EFFECTIVENESS OF SUSTAINED SILENT READING ON READING [PDF]

EFFECTIVENESS OF SUSTAINED SILENT READING ON READING ATTITUDE AND READING COMPREHENSION OF FOURTH-GRADE KOREAN STUDENTS by JUN-CHAE YOON (Under the Direction of MICHELLE COMMEYRAS) ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to reevaluate the effectiveness of SSR on reading attitude and reading comprehension of fourth-grade Korean students by employing a multivariate approach. 58 experimental students participated in a daily 15-minute practice of SSR wherein they were given a fixed period of time to read materials of their own choosing with the teachers in classroom. 61 control students participated in a daily 15minute self-study activity wherein they engaged in any activities such as writing, social studies, arithmetic, or writing Chinese characters. Three instruments were used: (a) Korean Version of McKenna and Kear’s Elementary Reading Attitude Survey, (b) Korean Reading Comprehension Test, and (c) Informal Daily Reading Log. For data analyses, a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) and a multiple analysis of covariance (ANCOVAs) were performed. Descriptive statistical procedures were used to analyze participants’ reading logs. Several conclusions were drawn from this research. First, the SSR activity has a positive impact on reading attitude. Approximately 9% of the variability in reading comprehension and reading attitude vector scores was

attributed to it. This effect size is considered as a large effect size, indicating the activity is effective for increasing students’ reading attitude. Unique characteristics of SSR such as self-selection, role modeling, non-accountability, and print-rich environment appeared to serve as the mechanism to develop reading attitude. Second, the SSR activity has no positive impact on reading comprehension. Only 1% of the variability in reading comprehension and reading attitude vector scores was attributed to it. This effect size is a very small one, indicating it is not effective for increasing students’ reading comprehension. Because a positive intention to reading influenced by a positive reading attitude does not always increase a student’s reading behavior (i.e., exposure to print) after school, especially when his or her reading behavior should compete with other options such as sports, computer games, out-of-school extra classes, social communities, and watching TV. Consequently, even significant change in reading attitude may not directly produce significant change in reading comprehension. Finally, on the whole students in the experimental group enjoyed participating in the daily reading activity with great satisfaction and enthusiasm throughout the study period. INDEX WORDS:

Sustained Silent Reading, Reading attitude, Reading comprehension

EFFECTIVENESS OF SUSTAINED SILENT READING ON READING ATTITUDE AND READING COMPREHENSION OF FOURTH-GRADE KOREAN STUDENTS

by

JUN-CHAE YOON

B.A., Korea University, Korea, 1993 M.A., Korea University, Korea, 1995

A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

ATHENS, GEORGIA 2002

© 2002 Jun-Chae Yoon All Rights Reserved

EFFECTIVENESS OF SUSTAINED SILENT READING ON READING ATTITUDE AND READING COMPREHENSION OF FOURTH-GRADE KOREAN STUDENTS

by

JUN-CHAE YOON

Approved:

Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia December 2002

Major Professor:

Michelle Commeyras

Committee:

James Baumann Seock-Ho Kim

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am extremely grateful to Dr. Michelle Commeyras, chairperson of my dissertation committee. Without her guidance this dissertation would have been impossible. Sincere appreciation is extended to my dissertation committee members, Dr. Donna Alvermann, Dr. James Baumann, and Dr. Seock-Ho Kim for their expertise, support, and time. Also, I would like to express my gratitude to Professors, Lim and Noh who taught me not only the value of education, but also the love of lifelong learning. In addition, I owe a special debt of gratitude to all of the students and the teachers who participated in this research. I am particularly grateful to my family and my friends for their love, encouragement, and support. Finally, I extend my deepest thanks to my wife and my daughter for their deep love.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iv LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ vii LIST OF FIGURES............................................................................................................ ix CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION............................................................................................. 1 Statement of the Problem.............................................................................. 1 Purpose and Research Questions .................................................................. 4 Definition of Terms ...................................................................................... 5

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LITERATURE REVIEW.................................................................................. 6 SSR: Roots, Definition, Rationale, Reading Mode, and Guidelines ............ 6 Mechanism of SSR for Reading Attitude and Reading Comprehension.... 17 Research Studies of Sustained Silent Reading ........................................... 32

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METHODOLOGY.......................................................................................... 41 Research Design ......................................................................................... 41 Participants ................................................................................................. 43 Instrumentation ........................................................................................... 45 Research Procedures and Data Collection.................................................. 55 Data Analysis.............................................................................................. 58

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RESULTS........................................................................................................ 62

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Main Analysis: MANCOVA ...................................................................... 62 Follow-Up Analysis: Univariate ANCOVAs ............................................. 63 Descriptive Analysis of the Informal Daily Reading Log .......................... 67 5

DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS .............................................. 71 Discussion................................................................................................... 71 Conclusions................................................................................................. 78 Suggestions for Further Research............................................................... 80 Limitations of the Study ............................................................................. 81

REFERENCES.................................................................................................................. 82 APPENDICES................................................................................................................... 95 A

SUMMARIES OF RESEARCH STUDIES.................................................... 96

B

INFORMAL DAILY READING LOG ........................................................ 114

C

LETTER OF AUTHORIZATION ................................................................ 116

D

INFORMED CONSENT FORM .................................................................. 118

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LIST OF TABLES Page Table 2.1 Descriptive Statistics on the Effect Size of Reading Attitude and Reading Comprehension ................................................................................................. 38 Table 2.2 Descriptive Statistics on the Effect Size of the Moderators on Reading Attitude ............................................................................................................. 39 Table 2.3 Descriptive Statistics on the Effect Size of the Moderators on Reading Comprehension ................................................................................................. 40 Table 3.1 Demographic Descriptions for Participants ..................................................... 43 Table 3.2 Internal Consistency Reliability (Coefficient Alpha), Test-Retest Reliability, and Mean and Standard Deviation of the Scores of the Reading Attitude Scales of the Korean Adaptation of the ERAS ............................................................ 50 Table 3.3 Internal Consistency Reliability (Split-Half Reliability by Spearman-Brown Formula and Coefficient Alpha) of the Scores of the Reading Comprehension Test ................................................................................................................... 53 Table 4.1 Multivariate Analysis of Covariance for the Dependent Vector of Reading Attitude and Reading Comprehension.............................................................. 63 Table 4.2 Means, Standard Deviations, and Adjusted Means of Attitude Scores toward Reading ............................................................................................................. 64 Table 4.3 Analysis of Covariance for Reading Attitude Scores ...................................... 65

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Table 4.4 Means, Standard Deviations, and Adjusted Means of Reading Comprehension Scores................................................................................................................ 66 Table 4.5 Analysis of Covariance for Reading Comprehension Scores .......................... 66 Table 4.6 Monthly Means, Grand Mean, and Standard Deviations for a Question 1: How Did You Feel about Reading during the SSR Activity? ................................... 68 Table 4.7 Monthly Means, Grand Mean, and Standard Deviations for a Question 2: How Was Interestness of a Reading Material You Read during Today’s SSR Activity ............................................................................................................. 68 Table 4.8 Monthly Means, Grand Mean, and Standard Deviations for a Question 3: How Was Readability of a Reading Material You Read during Today’s SSR Activity ............................................................................................................. 69 Table 4.9 Monthly Means, Grand Mean, and Standard Deviations for a Question 4: How Did You Participate in the SSR Activity Today? ............................................. 69 Table 4.10 Monthly Means, Grand Mean, and Standard Deviations for a Question 5: How Long Did You Spend Reading out of School Yesterday? ....................... 70

