dc.description.abstract | Nowadays people worldwide contact frequently. English has become an indispensable language and the main language for people to communicate. But for students, reading is considered as an ability related to language subjects, only for homework or getting good grades. Most of the past researches focused on students’ learning effectiveness, but few of them explored students’ feelings on English reading. Therefore, through two different stages of English reading activities, this study explores the changes of students’ reading engagement and the difference of English reading attitude after two different English reading activities.
The English books prepared for the activities are divided into six levels. 21 students in 6th grade in an elementary school in Taiwan who use English as a second language participated in this study. This study conducted “production-based reading” activity in the first semester, and
“interest-based reading” activity in the second semester. In production-based reading activity, students are divided into groups, and they can choose the English books they want to read and draw the story they read. In the end of this activity, students shared their works on stage. In interest-based reading activity, students are free to choose English books, and tell the researcher what they choose so that the researcher can record. After students finish reading the books, they are asked some questions related to the books what they read by the researcher. If students clearly understand the story, the researcher will give students stickers as a reward. After that, students can continue to choose books to read.
According to the results of this research, in production-based activity, the books selected by students are affected by the activity task. In interest-based activity, male students borrow more books than female students. For students with different prior knowledge, the level of the books what they choose are also different. After two different reading activities, the results show that students’ dislike of English can effectively be reduced. In terms of gender, for male students, English activities can effectively enhance their intrinsic interest and reduce their dislike of English. For female students, English reading activities not only can help them understand more vocabulary, but also reduce their anxiety when they cannot understand the meaning of English words and sentences. In terms of prior knowledge, for low-achievement students, although English reading activities can reduce their dislike of English, but they need someone help them to read. For middle-achievement students, English reading activities can effectively enhance their reading interest, and think that reading English books is less difficult to them. For high-achievement students, they are more concentrate on reading during interest-based reading activity than production-based reading activity. | en_US |