. Curve Examination Diagram obtained by SPSS. As shown in the graph, the best-fit regression was the quadratic model.

The diagram showed a functional relationship between the two sets of data. One set of the data has coordinates determined by the relationship. From Figure.1 and Figure 2, the relationship between the practicing time and the mean values of the post-experimental test scores of the groups can be formulated as below:

y = -0.0015×2 + 0.3554x + 8.541

The regression coefficients -0.0015 and 0.3554 had passed the t-Test with p-value below 0.01. The coefficient of determination R2 was 0.966. Based on the definition of correlation, the regression equation of the best-fit curve can be accepted. However, the scores from groups with practicing time less than 30 minutes did not shown significant improvement in the test. And with practicing time more than 90 minutes in the experiment, not much increasing in the reading comprehension performance could be observed either.

Comparing the mean grades of the post-experimental test with those of the pre-experimental test of each group, a trend of increasing in the grades can be observed. In the pre-experimental test, there was no significant difference in the ability of reading comprehension among the chosen participants. As their reading comprehension performance was similar and not very high at the beginning of the experiment. After the 6-week oral reading practice experiment, most of the groups had performed better than their previous grades. And with the increasing of oral reading practicing time, the average grade of students in the reading comprehension test had been increased as well. From Figure 1 and Figure 2 above, it is clear that the reading comprehension performance is not linearly proportional to the time length of the oral reading practicing experiment. The participants who spent less than 30 minutes in the oral reading experiment showed less improvement in the reading comprehension performance test. With oral reading time more than 90 minutes a day, the improvement was no long significant, i.e. the oral reading practice had met a bottleneck after 90 minutes practicing time. The significant correlation between oral reading behaviour and reading comprehension performance is between 30 minutes and 90 minutes of practicing time in a day.

3.3 Analysis of the Feedback Slip

The feedback slip was a short questionnaire given to the 120 participants after the post-experimental test. It included three questions to explore the opinions of students about and after the 6-week experiment. First of all, their opinions on the6-week oral reading practice experiment was interested. their opinions on oral reading and reading comprehension now, and would they continue using oral reading as a practicing method after the research. A sample of the feedback slip used in the research has been enclosed as Appendix V.

Because of the low return rate of student questionnaires in the pre-experimental test, students were advised to complete the feedback slip as accurate as possible after the post-experimental reading comprehension test. Therefore, 120 out of 120 feedback slips distributed had been returned back. The key questions and results of the feedback slip are illustrated in Table 6 below.

Key Points in Feedback Slip

Frequency (and Percentage) of Students’ Answers

What do you think of the oral reading experiment?

Useful

Neutral

67 (56%)

32 (27%)

Do you think oral reading is a way to improve reading comprehension performance?

Yes

Maybe

33 (28%)

70 (58%)

Are you going to continue practice oral reading after this research?

Yes

Maybe

28 (23%)

45 (38%)

Table.6. Key Points and Feedback in the Feedback slip after post-experimental test. Total number of feedback slips collected: 120.

From the feedback slips, the tendency of students’ opinion on oral reading could be predicted. More than half of the participants considered that the 6-week oral reading experiment was useful, whereas there were 18% of the students joined the experiment thought it was a waste of time and not very useful in improving their English ability. However, the attitude of using oral reading as a method to improve reading comprehension performance was still remained neutral for most of the participants in the research, since 58% students had chosen “maybe” for this question. Less than one third of the students believed that practicing oral reading could improve their ability in reading comprehension performance. 14% of the students did not approve that oral reading could help on the reading comprehension performance. For the question of applying oral reading in future English studies, 23% of the students would like to continue with the practice after the research. Approximately equal number of the students chose not to continue with the practice or remained uncertain.

4. Discussion & Evaluation

4.1 Discussion on Questionnaire and Feedback

From the illustration of Table 3 in the “Results” section, it was obvious that the awareness of the benefits of oral reading on reading comprehension was very low among current Chinese university students. Almost 70% of the students had not developed oral reading as a common reading habit during years of English learning, or had dropped this method as they grew. The reason for the negligence of this reading method could be lacking of the correct guidance in the primary and secondary education. As more than half of the participated students had claimed that they did not receive any guidance on English oral reading before or during their undergraduate education. The chosen reading material could also reflect this fact, because around 60% students had chosen to reading vocabulary aloud, instead of the written text in books or journals. The choice of this particular reading material could not have much benefit for reading comprehension performance, since understanding of the sentences, passages and the logic in the text is more important than knowing all the vocabulary. On the other hand, memorising vocabulary without applications is a slow and inefficient process. It was clear that most of the student had not been giving correct guidance on how to choose the reading material to improve the comprehension performance. As a consequence, only around 10 % of the students thought that oral reading could have a good influence on the reading comprehension.

The data obtained from the teachers’ questionnaire indicated that although all the English teachers though oral reading could be beneficial for reading comprehension or English learning in general, they did not choose it as a teaching strategy in classes. The preferred teaching strategies were textbook-focused and exam-focused methods. Because the main purpose for non-English-specialised undergraduate students is to pass the examinations. This is also the main reason why oral reading as a practicing or teaching method has been overlooked since the progress seems to be slow and time-consuming and various fast reading comprehension technical skills are preferred by Chinese EFL/ESL students. However, based on this research, the attitude of English teachers on oral reading remained positive. 90% of the participants considered that oral reading was essential in English learning. This leaves the opportunity for introducing oral reading as a EFL/ESL teaching and learning method in the future.

4.2 Discussion on Reading Comprehension Test Results

The results of 294 students in the pre-experimental test were mainly used for selecting suitable participants the flowing steps in this research. As a consequence, only the scores of the selected 120 students were mentioned in this dissertation. As compared in Table 5, the average scores from the post-experimental test were generally higher than those in the pre-experimental test. More importantly, as illustrated in Figure 1 and Figure 2, it was proved that the performance of reading comprehension was correlated with the practicing time of oral reading everyday. The correlation was significant between 30 minutes and 90 minutes of oral reading practicing time.

These finding suggested that only certain level of oral rea