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LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 2.1 Mathewson Model of Attitude Influence upon Reading and Learning to Read............................................................................................................. 21 Figure 2.2 McKenna Model of Reading Attitude Acquisition......................................... 24 Figure 3.1 Quasi-Experimental Pretest-Posttest Non-Equivalent Experiment-Control Group Design .................................................................................................. 42 Figure 4.1 Line Graphs of the Questions of Feeling and Interestness ............................. 68 Figure 4.2 Line Graphs of the Questions of Readability and Participation ..................... 69 Figure 4.3 Line Graphs of the Question of Participants’ After-School Reading Time... 70

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Statement of the Problem Most education systems worldwide have emphasized the achievement of a high level of reading ability and cultivation of a love of reading as important educational objectives (Elley, 1994). The majority of teacher educators and teachers in the field of reading education have also rated highly the instructional goal of fostering students’ positive reading attitude and independent reading performance (Morrow, 1991). Nevertheless, illiteracy, “inability to read or write a language,” (Harris & Hodges, 1995, p. 112) and aliteracy, “lack of the reading habit in capable readers,” (Harris & Hodges, 1995, p. 6) have been serious concerns for many societies. According to the recent OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) report of international student assessment, only ten percent of 15-year-olds worldwide can read sophisticated texts, evaluate the information, and apply it to everyday experiences. Further, most of them do not read for enjoyment. Of those who read, most do it for less than an hour per day out of school (Henry, 2001). As an in-classroom reading activity of cultivating a love of reading and achieving a high level of reading ability, Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) has been introduced. It has gained popularity in many elementary and secondary classrooms in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand (Dymock, 2000; Halpern, 1981; Nagy, Campenni, & Shaw, 2000). Also, many reading teachers have viewed SSR as one of the

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most valuable reading activities to develop simultaneously students’ reading ability and reading attitude. According to Drecktrah and Chiang (1997), approximately 97% of American second through fifth-grade teachers and 70% of American elementary teachers of students with learning disabilities have used SSR in their classrooms. More recently, Nagy, Campenni, & Shaw (2000) reported that more than 75% of teachers in northeast Pennsylvania are currently using SSR as a daily reading activity in their classrooms. Similarly, many elementary and secondary teachers in New Zealand have implemented it as an integral component of a school reading program. According to the Education Review Office of New Zealand (Dymock, 2000), more than 90% of primary and intermediate schools during 1998 and 1999 set a regular time of between 10 and 20 minutes daily for SSR. My interest in SSR as an in-classroom reading activity grew out of my experiences with reading education for students in South Korea. That is, they have little exposure to reading as an enjoyable activity due to crowded classrooms, limited space and resources, a narrowly defined traditional reading programs, and highly structured schedules and timetables. In particular, it seemed to me that the simplicity and flexibility of the implementation of SSR was practical for the South Korean context. Specifically the cost and no need of special training other than a few guidelines understood by teachers and students just might work for Korean reading education. SSR takes minimal time and is easy to plan, and adapt to either a highly structured curriculum or more a flexible curriculum and with any age groups (Berglund & Johns, 1983; Sadoski, 1980). This is why the investigator though it could play a crucial role in fostering children’s reading ability as well as reading attitude in the Korean context.

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SSR is not uncontroversial when it came to the research available on it. Reviews of SSR (see Dymock, 2000; National Reading Panel, 2000; Sadoski, 1984; West, 1995) failed to establish its educational impact on reading attitude and reading comprehension. Indeed, scientific evidence regarding the effectiveness of SSR on them is equivocal. For example, a few studies doubted whether SSR has a positive influence on reading comprehension (Dully, 1989; Summers & McClelland, 1982). Also, many studies questioned whether SSR has a positive influence on attitude toward reading (Collins, 1980; Dwyer & Reed, 1989; Langford & Allen, 1983; Manning & Manning, 1984; Summers & McClelland, 1982). On the other hand, a few studies have indicated that SSR promotes a positive attitude toward reading (Aranha, 1985; Dully, 1989; Wilmot, 1975). And, several studies have indicated that SSR promotes reading comprehension (Farrell, 1982; Langford & Allen, 1983). However, many studies that reported the significant effects of SSR on reading attitude (e.g., Dully, 1989; Wilmot, 1975) and reading achievement (e.g., Burley, 1980; Farrell, 1982; Langford & Allen, 1983) have a severe methodological problem with respect to the use of multiple univariate F tests on two related dependent variables, reading attitude and reading comprehension. This problem might increase the possibility for researchers to conclude that the treatment is effective in situations where pure chance is operating. Nevertheless, many advocates of SSR have praised and encouraged SSR without presenting scientific research data (West, 1995). Also, numerous reading practitioners have implemented the reading activity in classrooms based only on its popularity.

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The investigator concluded that further research was needed to evaluate both the claims of success by supporters as well as the lack of success found by others by employing a better research design, a multivariate approach. Doing SSR research may offer implications for reading teachers who wish to achieve a high level of reading ability and to cultivate a love of reading.

Purpose and Research Questions It was the purpose of my dissertation research to reevaluate the effectiveness of SSR as a daily, independent reading activity in improving reading achievement and reading attitude of fourth-grade Korean students by employing a multivariate research design. To investigate its effects, the main and follow-up research questions were addressed in this study. Main Research Question Is there an adjusted mean vector difference between the experimental group and control group when they are compared simultaneously on attitude toward reading as measured by the Korean Version of Elementary Reading Attitude Survey and on reading comprehension as measured by the Korean Reading Comprehension Test? Follow-Up Research Questions 1. Do fourth-grade Korean students who participated in the daily practice of Sustained Silent Reading significantly outperform fourth-grade Korean students who did not participate in the daily practice of Sustained Silent Reading on reading attitude as measured by the Korean Version of Elementary Reading Attitude Survey?

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2. Do fourth-grade Korean students who participated in the daily practice of Sustained Silent Reading significantly outperform fourth-grade Korean students who did not participate in the daily practice of Sustained Silent Reading on reading comprehension as measured by the Korean Reading Comprehension Test?

Definition of Terms The following definitions of terms are assumed in this study: Sustained Silent Reading: It is a classroom reading activity wherein students are given a fixed period of time for the silent reading of self-selected material either for the purpose of enjoyment or for information (Moore, Jones, & Miller, 1980; Sadoski, 1984). Reading Comprehension: Theoretically speaking, it is an act of constructing meaning from graphic stimuli (Harris & Hodges, 1995). Operationally, it is an individual student’s score measured by the vocabulary and comprehension sections of the Korean Reading Comprehension Test, Level 4. Reading Attitude: Theoretically speaking, it is a psychological disposition formed through cognitive, affective, and behavioral response of a reading act (Alexander & Filler, 1976; Eagly & Craiken, 1993; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Operationally, reading attitude is an individual student’s score measured by using 20 items of the Korean Version of the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey.

