이미지 자료를 활용한 중학생의 영어 독해능력 향상에 관한 연구

Abstract

The purposes of the study were to investigate ways to improve the English reading comprehension ability of middle school students through using mental imagery. The subjects were 73 students in the first year at J. Middle School in Gwangju. They were divided into two groups: the experimental group consisted of 36 students and the control group consisted of 37 students. The level of English reading ability of the students in the two groups was almost the same, which was shown by a pre-test administered before the beginning of the experiment. For a period of four months, the students in the experimental group were taught reading by the teacher (researcher), who had the students use imagery related to the content of the text while reading it. The control group was taught by the traditional grammar-translation method. In order to measure reading comprehension ability two tests were administered: one was used as a pre-test, and the other as a post-test. Both these tests were composed of 20 questions on the content of the text. The teaching efficacy of the experimental group was compared with that of the control group after four months. In addition, to find out the relationship between grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension ability, a test to measure grammatical knowledge of the students was constructed, which included 20 items. A questionnaire was used to probe students' interest in the English lessons taught by using images. The results are as follows. First, while there was no difference in reading comprehension ability between the experimental and control group on the pre-test, there was a statistically significant difference on the post-test. The mean score for the experimental group was significantly higher than that for the control group. Second, it was found that there were significant differences in the three levels of English proficiency: the teaching of reading taught by using images was more effective for the high-level students. Third, no significant difference was found between genders. Image-using reading lessons were equally effective for both male and female students. Fourth, there was a significant correlation between scores of grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension in the experimental group. The students on the higher level of grammatical knowledge tended to have higher scores of reading comprehension. Fifth, most of the students who were taught reading by using images responded that they had more interest and satisfaction in the reading lesson. These findings were discussed with respect to applying them to the teaching of reading in the classroom.