Action Research on the Effectiveness of Remedial Instruction with Passages of GEPT Reading Comprehension Tests on Low Achievers By Min-Shin Cheng NA3C0012 林月鳳 Ephone Lin

Introduction In a normal English class, the abilities of students are very different. The situation not only brings great challenges to English teachers but it also causes a sense of depression and helplessness to low achievers. From the grades of the exam of the vocational high school graduates, the researcher found the teaching material is not really appropriate to every student.

Chen (2009) noted that most school English teachers face the following teaching difficulties: (a) a mixed proficiency class leading to the bimodal distribution, (b) students with low English proficiency struggling to learn English, and (c) the inability to take care of students with mixed proficiency levels at the same time. The researcher hoped to offer a meaningful context to low achievers to improve their English abilities.

Research Questions 1.What are the participants’ perspectives on the remedial instruction? 2.Is it effective to include the passages of GEPT reading comprehension tests (the basic level) in the remedial instruction on low achievers? 3.What are difficulties and problems encountered by the participants and the teacher in the remedial instruction with passages of GEPT reading comprehension tests (the basic level)?

Lierature Review Remedial Instruction: It is an effective way to provide low achievers with remedial instruction to enhance their competence they ought to be equipped with (Li, 1996). Tu,2001,showed that strengthening students’ basic degrees is the principal goal of remedial instruction.

Studies Related to Remedial Instruction: Numerous studies have explored the positive effect of remedial instruction on elementary school students and junior high school students (Fang, 2012; Ho, 2011; Lin, 2010; Lin, 2011; Lin, 2013; Tseng, 2012; Wang, 2013). Moreover, Chen, Hsiou, Teng, Tsai, and Yang (2011) conducted a study to explore the effects of remedial English programs at a technical college.

Models of Remedial Instruction: Model I: Three Steps of Remedial Instruction. Model II: Five Steps of Remedial Instruction.

Model III: Three Phases of Remedial Instruction.

Types of Remedial Instruction are 1.Pull-Out Remedial Instruction: They are resource classes and after-school programs. 2. Pull-In Remedial Instruction: It’s to assist low achievers in regular classes. Chen (2003) suggested teachers adopt some strategies in class to timely help improve students learning problems, like cooperative learning, ability grouping and peer-tutoring.

Definitions of Reading: There are a variety of definitions of reading from different perspectives. In short, to facilitate learners’ English ability development, reading is the indispensible basis. The process of reading involves not only decoding of vocabulary, phrases and grammar, but also readers’ prior knowledge and experience. Thus, the material should be according to their English level, interests, experience and background. The researcher thought the passages of GEPT reading comprehension tests are appropriate learning materials for remedial instruction.

The learning curve will look something: Models of Reading Process: Bottom-up Models, Top-down Models and Interactive Models.

Reading Comprehension: According to Richards and Schmidt (2002), based on the different reading purposes, there are four reading comprehension styles: 1. Literal comprehension 2. Inferential comprehension 3. Critical or evaluative comprehension 4. Appreciative comprehension Inevitably, the four levels of reading comprehension can be applied to the instruction at the same time.

The General English Proficiency Test (the GEPT): 1.Background and description of the GEPT. 2. The Use of the GEPT. 3. Research related to the GEPT. Action Research: Lewin, K. (1946) is a US founding father of action research; he developed a theory of action research as a spiral of steps that proceeds from planning, acting, observing and reflecting (see Figure 2.6).

Action Resarch Figure 2.6. Action Research Cycle (Lewin, 1946) This approach was also used widely by Stenhouse (1980) and later by Elliott (1981, 1991). According to Lomax, McNiff,and Whitehead (1996), action research can help teachers improve their professional fields.

In summary, action research is conducted through cycles of planning, action, observation and reflection. The purpose of action research is to make the situation the researcher would like to improve better and make the problem solved through reflections and actions.

Methodology Research Design: 1. This study was mainly conducted on a qualitative research and the number of participants was six. 2. The data of this study would mostly derive from the questionnaire, interviews, observations, field notes and reflective journals. 3. The researcher used quantitative approach as well to analyze the questionnaire and organize the subjects’ pretest and posttest outcomes to clarify their performance.

Participants: 1.The participants were six students in their second year of vocational high school, mainly studying in the Department of Food and Beverage. 2.The six students had limited English proficiency. According to the definition of low achievers in the report released by the MOE (2009), these students could be regarded as low achievers. 3.All the six students were boys.

Teaching Material: the passages of the GEPT reading comprehension tests published by Far East Publishing Co., Ltd. Instruments and Data Collection: multiple data sources were collected, including the pretest, the questionnaire, interviews and informal interviews, the posttest, classroom observations, field notes and the researcher’s reflective journals..

Procedures of the Study:

Data Analysis: 1.The qualitative data are from interviews, informal interviews, observations, field notes and the teacher’s reflective journals. 2.The quantitative data are from the questionnaire, pretest, and posttest. 3.The three research questions, data collection and data analysis are shown in Table 3.4.

Results and Discussion RQ1: What are the participants’ perspectives on the remedial instruction? Results Results: The participants liked the teacher- student interaction, the atmosphere, the small number of the students in the remedial course. The participants liked that the teacher instructed them at a slow pace, so they could raise questions at any time. They hoped that the remedial course could be prolonged.

RQ2: Is it effective to include the passages of GEPT reading comprehension tests (the basic level) in the remedial instruction on low achievers? Results Results: The passages of GEPT reading comprehension tests (the basic level) are the appropriate teaching material for vocational high school’s low achievers. The context should be emphasized when it comes to learning vocabulary. The after-reading questions help draw students’ attention during the reading and strengthen their understanding.

RQ3: What are difficulties and problems encountered in the remedial instruction with passages of GEPT reading comprehension tests? Results Results: The finite time span to carry out the remedial course was the most principal problem. Few repetitive words appeared in the passages, and the participants often felt confused about the polysemous words. The English words that looked alike usually puzzled the low achievers. Struggling readers have developed many bad decoding habits.

Conclusions Each participant benefited from the remedial course. 1. the students liked the small group. 2. the remedial course promoted the teacher-student interaction, making the atmosphere in the class more pleasant. 3. the remedial course also boosted the participants’ confidence and motivation.

Pedagogical Implications Firstly, the passages of GEPT reading comprehension tests are highly effective. Secondly, the difficulty which the students encountered was they failed to distinguish the visually similar words at times. Thus, the teacher can guide students to use mnemonic associations to promote identification of the words.

Thirdly, as for the vocational high school low achievers’ behavioral problems, such as being talkative and lazy, the teacher can cope with them with respect and concern. Lastly, the repetitive words appearing in the passages of GEPT reading comprehension tests used in the remedial course can be more so that the students’ vocabulary memory can be enhanced.

Limitations The time constraint is the first limitation: long-term remedial courses are available for the study, more vocabulary, phrases, grammar, and topics may be learned by the participants. The small sample size and the lack of diversity in the sample is the second distinct limitation: they are only six participants and from the same class.

Suggestions In this study, the participants are only six students, and they come from the same school, so a large sample from different vocational high schools is needed to further study. Lengthening the duration of the remedial course is recommended, and the quantity of the passages could be increased.

Comment The study seems to be an easy model to finish a thesis, because it always focus on the items of the study’s title. However, it didn’t have powerful numbers or offer any teaching approach to support the researcher’s point of the study. The participants are only six students, it is a very small size of subjects. The figure 2.4, I think it seems a wrong chart, because the meaning of the figure is unreasonable.

Thanks for your attention. ^_^