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CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW SSR: Roots, Definition, Rationale, Reading Mode, and Guidelines The Roots of SSR From today’s point of view, Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) as a classroom reading activity is not a new idea in the field of reading. In fact, it can be traced back to Individualized Reading (IR) in the 1950s and the 1960s that was a sort of reading instruction to help teachers guide their students toward assuming responsibilities and initiatives for their own growth in reading (Pilgreen, 2000). Children were regularly given a period of time to read materials of their own choosing in those activities. Free reading, recreation reading, individualized reading, and library periods may also be considered the forerunners of SSR (Mork, 1972). More recently, Hunt (1970a, 1970b, 1971) introduced Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading (USSR) as one of the important elements of the Individualized Reading Program (IRP). Since then, the various versions of SSR have gained popularity in many elementary and secondary classrooms in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand throughout the early 1970s and 1980s (Sadoski, 1980; Combs & Van Dusseldorp, 1984). Although there are some variations in format and implementation, today’s reading teachers have been conducting SSR either as a part of a comprehensive literacy program such as a Reading-Writing Workshop (Atwell, 1998) or as a daily independent reading activity. According to Drecktrah and Chiang (1997), approximately 97% of American

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teachers in the second through fifth grade and 70% of American elementary teachers of students with learning disabilities have used SSR in their classrooms. As mentioned above, SSR was originally referred to as Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading (USSR) introduced by Hunt (1970a). One year later, MaCracken (1971) shortened his acronym to SSR after dropping the “U” from USSR. Since then, it has been labeled in a variety of ways: Personalized Reading (PR), Free Voluntary Reading (FVR) (Krashen, 1993), Pleasure Reading (PR) (Spiegel, 1981), Self-Selected Reading (SSR), and High Intensity Practice (HIP) (Oliver, 1970). For the purpose of promoting students’ interest in the activity, many catchy titles were created: Sustained Quiet Uninterrupted Individualized Reading Time (SQUIRT) (Bowermaster, 1986), Drop Everything and Read (DEAR), Drop Everything--Else Read (DEER), Our Time to Enjoy Reading (OTTER) (Tierney, Readence, & Dishner, 1995), Every Read in Class (ERIC), Daily Independent Reading Time (DIRT), Free Reading Every Day (FRED), Positive Outcomes While Enjoying Reading (POWER), Reading Instead of Television (RIOT) (Ziegler, 1993), Silent Time at Reading (STAR) (Noland, 1976), Reading Is Only the Tiger’s Tail (RIOTT) (McCracken & McCracken, 1972), and Motivation in Middle School (MIMS) (Heathington, 1979). To foster children’s participation and interaction with their peers, SSR was often combined with a variety of literacy activities such as writing (Pyle, 1990), discussion (Speaker, 1990), and talking (Gutkin, 1990; Hong, 1981; Kaisen, 1987). Moreover, to create reading opportunities outside of school, it used to be extended to the home environment: Home Sustained Silent Reading (HSSR) (Demos, 1986).

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No matter what terms have been used for SSR, basically it is an in-classroom reading activity wherein students are given a fixed period of time to silently read a selfselected material either for pleasure or for information. It still gains considerable attention among many literacy researchers and numerous reading teachers as a part of the regular language-arts reading curriculum or as an independent reading activity in classrooms. Definition For the last three decades since Lyman Hunt originally introduced USSR as a key element of an in-school reading program in 1970, many advocates have created various definitions of SSR. Hunt (1970a) defined it as a daily period of silent reading time wherein children practice several reading skills: “Every teacher of reading should think of USSR as the pinnacle of achievement with regard to teaching skillful reading” (p. 7). One year later, McCracken (1971) stated that “SSR is the drill of silent reading; it is the drill (originally emphasized) or practice necessary in learning to read, not a total reading program (p. 521). In a similar vein, Noland (1978) made the most overarching definition in the literature of SSR: Sustained Silent Reading is a concept developed and implemented by Hunt and McCracken that has as a fundamental goal the development of proficient readers. Educators in their conscientious efforts to provide direct reading instruction are over-teaching. Because reading is a skill, practice is necessary in order to develop reading proficiency. Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) by allowing readers to sustain themselves without interruption in silent reading periods of half an hour or more. (p. 157) However, these initial definitions limited the quality and value of the activity to the drill of a variety of reading skills. As McCracken and McCracken (1978) confessed several years later that “we saw SSR as the drill or practice of silent reading, and for

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some reasons our understanding of it was limited to this value” (p. 406), its primary purpose was to provide children with a large amount of time to apply and transfer a variety of isolated reading skills learned during their regular instructional period. Later, some definitions of it appeared to include discovery of the joy and value of reading, self-direction, and self-selection to foster a lifelong literacy learner. For example, Moore, Jones, and Miller (1980) stated that “SSR is a structured activity in which students are given a fixed period of time for the silent reading of self-selected material” (p. 445). Similarly, Sadoski (1984) wrote: Sustained silent reading (SSR) is a school reading activity, which consists of a period of time during the school day when children and teachers in a class or in the entire school read self-selected books without interruption for purpose of enjoyment. (p. 119) In summation, SSR can be defined as an in-classroom reading activity in which students and teachers are regularly provided with a fixed period of time for the silent reading of self-selected materials for the purpose of practice, pleasure, or information. Rationale There are a few primary reasons why literacy educators and literacy practitioners have been interested in SSR. The first reason is that SSR is supposed to promote children’s reading skills. When SSR was introduced as an in-classroom reading activity, its primary purpose was to provide children with a large amount of time to apply and transfer a variety of isolated reading skills learned during their regular instructional period. From this perspective, Hunt (1970a) stated “basic to the concept is that the greatest reading skill to be achieved is that of sustained silent reading over-long stretches

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of print without interruption and without breaks” (p. 7-8). In a similar vein, McCracken (1971) and Mork (1972) also commented, respectively: In our press of achievement, the importance of practice in reading silently has been overlooked. Our students are overtaught and underpracticed. We behave as if there is so much to teach that school time cannot be wasted on the drill of silent reading. (p. 583) Why so much practice in reading? The answer is simple. If someone is to learn a skill, he is provided large amounts of practice in using that skill. If children are to become readers, they must practice reading—in the kinds of materials they will read, books. (p. 438) However, their awareness of the value of SSR was limited to the practice and the application of reading skills through silent reading (McCracken & McCracken, 1978). As a consequence, it tends to overlook the development of children’s positive attitude toward reading which is one of the most important factors to influence their overall literacy development. The second reason is that many children lack a positive reading attitude and do not want to read much outside of school even though they are capable, independent readers and are always encouraged to read. With respect to the improvement of a positive reading habit, SSR has gained popularity among many reading teachers and literacy researchers because they believe that offering the opportunity to read voluntarily selfselected materials for pleasure is the most effective way of increasing it (Cline & Kretke, 1980; Moore, Jones, & Miller, 1980; Sadoski, 1984). In this regard, Sadoski (1984) and Moore, Jones, and Miller (1980) suggested, respectively: The rationale for SSR is that it will promote reading growth through allowing students to have sustained encounters with self-selected reading material without interruption in the presence of positive peer and teacher role models. Students develop reading skill through application and practice; they develop interests and

