소리 내어 읽기 활동이 초등영어 학습자의 듣기와 읽기 능력 및 정의적 요인에 미치는 영향

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate changes in listening, reading achievement, and learning attitudes of Korean elementary students who enrolled in the reading aloud activity class. The study was conducted by targeting the 3rd to 6th grade students who participated in after-school English programs at an elementary school in Gwangju. The classes were conducted three times a week for six weeks from March 18th to May 3rd. On the first day of class, students were asked to fill out a questionnaire about their attitudes toward English learning. They also took a pre-listening and reading test. In the class, the participant students performed a reading aloud lesson based on story-based books. After the experiment, the students were asked to fill out a post questionnaire and given a post-listening and reading test. The pre－and post－questionnaire items were the same. The collected data was analyzed by using descriptive statistics and paired samples t-tests. The study results are as follows： first, the classes demonstrated that evaluation of English listening and reading abilities increased after the pre－test, but the statistical improvement was not seen. It seems that learners gain good opportunities to listen to classmates. Especially, the students' reading skills were improved in terms of verbal ability and syntactic comprehension use. The students practiced reading with their classmates or through group activities while they were performing reading aloud. It was observed that students can enhance their reading abilities through interactions with others. and that reading aloud activities were helpful to the students to read many words and phrases. There were no statistically changes in the students’ interest, self-confidence, anxiety, motivation and attitude. Hence, it seems that more investigations on affective factors need to be conducted for a longer period of time. There were only 14 students used for this study and the length of the experimental was six weeks. A small sample size and a short study period can show a small impact on the results. In spite of the short experimental period, this study gives compelling evidence that teaching English through reading aloud with English story-based book activities is able to contribute to the improvement of students’ listening and reading abilities. The study provides teaching implications based on the results.