The Repository @ St. Cloud State

Open Access Knowledge and Scholarship

Date of Award

5-2018

Culminating Project Type

Thesis

Degree Name

English: Teaching English as a Second Language: M.A.

Department

English

College

College of Liberal Arts

First Advisor

James Robinson

Second Advisor

Michael Schwartz

Third Advisor

James Heiman

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Keywords and Subject Headings

The effect of Extensive Reading, EL elementary students, MAP reading test scores, ACCESS reading scores, the amount of reading time and test scores, growth in reading scores of EL students

Abstract

The diverse studies have supported extensive reading as one of the effective methods for the improvement of EL/EFL students in their language proficiency and reading skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of extensive reading on standardized reading tests scores of elementary EL students.

In this study, I collected three different data of each 3rd and 4th grade EL student in the experimental group and the control group. First, the amount of the reading hours of the students who were in the extensive reading program for 7 months was collected. Secondly, the fall and spring MAP reading test scores of 2016-2017 school year of each student in both experimental group and the control group were collected to compare and contrast the growth rate of individual student and each group. Thirdly, ACCESS reading proficiency scores of 2016 and 2017 were collected to see if extensive reading program helped the students who used extensive reading program gain more reading tests scores than the students who did not use extensive reading program.

The results of this study indicates that there is no significant or clear correlation between the amount of reading time and the growth of standardized reading test scores of the EL elementary students who had ER program. It also shows that the ER program helped the experimental group grow in their MAP reading test, but not in their ACCESS reading test. There might be several possible factors that affected on the negative results of this study. However, despite the negative results of this study, it is believed that the ER program exerted a positive influence on the motivation and attitude of elementary EL students.

Share

COinS