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taste through personal motivation and the free pursuit of individual concerns without the constraints of reporting or testing. Also, the avoidance of feelings of failure and stigmatization often engendered by oral reading difficulties exhibited in reading groups helps to promote attitude improvement as well. (p. 119) SSR helps to achieve a major goal of the school experience; it aids in developing attitudes and habits conducive to a lifetime of reading for enjoyment and learning. (p. 449) Basically, this notion is deeply grounded in the strong belief that the development of attitude toward reading is facilitated and enforced by providing students with ample opportunities to experience reading per se as a holistic process. The final assumption that is not explicitly stated by numerous advocates of SSR in the field of contemporary reading is that reading is a purely individualistic act of acquiring knowledge and taking pleasure. In other words, their understanding of reading is grounded mainly in a modern view of reading that has evolved in the Western context over the past several decades. From this modern perspective, reading is a process of constructing meaning through a private transaction between reader and printed material. Unwittingly, this notion placed reading in the realm of visual, silent, and private practice (Boyarin, 1993). This theoretical location of reading in the private sector neglected another aspect of reading as an action of collaborative interpretation in communities (Long, 1993). Under this circumstance, an act of reading and interpreting text had little social impact on creating a reading community wherein the readers are united around common goals. Furthermore, it also removed the possibility of creating and enlarging a textual community (Howe, 1993). As a consequence, it resulted in the lack of the vision of reading as a cultural and social practice.

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In fact, reading as a voluntary act either for pleasure or for information is a relatively contemporary concept. Historically, the acts of reading and of interpreting text were fundamentally public, social, and illocutionary, not private and subjective (Boyarin, 1993). For example, reading in ancient Jewish culture indicated an oral, social, and collective act wherein there was no sense of processing and receiving written language and nobody silently consumed texts alone without public interactions. Rather, reading and interpreting text as social action demanded reconsideration of the way readers capitalize culture and its impact on social change. In this context, readers not only empowered themselves and their members but also helped them create community, sustain collective memory, and challenge the status quo. Then, an act of reading was considered as a forum for critical reflections that were crucial in negotiating the moral and ideological dimension of social identity (Howe, 1993). On the contrary, reading in modern Europe signified an act that belongs to a private or semiprivate social space. More often than not, it became a scene wherein the reader is alone, distanced from the claims of domestic and public life. This historical transition from reading as a collective, oral practice to the private, silent practice resulted in a consideration of reading as the source for pleasure and erotic experience (Boyarin, 1993). Nell’s (1988) comment on reading for pleasure evokes it: Reading for pleasure is an extraordinary activity. The black squiggles on the white page are still as the grave, colorless as the moonlit desert; but they give the skilled reader a pleasure as acute as the touch of a loved body, as rousing, colorful and transfiguring as anything out there in the real world. (p. 1) From time to time and from place to place, an act of reading has occupied an entirely different practice. The contemporary notion of it shared among many people seems to reflect only the visible peak on an iceberg. To enlarge the boundaries of reading

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in the contemporary world, as Howe (1993) pointed out, we may not neglect that reading was originally referred to a public, oral act within a community. Reading Mode In regard to the issue of reading mode in SSR, many advocates preferred silent reading to oral reading. Hunt (1970a) strongly stated “silent reading is more significant than oral reading” (p. 7). McCracken (1971) also suggested: Each student should learn to read silently (italics added) and to sustain the act of reading in books for reasonably long periods of time. . . . Each student in kindergarten through high school should be required to read silent (italics added), without interruption, for thirty minutes a day. (p. 582) Apparently, such preference is grounded in the critical eyes of a traditional way of teaching reading in which reading has been regarded as a process of helping children “sound-out” every word as they read orally with their peers and teacher following along with a text. Initial research on reading mode also supported the argument that oral reading requires the designation of attention to pronunciation, intonation, and emphasis, resulting in slower and less accurate comprehension performance. Some studies empirically showed that silent reading appears to be superior to oral reading for reading comprehension (e.g., Mead, 1915, 1917; Pintner & Gilliland, 1917; Pintner, 1913). With the influence of cognitive approaches such as cognitive psychology, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics in the field of reading, especially, silent reading as a one-step process of associating meanings with prints was reemphasized. In this regard, many advocates of the paradigm argued that ongoing vocalization in oral reading requires memory capacity

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shared with other cognitive processes involved in reading comprehension, resulting in slower reading comprehension in oral reading (Goodman, 1970, 1971). However, the findings from research were equivocal as to whether silent reading or oral reading per se increases greater reading comprehension. Some studies found oral reading comprehension to be superior (Burge, 1983; Elgart, 1978; Rowell, 1976), while other studies found no consistent differences between silent and oral reading comprehension (Nardella-Rodriguez, 1991; Sposato, 1979). In contrast, several studies showed conflicting results (Cieslak & Parmer, 1986; Miller & Smith, 1985, 1990; Swalm, 1972), namely the interactive effect between reading mode and level of reading competency. That is, for good readers oral and silent reading comprehension are equivalent, while for poor readers oral reading comprehension is superior to silent reading. Therefore, an exclusive use of silent reading mode in SSR may be reconsidered for poor or lower-grade readers. Guidelines SSR as a simple, yet effective reading activity never happens in a vacuum. Just providing children with a large amount of time to read various materials may not be enough. Rather, well-regulated procedures leading the activity are indispensable for its success. To effectively implement it, many researchers and teachers have suggested various guidelines of organizing and managing their classrooms. For the first time, McCracken (1971) developed feasible principals for the activity. They included the following six guidelines (pp. 521-522): (a) Each student must read silently, (b) the teacher reads, (c) each student selects books, (d) a timer is used, (e) there are absolutely

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no reports or records of any kind, and (f) begin with whole classes or larger groups of student. Each student must read silently. The implication of this rule is that each student can read silently so that nobody pretends to read, especially if he or she is provided an opportunity to read printed materials of their own choosing in enriched-literacy environment. The teacher reads. The teacher should display a good role model. For those children who have never experienced such role modeling at home or in school, it is one of the most important sources for the development of a positive attitude toward reading. Each student selects books. Self-selection is the best way of fostering children’s involvement in reading materials and of promoting their literacy development in terms of cognition and affection. In order for them to have ample opportunities to select various materials, therefore, there must be a wide range of materials available in classrooms. For those children who have difficulty choosing materials by themselves, however, an appropriate guidance should always be required. A timer is used. An alarm clock or cooking timer is used so that no child interrupts to ask how much time has elapsed or if time is up. At the outset, teachers had better start with a short amount of time in order for children to maintain their attention on reading. There are no reports or records of any kind. Non-accountability or light accountability, if any, is required. Children, if possible, are not required to keep records, prepare book reports or daily reading journal, or write summaries for a given period of time. Sometimes, heavy accountability as in regular reading classes may change the

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context for even the best of literacy texts from pleasure-offering reading to functional reading. Begin with whole classes or larger groups of student. This activity is flexible enough to fit well with any kinds of reading curriculum and with any age group ranging from primary through secondary, even college level. In particular, children can learn from each other in whole classes or larger groups. Several years later, Hong (1981) modified McCracken’s (1971) procedures to provide younger or slower readers with the opportunity to actively participate in the activity. In the modified SSR called “Booktime” (Hong, 1981), the reading group consisted of five to seven younger readers. At first they began with 1-5 minutes. Gradually, they increased their reading time to 10-15 minutes, as they became familiar with it. Furthermore, interactive activities such as book-sharing, reading-aloud, and paired-reading were permitted if students did not make too much noise. The teacher also responded to their questions about books. These guidelines included the following: (a) Reading time is held at the same time each day, (b) the reading group consists of five to seven students, (c) the teacher regularly reads aloud to the children, (d) children select just one book at a time, (e) the teacher reads with the children, and responds to children’s questions if needed, (f) children are permitted to read in pairs and talk to each other quietly, (g) children are guided towards reading books, and (h) there should be little noise through the reading area. Again, 20 years later Pilgreen (2000) added a few factors: (a) print-rich environment requires, (b) staff training should be provided, and (c) follow-up activity should be offered.

