1. MA3C0102 甘蘋 The implementation of a Balanced Reading Program in an Elementary EFL classroom: A case study

2. Outline Chapter One Introduction Background and Motivation Purposes of the Study Research Question of the Study Significance of the Study Chapter Two Literature Review Theories and Studies of the Balanced Reading Instruction The Theories of Reading The Role of Storybooks in Children’s Early Literacy

3. Chapter Three Methodology Background of the Subjects: Balanced Reading Instruction Instruments Procedures of this study Data Analysis

4. Chapter one Introduction Background and Motivation MOE (2008), applying phonics to listening, speaking, reading and writing (5-1-6) Adams (1990) pointed out that phonics is an effective way for teaching students to read However, phonics has been regarded as more pronunciation instruction than reading instruction Words or sentences from most of textbooks are not fit for the pupils’ language experiences, rather than sentences with related meanings or texts with meaningful context, which are much closer to real reading (Cunningham, 1991).

5. Background and Motivation MOE(2008), students can predict the meanings of words or sentences from the storybooks or contextual sentences (3-2-7). Students can comprehend the daily conversation, simple stories or radio programs, even to write down the key words or sentences (5-2-3) Learning English is not merely practicing sound- spelling relationships but also including meaning making.

6. Background and Motivation Riley and Burrell (2007), story sharing played a considerable role in children’s literacy at the very early stage of reading and writing learning Providing learners with storytelling which is the meaningful and authentic learning environment is the nature of whole language approach (Shen & Huang, 1997) But, whole language does not promote spelling skills (Graham, 2000),and reading of predictable texts does not develop word recognition skills as reliably as alternatives (Johnston, 2000), and does not produce as certain vocabulary growth (Swanborn et al., 1999)

7. Background and Motivation “Balanced Reading Instruction “(BRI) is a method of combining phonics and whole language approaches to build reading proficiency (Donat, 2006) These researchers applied balanced reading instruction to examine the effectiveness of phonics instruction with storybooks on word recognition and reading comprehension of EFL learners (Fu, 2008; Kuan, 2011; Liaw, 2003; Tsai, 2006).

8. Research Question of the Study 1.How does the BRP affect the word recognition and word spelling? 2.How does the BRP affect the reading comprehension and reading attitudes? 3.What are the potential problems encountered to students on adopting the BRP? 4.What are the potential problems encountered to teachers on adopting the BRP?

9. Significance of the Study Several previous researches shown the positive effects of BRI on learner’s English word recognition, reading comprehension, reading attitude, and reading motivation Most of them investigated in quantitative and qualitative research Only Shen, Leou, & Pan (2010) integrated BRI into EFL elementary classrooms observing two struggling students as case studies in qualitative research Another researcher Wang (2012) did an action research on BRI on the fifth grade students in Pen-Hu This study will present the affection of BRI on elementary school students’ word recognition, word spelling, reading comprehension, and reading attitudes with children storybooks as a case study

10. CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW Theories and Studies of the Balanced Reading Instruction Background of Balanced Reading Instruction Adams (1990), called “reading wars”, this debate centered on which instructional method was most effective way to enhance children’s reading achievement. Phonics instruction facilitates EFL young learners to decode words effectively, then, decoding helps in the improvement of word recognition, and, finally, improves reading fluency

11. However, some have argued against the utility of extensive phonics instruction because the English does not contain a perfect one-to-one relationship between letters and sounds (Hittleman, 1988; Smith, 1988) the whole language approach teach vocabulary, spelling, and grammar contextually in the process of top-down, instead of doing isolated exercises such as systematic phonics drills in the process of bottom- up (Brooks, 2005). However, due to the low socio-economic status, students do not fare well with whole language when evaluated with standardized measures ( Jeynes & Littell, 2000)

12. Suggest that literacy instruction should promote the interaction between the skilled aspects of reading (e.g. phonemic awareness, alphabetic knowledge, letter- sound association) and the meaning-based aspects of reading (e.g. vocabulary, comprehension) (Bingham & Hall-Kenyon, 2013).

13. The Meaning of Balanced Reading Instruction It combines phonics instruction with the whole language approach to demonstrate skills and meaning and meet the reading needs Includes community, home, and library involvement as well as structured classroom plans and use of activities such as read alouds, guided reading, shared readings, and independent reading and writing ( Fountas & Pinnell).

14. The Theories of Reading Word recognition Perfetti (1985), the processes of word recognition include letter recognition, phonetic activation, and semantic encoding. ( orthography, pronunciation, meaning) Phonics skills and sight words are two important techniques, especially for beginning readers ( Wynn,1988)

15. Word spelling “Spelling here is not the spelling of lists and rote learning. Rather it is introduced as an integral part of writing: in essence, the process of encoding. Spelling is explained as a special and extremely important part of literacy that involves phonics, the linking of phonemes to graphemes.” (Buckland & Fraser, 2008) Three spelling skills —(1) Phonemic Awareness to distinguish the sounds, (2) rules that govern possible encoding of those sounds, and (3) visual memory—all play a part in spelling them correctly

16. Reading comprehension It is defined as the level of understanding of writing Adams (1990) considered that instant and effective word recognition is vital to reading proficiency as student’s reading comprehension capability will be hindered with too much time consumption in analyzing and processing individual words Motivation and attitude are important factors involved incomprehension process

17. Reading attitude "a system of feelings related to reading which causes the learner to approach or avoid a reading situation" (p. 1). ( Mckenna& Kear,1995) Yamashita (2004), provided four sub-components of reading attitude (comfort, anxiety, value ascribed to reading, and self-perception as a reader) Positive L1 reading attitude had strong impact on L2 reading ( Yamashita, 2007)

18. The Role of Storybooks in Children’s Early Literacy As children predict what is going on next from listening to a story to reading a story, they would establish effective reading skills ( Raines & Canady, 1990). Many studies showed that the application of story experiences result in positive benefits in various areas of children’s language learning ( Cho, Choi & Krachen,2008; Isbell, Sobol,Lindauer&Lowrance, 2004).

19. Chapter Three Methodology Backgrounds of the subjects The School : small-size elementary school with one class in every grade; a rural community in Tainan The students: 12 sixth graders Balanced Reading Instruction Teaching materials: six storybooks Teaching process: based on the sequence of whole-part-whole (Strickland, 1998)

20. Instruments The pre-test and the post-test of English word recognition The pre-test and the post-test of English word spelling The pre-test and the post-test of English reading comprehension The open-ended questionnaires of reading attitudes Classroom observations Interviews Teacher reflective journal

21. Procedure of this study 80 mins per week, lasting 8weeks Lesson plan: ( first period for teaching phonics; second period for storytelling) Data Analysis T-test Qualitative Analysis