A Study of Oral Reading Fluency: The Implementation of Readers Theater in an
EFL Elementary School
NA1C0004
Yueh-Long Yang
2006
MA Thesis, National Chung Cheng University
Reviewed by I-Pei Tsai
This thesis investigates the affection of Readers Theater for EFL elementary
school students in Taiwan. There are eighteen participants who were chosen randomly
in the forth grade. In the thesis, it contains five chapters. First chapter outlines the
basic ideas of the thesis and contained four parts: background and motivation, the
purpose and research questions, the significance of the study and definition of used
terms. Author, an elementary school teacher, mentions how to help students acquire a
new language and practice it. Therefore, he comes out with the question: how does
Readers Theater affect elementary school students’ oral reading fluency? Although
numerous studies has pointed out that Readers Theater is effective to students’ oral
ability, none of them investigates in English as Foreign Language Environment. This
is what makes this study different from others.
Second chapter is literature review. It also included four sections, reading and
reading approaches, the framework of conceptualizing oral reading fluency, the
importance and the assessment of oral reading fluency and ways to implement Reader
Theater. In literature review, it provides lots of supports for the research. Especially
Oral Reading, it is language learning and teaching skill, also called read aloud.
Third chapter describes the details of the methodology. It comprises action
research, setting, curriculum, participants, materials, Reader Theater and data
collection. It specifically describes the process of the development of theory and
adjusted theory. It also provides understandable and readable graphs that make theory
and methodology easily understandable.
In chapter 4, it involves two parts: the results and discussion. Among three
methods, all of them improve students’ oral ability. It proves that Reader Theater can
improve their oral reading fluency.
In chapter 5, it claims its findings again. Moreover, it also describes the
limitation and makes some suggestions for further research.
For me, the thesis is well-organized and full of details. Especially, it is
conscientious in teaching design. During the teaching process, the research figured
out there was some problem of the teaching method. Then, he changed the procedure
and redesigned the teaching method instead of insisting on the original one.
One disadvantage of the thesis is methodology. The first research method is
One-Minute Reading Probe. Writer describes this research method as efficient
assessment to measure students’ oral ability. Meanwhile, it is time efficiency. It only
takes one minute to measure students’ ability. However, it lacks of the standard to
measure students’ score. In other words, the formula should be provided in the thesis
to support the measurement and results. If there is no formula, it would be a good idea
to provide examples with scoring sheet. It helps readers understand the procedure and
makes the method more reliable.
Furthermore, the researcher collects the data and uses only bar chart and
percentage to analyze the findings. I believe if the researcher applies ANOVAs into
this study, it will make it a more vigorous thesis.