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Besides these various standard procedures, in an effort to maximize the effects of the activity many teachers often used a bulletin board to present interesting book lists, information on the winner of book awards, the background of an author, or a teacher’s own reading log. Also, many reading teachers create a print-rich reading environment, including the availability of age appropriate and reading level appropriate printed materials, in order to encourage children to engage in SSR. Absolutely, these efforts should be indispensable for SSR success. With those standard elements, therefore, they should be considered as important factors consisting of the activity. However, there are no magical guidelines for guiding students to experience the joy of reading. As put by Spiegel (1981), a teacher’s own knowledge about his or her classroom should be the first step in implementing the activity.

Mechanism of SSR for Reading Attitude and Reading Comprehension Why are some children willing to spend much more time reading inside and outside of school? In contrast, why are others unwilling to do so? In the language of social psychology, why do some persons hold a positive attitude toward reading, whereas others hold a negative attitude toward it? Despite the importance and necessity of answering these questions, little exploration and elaboration toward such understanding have been conducted in the field of reading education (Mathewson, 1994; McKenna, Kear, & Ellsworth, 1995). Instead, social psychologists have been interested in making sense of the structure and nature of attitude, including reading attitude, its acquisition, and development. They have used the concept of attitude to solve those questions mentioned earlier in this paragraph (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993).

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An examination of the social psychological literature shows that attitude has been variously defined. For example, Petty and Cacioppo (1981) viewed it as “a general and enduring positive or negative feeling about some person, object, or issue” (p. 7). Beck (1983) viewed it as “a positive or negative evaluation of some person, object, or things” (p. 302). Ajzen (1989) regarded it as “an individual’s disposition to respond favorably or unfavorably to an object, person, institution, or event, or to any other discriminable aspect of the individual’s world” (p. 241). Each of these definitions has been categorized into three classes in social psychology: cognition, affect, and behavior, depending on what aspect of the concept of attitude is relatively emphasized (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). From this point of view, Petty and Cacioppo emphasized the aspect of feelings or emotions that people have with respect to a given attitude object, whereas Beck stressed the aspect of cognitive evaluation that people have about a given attitude object (Mathewson, 1994). Ajzen focused on the aspect of behavioral intentions that people have in relation to a specific attitude object (Mathewson, 1994). Similarly, discussions of attitude toward reading in the field of reading research have been within the rubric of such social psychological definitions. For example, Alexander and Filler (1976) defined it as “a system of feeling related to reading which cause the learner to approach or avoid reading situation” (p. 1). McKenna adopted the view that “attitude is largely affective in nature and that beliefs are causally related to it” (p. 938). All of these definitions emphasize the aspect of feelings or emotions that people have with respect to reading behavior. In contrast, Mathewson (1994) viewed it as “evaluation of content and purpose, feelings about engaging in a particular kind of reading, and action readiness for initiating or sustaining reading activity” (p. 1136). It

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stresses the aspect of cognitive evaluation that people have about an act of reading as well as the aspect of behavior readiness that people have in relation to an act of reading. With respect to the dimensionality of attitude, discussions have been produced in the field of social psychology. Fishbein (1967) and Alexander and Filler (1976) adopted a one-component model of attitude where attitude is primarily associated with the affective concept. Cognitive and behavioral responses are regarded as contributing factors. In contrast, Ajzen (1988) adopted a traditional idea of social psychology dividing the dimensionality of attitude into three categories, in which each of three classes of attitude is supposed to possess unique discriminant validity not shared with the other two. As in the area of social psychology, however, the dimensionality of attitude toward reading remains controversial for empirical and theoretical issues in the field of reading research. Emphasizing the feelings an individual person experiences in relation to a reading act, McKenna (1994) argued that reading attitude is primarily associated with the affective concept and that beliefs are causally related to it. In contrast, accepting a tricomponent model of attitude that accentuates the three concepts of the cognitive, affective, and behavioral, Mathewson (1994) pointed out that “quantifying all three of these aspects not only ensures that attitude toward reading has been measured fully, but also allows estimation of their subjective importance” (p. 1151). Each of these models has been supported by several empirical studies. The earlier studies of the construct of attitude toward reading conducted by Engin, Wallbrown, and Brown (1976) and Wallbrown, Brown, and Engin (1978) showed that reading attitude includes the following eight dimensions: (a) expressed reading difficulty, (b) reading as direct reinforcement, (c) reading as enjoyment, (d) alternative learning

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modes, (e) silent vs. oral reading, (f) reading anxiety, (g) reading groups, and (h) comics. The principle-factor analysis by Blaha and Chomin (1981) also showed support for a few dimensions such as the expressed reading difficulty, reading as enjoyment, silent vs. oral reading, and alternative learning modes. In a similar vein, Lewis and Teale (1980) pointed out that reading attitude is based upon a multi-dimensional conceptualization of an act of reading: (a) a development factor—the value an individual has in relation to an act of reading as a means of gaining insight into self and others, (b) a utilitarian factor— the value an individual has with respect to an act of reading in attaining educational or vocational goals, and (c) an enjoyment factor--the value an individual has in relation to an act of reading for pleasure. In contrast, McKenna and Kear’s (1990) factor analysis of the psychological reality of reading attitude showed that it includes only two dimensions of attitude toward recreational reading and attitude toward academic reading. No matter what dimensions function as components or as contributing factors, each of the models have played a unique role in constructing the theoretical models of reading attitude acquisition, development, and its influence on reading comprehension in the field of reading research. Mathewson (1976, 1985, 1994) developed and redeveloped the first model of reading attitude that addresses the cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of attitude. Along with external motivators (e.g., incentives, purposes, norms, and settings) and an individual internal emotional state (e.g., excitement, joy, and sadness), reading attitude is one of three principal components that influence an individual’s intention to read (or continue reading) in his model (see Figure 2.1). According to his model, attitude acquisition is affected by four important factors, “cornerstone concepts,” “persuasive

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Persuasive communications: Central route and peripheral route

Satisfaction with affect developed through reading Specific feelings stimulated by ideas from reading and by reading process Internal emotional state

Attitude Toward Reading

Cornerstone Concepts

Prevailing feelings about reading Action readiness for reading

Intention to read or to continue reading

Reading, including text selection, attention, strategy use, and comprehension

Evaluative beliefs about reading External motivators (incentives, purposes, norms, and settings)

Revision of cornerstone concepts based on ideas from reading

Satisfaction with ideas developed through reading

Ideas reconstructed from or related to reading selection

Key Influence Feedback

Figure 2.1 Mathewson Model of Attitude Influence upon Reading and Learning to Read From G.C. Mathewson, “Model of Attitude Influence upon Reading and Learning to Read” (p. 1149). In R.B. Ruddell, M.R. Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (4th ed.), 1994. Reprinted by permission of the International Reading Association.

