Improving Intrinsic Motivation in Reading: Effects of Reading Strategies Instruction Group members 陳毓茜 (Nancy) 鐘晨嫚 (Edith) 宋盛郁 (Ellen)

Chapter 1 Introduction Reading strategies are as tactics that readers use to engage and comprehend text. (Paris, Wasik, and Turner, 1996) Reading strategies are as tactics that readers use to engage and comprehend text. (Paris, Wasik, and Turner, 1996) Block (1992) stressed that “strategies reveal a reader’s resources for comprehending a text, including how readers conceive a text, what textual cue they attend to, how they make sense of what they read, and what they do when they don’t understand.”

The statement of problem The aim of this quasi- experimental study is to investigate the effects of reading strategies that relates to intrinsic motivation in reading. This study is to aim to provide profound insight to EFL reading and gain deeper understanding of how these two reading strategies effect English major students’ intrinsic motivation in reading.

Hypotheses 1. The students provided with reading strategies have higher intrinsic motivation in reading. 2. The use of finding specific information strategy can improve their intrinsic motivation in reading. 3. There is a difference between the use of finding specific information and drawing conclusions.

Definition of terms Intrinsic motivation Intrinsic motivation is defined as the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfactions rather than for some separable consequence. (Deci ＆ Ryan, 2000)Intrinsic motivation is defined as the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfactions rather than for some separable consequence. (Deci ＆ Ryan, 2000) Reading strategies Strategies include processes for enhancing reading comprehension and overcoming comprehension failure. (Knight, et al, 1985)Strategies include processes for enhancing reading comprehension and overcoming comprehension failure. (Knight, et al, 1985)

Chapter 2 Literature Review The effects of reading strategy When learners use reading strategies, they may construct better reading comprehension. This reading process means that they could read beyond the lines and to think critically (Shelton, 2006).

Literature Review The role of intrinsic motivation and reading strategy Pintrich and his colleagues studied the relationships between students’ motivation and strategy use (Pintrich, 1989; Pintrich and De Groot, 1990). Based on a general expectancy- value framework, Pintrich (1989) proposed that students'' motivation consists of three components: expectancy, value, and affect.

Literature Review Reading Strategy Instruction The research (Durkin, 1979) revealed that teachers actually devoted only 2% of the classroom time to teach students how to comprehend what they read. To become strategy users, they need ‘‘systematically orchestrated instruction or training’’ (Alexander, 1996).

Literature Review Finding Specific Information strategy According to Grellet & Hadley’s skimming theory, in a reading process, struggling readers may raise many questions in their mind. When they asked of many questions about the content, the author, the events, the issues, and the ideas, they try to find information for answering questions quickly in their thoughts

Literature Review The Strategy of Drawing Conclusion based on clues in the text According to the writer Susan Hall (1990), she stressed that “inferring allows readers to make their own discoveries without the direct comment of the author.” That is, inferring relates to the notion of reading between the lines. Readers can make guesses or appropriate inferences about underlying themes in the text or make predication for next theme.

Chapter 3 Defined Population The defined population includes all students from English Department at Providence University.

Participants One hundred and six students from two freshmen classes of English Department at Providence University voluntarily participated in this study. Their ages were from eighteen to twenty-one years old.

The demographical information

Why we choose freshmen? First, with regard to their general performance in English reading, half of students, reported that their general reading performance was good. Second, as for learning motivation, most of students from the two classes indicated that they had high motivation in English reading.

Strategy of inquiry This study is a quasi-experimental, pretest/posttest, control group design.

Treatment First, the treatment group (Class B) received the instruction of finding specific information. We provided the methods of using the strategy of finding specific information, such as providing many questions about the content, thinking about Wh- questions (Why? Where? What? Who? How?), and highlighting the information they found.

Treatment Second, the treatment group received the instruction of drawing conclusions, including inferential thinking, questions to generate a conclusion about an underlying theme, and trying to make a conclusion from the questions.

Instrumentation A motivation and strategy questionnaire, based on the work of Oxford (1989), Hung, H., Tsou, W., & Wu, K. Y. (2005), Chen, Y. R. (2007), Yang, N. D. (1992, 2002), was used to investigate students’ motivation and reading strategies.

Reliability Cronbach‘s Alpha.715 (the items of motivation ) Cronbach‘s Alpha.764 (the items of reading strategy )

Validity The questionnaire includes two parts. In part 1, there were 13 questions about intrinsic motivation toward English, and 5 items about reading were grouped in a section. In part 2, 16 questions about reading strategies were listed in the questionnaire, in which 5 questions about finding specific information and 3 questions about drawing conclusions.

Procedure of data collection pre-test questionnaire Instruction1 Finding specific information Reading test 1 Instruction 2 Drawing conclusions Reading Test 2 posttest questionnaire

Method of data analysis The descriptive statistics and statistical analyses for measuring students’ intrinsic motivation, reading strategies, and the demographic information were performed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Reliability of motivation and strategy questionnaire Cronbach‘s Alpha T-test

Chapter 4 Finding

Finding The chart shows no difference between the experimental and control groups in the pretest related to reading motivation, t (95) =.55, p>.05. It revealed that there is a significant difference between the two groups in the posttest related to reading motivation, t (95) = 2.33, p<.05.

Finding

It revealed that there is a significant difference between the use of finding specific information and drawing conclusions in two groups, p<.05.

Chapter 5 Discussion Hypothesis 1 The students provided with reading strategies have higher intrinsic motivation in reading.

Discussion According to Ryan and Deci (2000), intrinsic motivation is viewed as human willingness to engage in tasks. In the posttest, there was a significant difference between using reading strategies and learners’ intrinsic motivation. One guess is that the learners are willingness to use reading strategies to do the test better. They may think that using strategies is useful in their reading process.

Discussion Hypothesis 2 The use of finding specific information strategy can improve their intrinsic motivation in reading.

Discussion Based on the results of data analysis, there is a significant relationship between finding specific information and learners’ intrinsic motivation. Their intrinsic motivation was high in the posttest.

Discussion This finding is in line with Grellet (1981) and Hadley’s (1993) skimming theory. Because of learning experiences and human willingness, the learners would want to use finding specific information strategy for answering questions quickly to express their thoughts.

Discussion Hypothesis 2 There is a difference between the use of finding specific information and drawing conclusions.

Discussion In the finding of this study, the learners were more willingness to use drawing conclusion strategy than finding specific information.

Discussion Regarding the influence of English proficiency levels, Susan Hall (1990) stressed that inferring allows advanced level of readers to make their own discoveries without direction. Conversely, poor level of readers may try to find answers quickly. To summarize, in the study, the advanced level of readers may tend to predict while reading English text than the poor readers.

Limitations First, a random selection is suggested before the study is conducted, thereby the findings could be used to generalize the population of this study. Secondly, time for tests was too short, some students may have the anxiety such as the nerves to do the tests that interrupted or impeded their thinking.

Limitations Thirdly, it is better to conduct the long-time experiment to observe student’s motivation changes using reading strategies several times. This quasi-experimental study is a short-time study and it measures students’ reading ability only one time, so the result may be unable to reflect the real effect of the experiment.