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communications,” “affective satisfaction,” and “cognitive satisfaction.” Cornerstone concepts, which includes personal values, goals toward reading, and self-concept as a reader and persuasive communications (e.g., a teacher’s persuasion for children to read or an attractive picture on a book’s cover) influence attitude toward reading through the influence connections. Also, affective satisfaction (satisfaction with affect developed through reading) and cognitive satisfaction (satisfaction with ideas developed through reading) have an impact on attitude through the feedback connections. This viewpoint implies that a positive attitude toward reading appears to influence an intention to read, which in turn influences reading behavior, and subsequently reading experience. By a feedback route, such reading experience reinforces attitude toward reading. In his words, Cornerstone concepts and persuasive communications influence attitude toward reading, attitude influences intention, intention influences reading, and reading gives rise to ideas, feelings, and internal emotions. To perpetuate the cycle, satisfaction with ideas, feelings, and emotional states that result from reading provides feedback influencing the initial attitude toward reading. Favorable attitude toward reading thus sustains intention to read and reading as long as readers continue to be satisfied with reading outcomes. (Mathewson, 1994, p. 1148) As mentioned in the earlier discussions regarding the dimensionality of attitude toward reading, however, the model may have limitations in its suitability for predicting attitude acquisition and development. First, as McKenna (1994) pointed out, a reader’s subjective norms in the model (i.e., a reader’s belief about the views and expectations held by significant others in his or her reading environment) directly influence his or her intention to reading, not attitude toward reading. In regard to the issue of a casual relationship from beliefs to attitude, Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) and Ajzen (1989) argued that a casual relationship proceeds in general from beliefs to attitudes to intentions to read

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to reading behavior. Liska’s (1984) revised model of the Fishbein-Ajzen model also illustrated that beliefs directly influence attitude. After all, the Mathewson model may lack the possibility that such beliefs about subject norms can directly influence attitude toward reading (McKenna, 1994; McKenna, Kear, & Ellsworth, 1995). Second, the model postulates that intention to read is a sufficient condition to cause reading behavior to occur. However, intention to read itself may not be sufficient to cause reading behavior to occur when reading skills or social interactions are required. In addition to the intention to read, appropriate reading skills and social interactions also play important casual roles in leading reading behavior (Liska, 1984). In spite of some limitations in explaining attitude acquisition and development, his model has contributed to a very significant advance in theorizing the process of attitude acquisition and development. In another effort to construct a more comprehensive model of acquisition and development of reading attitude, McKenna (1994, 1995) synthesized several general models of attitude acquisition (e.g., Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; Liska, 1984) and reading-specific models of acquisition and development of attitude toward reading (e.g., Mathewson, 1985, 1994; Ruddell & Speaker, 1985). Instead of taking up a tricomponent view of attitude, McKenna (1994) adopted the view that “attitude is largely affective in nature and that beliefs are casually related to it” (p. 938). By differentiating beliefs from attitude in his model (see Figure 2.2), he proposed a causal relationship from beliefs to attitude. Specifically, his model suggested three important factors directly influencing reading attitude acquisition and development: (a) beliefs about the expectations of significant others, (b) beliefs about the outcome of

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Social structure and environment

Beliefs about the outcomes of reading in light of judged desirability of those outcomes

Beliefs about the expectations of others in light of one’ motivation to conform to those expectations

Subjective norms contingent on: -identify of others -possible conflicts among expectation -nature of specific expectations -externally imposed purposes for reading ∙∙∙

Intention to read contingent on: -availability of help -availability of materials -interest in topic -time constraints -physical environment -presence of competing options -physiological state -nature of specific text ∙∙∙

Attitude toward reading contingent on: -strength of attitude -personal purposes for reading -importance ascribed to specific reading activity being considered ∙∙∙

Decision to read (or keep reading)

Metacognitive state

Decoding subprocesses

Cognitive state

Text representation

Figure 2.2 McKenna Model of Reading Attitude Acquisition From M.C. McKenna, “Toward a Model of Reading Attitude Acquisition” (p. 31). In E.H. Cramer & M. Castle (Eds.), Fostering the Love of Reading: The Affective Domain in Reading Education, 1994. Reprinted by permission of the International Reading Association.

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reading, and (c) a reader’s metacognitive state. Along with attitude toward reading, subjective norms (e.g., identity of significant others, possible conflicts among expectations, nature of specific expectations, and externally imposed reading purpose), intention to read (e.g., availability of help and materials, time constraints, physical reading environment, and physiological state), and a reader’s metacognitive state (a monitoring of text comprehension and a judgment about whether the reader’s reading purpose is being satisfied) influence reading behavior, in his words, “a decision to read or keep reading” (McKenna, Kear, & Ellsworth, 1995, p. 31). Furthermore, with respect to attitude acquisition and development over time, his model implies that a reader’s attitude toward reading develops as the result of an interaction of three factors: subjective norms, beliefs about the outcome of reading, and individual reading experience. As he pointed out, however, the theoretical and empirical validity of the model may require numerous investigations. Nevertheless, his model contributed to a very significant advance in conceptualizing the acquisition and development of attitude toward reading. On the other hand, as illustrated in the two models, many factors can contribute to the acquisition and development of an attitude toward reading. School achievement, selfconcept, school and home environment, parental attitude, teacher attitude, gender, socioeconomic status, individual interest, maturations, and intelligence are the most prominent factors (for review, see Alexander & Filler, 1976). In addition to these factors, many researchers have documented that instructional strategies such as reading aloud to students (Anderson, Tollefson, & Gilbert, 1985; Herrold, Stanchfield, & Serabuan, 1989), using high-quality literature (Morrow, 1983), emphasizing links between reading events

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and life events (Guzzetti, 1990) play a crucial role in developing and improving a positive reading attitude. Also, many researchers and numerous reading teachers have paid attention to SSR as an in-classroom reading activity to achieve two educational objectives: (a) improvement of attitude toward reading and (b) enhancement of the overall reading performance. In particular, their interest in SSR is based on: (a) offering a reader a large amount of time to apply and transfer the isolated reading skills learned during their regular instructional period is the best way of enhancing his or her overall literacy development in terms of the cognitive domain and (b) allowing him or her to encounter self-selected reading material without interruption in the presence of positive peer and teacher role models is an effective means to foster a positive attitude toward reading. They seemed to believe that several important characteristics of the SSR activity such as self-selection, role modeling, non-accountability, and frequent exposure to print would serve as the mechanism to develop reading performance and reading attitude. Based on the models of reading attitude acquisition presented earlier in this section, those characteristics of SSR are supposed to cause a reader’s reading attitude and reading comprehension to improve by several routes such as cornerstone concepts or persuasive communications in the Mathewson model and the beliefs a reader harbors about reading and specific reading experience in the McKenna model. Empirically, many researchers have documented that SSR as an in-classroom reading activity promoted students’ positive attitudes toward reading (Aranha, 1985; Dully, 1989; Wilmot, 1975) and reading achievement (Aranha, 1985; Burley, 1980; Farrell, 1982; Langford & Allen, 1983; Pilgreen, 2000).

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The following are some important characteristics of SSR, which are supposed to serve as the mechanism to develop reading comprehension and reading attitude: Self-Selection It is reasonable to assume that readers pay closer attention, persist in their reading for longer periods of time, learn more, and enjoy their involvement to a greater degree when they read materials that interest them. In this regard, Deci and Ryan’s (1985) theory of self-determination and intrinsic motivation, emphasizing that children’s natural curiosity energizes their desire to learn, is useful in explaining children’s desire to learn. From a reading perspective, their self-determination theory suggests that children are motivated when they have choice and ownership in what they read. The models mentioned earlier in this paper also illustrate that self-selection as internal motivation is one of the important factors that influence the decision to read and that sustain the reading activity. In addition, Renninger and Wozniak (1985) argued that even young children have strong, stable, and relatively well-focused individual interests that function as powerful determinants of their attention, recognition, and memory. As a crucial motivating factor, providing children with an opportunity to select printed materials may be an effective strategy for children’s literacy development because individual interest in topics is a crucial determinant of reading attitude and reading comprehension. By choosing their own materials, they have their own ownership of reading that eventually becomes the cornerstone of their overall literacy development (Shannon, 1995). A few studies (e.g., Cecil, 1984; Rehder, 1980) have also demonstrated that individual preference of topics has a positive effect on cognitive and affective functioning. For example, Rehder (1980) conducted a study to determine “how much liking affects

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reading achievement.” Secondary school students involved in a popular fiction course where they were provided high interest paperback-fiction of their own choosing significantly outperformed the control group students who participated in a composition class as the control group. Furthermore, many students responded that they would continue to enjoy reading. Similarly, in Cecil’s (1984) study, Native American students were asked to read books in which they are interested or not. Their higher topical interests in books produced higher reading comprehension of those books. These results suggested that preference might be a crucial motivational element to increase reading comprehension and reading attitude. More recently, Schiefele (1991) investigated how college students’ interest in materials influences their comprehension when their prior knowledge of the materials and general intelligence were controlled. Schiefele found that students who were interested in the materials processed those materials more deeply than did students less interested in the materials. Furthermore, Fink (1996) found that even dyslexics, who were hampered by persistent deficiencies in basic reading skills, could construct meaning in a single high interest domain. By focusing on self-selection in SSR, the teacher can find ways of fostering children’s involvement in printed materials and promoting their literacy development in terms of cognitive and affective domains in reading. In particular, offering such personal selection may make a significant contribution to the motivation of unmotivated readers. In contrast, when self-choice is removed, individual intrinsic motivation to reading may be diminished (Gottfried, 1985). In addition to individual self-selection, however, children also should be provided with careful guidance that leads them, especially for

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some children who have difficulty selecting appropriate materials by themselves, to make an appropriate selection. Role Modeling Human behavior is learned in part by observation and imitation (Bandura, 1986). For young children such physical demonstration may be one of the most important sources of their social learning. When a given behavior is modeled by parents, teachers, peers, or celebrities, especially, their learning of it may be facilitated. With respect to the attitude acquisition and development, the assumption is well illustrated in the models presented above where role modeling as subjective norm in the McKenna model or as external motivator in the Mathewson model is an important factor to influence reading activity. Through this lens, teachers have the opportunity to demonstrate their interest and enjoyment of reading by providing a role model of silent reading. During SSR time, their participation provides a good model for the development of children’s attitude and interest in reading. In this regard, many researchers suggested that it is a crucial factor for the success of SSR. For example, Gambrell (1981) stated, “our students need to see that we value reading and that reading is important in our lives. Share with your students. What better way to show them that reading is important” (p. 898). A teacher also commented on the importance of the teacher model in facilitating children literacy development: I think the teacher modeling during SSR does perhaps improve the children’s concentration. If you are actually reading you do set them an example . . . I can’t think of many teachers who actually do read. Most of them were shuffling papers of some sort . . . If you are doing something very quietly at your desk—this could be marking, it might not affect them too much . . . I think because they had so little free time . . . it was a time to . . . check up on all the little things you needed to do . . . I can see the advantages for sitting and reading . . . I think I’ll have to try it. (as cited in Campbell, 1989, p.181)

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If a teacher reads at the same time and the same place, children may understand that an adult thinks that reading is important enough to engage in it themselves as a scheduled part of the busy school day. Moreover, such nonverbal feedback offered by the teacher and their peers in the classroom may lead students to continue and to sustain the activity. Even if it is no longer externally imposed on them, the activity may proceed. In this regard, Wheldall and Entwhistle’s (1988) study provided affirmative evidence that showing the teacher’s own reading behavior is one of the most positive influences he or she has on students. Their study was conducted to determine whether teacher role modeling is an important factor for children’s reading behavior. In the study, 23 fourthgrade students of mixed ability participated in a SSR activity over a six-week period. They reported an overall mean increase in on-task-reading behavior of approximately 32% from initial baseline to second intervention. The results showed a strong effect for teacher modeling during the SSR session. In contrast, the lack of appropriate role modeling has been attributed to failure of the implementation of the SSR (Gambrell, 1981). Therefore, teacher role modeling as nonverbal feedback should always be considered in the implementation of the SSR activity. Non-accountability Children are not required to keep records, prepare book reports or daily reading journals, or write summaries for a given period of time. No accountability or light accountability, if possible, is required because heavy accountability may change the context for even the best of literary texts from pleasure-offering reading to functional reading. That is, it may lead even active readers to invent ways of showing the autonomy of their reading for the teacher, while for reluctant readers it may be so threatening that

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they never experience the pleasure of reading. In this regard, one teacher who participated in the Nagy et al.’s survey (2000) strongly commented: Reading should be a spark to ignite a fire—heavy accountability tends to throw water on the spark. If it is graded, it defeats the purpose of reading class...to become life-long readers. (p. 6) Schiavone’s (2000) study also showed that accountability for reading did not play a key role on the reading comprehension and attitude of seventh-grade children. However, the teacher should exert all possible efforts to share his or her reading experience with children and to entice comments from them about reading out of the activity. Exposure to Print Frequent exposure to print is probably a major source of a reader’s vocabulary knowledge and background knowledge growth. That is, many researchers have well documented the relationship between knowledge of word meanings and comprehension (e.g., Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Beck, McKeown, & Omanson, 1987; Stahl & Fairbanks, 1986). The important conclusion drawn from this relationship is that more vocabulary knowledge facilitates better comprehension. Also, the contribution of background knowledge to comprehension has been well explored under the overall framework of schema theory by many researchers (e.g., Bransford & Johnson, 1972; Lipson, 1982, 1983; Pearson, Hansen, & Gordon, 1979). The essential conclusion drawn from those studies is that vocabulary knowledge serves as scaffolding to understanding the new information in the text. With respect to the growth of such knowledge, many researchers have suggested the importance of frequent print exposure. A few studies of the relationship between comprehension and print exposure have supported the belief that exposure to print fosters

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reading comprehension (e.g., Anderson, Wilson, & Fielding, 1988; Cipielewski & Stanovich, 1992). For example, Anderson, Wilson, and Fielding (1988) found that comprehension in Grade 5 was correlated with time spent reading books at home. In a similar vein, Cipielewski and Stanovich (1992) also reported that children with high levels of print exposure were more likely to be better readers than children with low levels of print exposure. In other words, children got richer, or better at reading, as a result of frequent exposure to print; children got poorer, or worse at reading, as a result of infrequent exposure to print (Stanovich, 1986). Hence, providing children with an opportunity to read materials of their own choosing should be one of the most important school-related tasks to increase children’s exposure to print and then to foster their literacy development.

Research Studies of Sustained Silent Reading Summaries of Research Studies Over the past three decades, since Hunt (1970a) introduced USSR, numerous theoretical and empirical research studies have been conducted on the effects of SSR on reading achievement and attitude toward reading of elementary and secondary L1 (first language) readers and L2 (second language) readers. By ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) and UMI (University Microfilms) databases, approximately 350 studies were collected. Of them, some representative studies are summarized in chronological order in Appendix A (Detail procedures for data collection were presented in the meta-analysis section).

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Synthesis of Studies: A Meta-Analytic Approach It is the purpose of this section to examine the effects of SSR on reading attitude and reading comprehension by employing Hedges and Olkin’s (1985) meta-analytic procedure. Two research questions were posed: (a) does SSR enhance students’ attitude toward reading and reading comprehension and (b) what contextual features of SSR are associated with students’ reading attitude and reading comprehension? The purpose of the first question was to evaluate the overall effect of SSR on reading attitude and reading comprehension. The second question permitted the identification of SSR moderator variables on reading attitude and comprehension. Variability in Study Features Studies included in this analysis differ in methodological and procedural features as well as sample characteristics such as the type of treatment conducted, participant characteristics, sample size, and type of control group used. Such contextual features known as moderator variables (Rosenthal, 1984) may be associated with variations in the magnitude of the relationships between an independent and dependent variable. That is, some contextual characteristics across the reviewed studies may influence significant variability in the magnitude of the relationships, that is, in the effect sizes of those studies. From the literature review, several contextual features (e.g., publication type, duration of treatment, treatment type of control group, participant’s grade level and ability level, methodological quality, and teacher’s role) were found as potential moderator variables of SSR studies. Of them, two contextual factors, duration of treatment, and participant’s grade level, were analyzed because they are more significant

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moderators that exert on influence the effect sizes of the studies as compared with the other moderator variables. Duration of Treatment. Each of the studies included in this analysis varies in its duration of treatment. Intervention in several studies (Dully, 1989; Schon, Hopkins, & Vojir, 1985) lasted more than a semester, approximately 6 months, while that of others (Box, 1984; Collins, 1980) lasted less than 6 months. However, evidence regarding the effectiveness of duration of treatment as a moderator variable on reading attitude and reading comprehension is equivocal. One school-year study (Dully, 1989) did not report a positive effect on reading attitude, whereas just a 13-week study (Box, 1984) showed a positive effect on it. For reading comprehension, one school-year study (Dully, 1989) did not report a positive effect, whereas a 6-week study (Burley, 1980) showed a significant effect on it. In light of the cost and the effort of producing a given effect, duration of treatment gives us an indicator to evaluate the practical value of the program. For instance, if a short duration of treatment produces as significant an impact on reading attitude and reading comprehension as a longer duration of intervention does, then the less expensive and effortful one may justify broad dissemination and adoption. In this regard, I chose duration of treatment as a moderator variable to investigate if this contextual factor influences significant variability in the magnitude of the effect sizes of those studies. The level of this moderator was classified as more than 6 months and less than 6 months because a semester-treatment-duration, of approximately 6 months or less, is not substantially short in a school context. Grade Level. A variety of grade levels of students ranging from second grade to a college level have participated in SSR. However, empirical support regarding the

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effectiveness of grade level on reading attitude and reading comprehension is not entirely convincing. For reading attitude, Wilmot (Wilmot, 1975) reported that there is a statistically significant effect for the fourth- and sixth-grade students, whereas no significant effect is found for the second graders. Holt and O’Teul (1989) showed that there is a positive effect for the seventh graders, while Einhorn (1979) reported that there is not a significant impact for the fifth-grade students. For reading comprehension, Burley (1980) reported that there is a statistically significant effect for the sixth through eighthgrade students, whereas no significant effect is found for the fifth through seventh-grade students (Summer & McClelland, 1982). Box (1984) showed that there is not a positive effect for third graders, whereas Reedy (1994) reported that a significant difference is found for third graders. In view of the effectiveness of intervention, it is important to know at which grade levels such a contextual factor influences the magnitude of a relationship because it may provide us an optimal time to maximize the effectiveness of SSR intervention. In this regard, grade level of students was selected as a moderator variable to investigate if such a contextual factor moderates significant variability in the magnitude of the effect sizes of those studies. The grade level was classified as below third grade and above fourth grade because after the third grade more and more children are likely to participate in leisure options such as sports and social communities, which can influence the magnitude of the effectiveness of SSR intervention. Data Collection To evaluate the effectiveness of SSR on reading attitude and reading comprehension, the investigator employed a meta-analytical approach developed by

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Hedges and Olkin (Hedges & Olkin, 1985). To identify relevant studies, ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) and UMI (University Microfilms) databases were searched. In particular, including unpublished doctoral dissertations as well as unpublished articles in this analysis helps me avoid, more or less, the publication bias related to the “file drawer problem” (Rosenthal, 1984), which is tendency for authors not to submit and journal editors not to accept for publication of studies that fail to produce statistically significant results. However, the search was limited to the research and literature from 1970 to the present because research on SSR has been widely conducted since Hunt (1970a) introduced Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading (USSR) as one of the important elements of an Individualized Reading Program (IRP). Through such a search, over 350 studies were collected as a preliminary data set. In the initial selection, the investigator cut all non-experimental studies. Then, abstracts of over 70 studies were reviewed and 25 studies remained. For the review of the second list, full texts of 25 studies were reviewed based on the following criteria: (a) an SSR group was compared to a control group, (b) studies contained enough statistical information to estimate effect size, (c) studies were published or unpublished after 1970, and (d) outcome measures included reading comprehension or reading attitude. After the second review, 10 studies of reading comprehension and 7 ones of reading attitude remained in this analysis. Effect Size Calculation The meta-analysis program developed by Schwarzer (1996) was used to calculate effect sizes. For studies including multiple treatments case, the effect size of each comparison was calculated individually. For studies in which multiple outcome measures were used, the effect size of each dependent measure was averaged. Thus, although 7

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studies for reading attitude and 10 studies for reading comprehension were selected, 10 and 11 effect sizes were obtained and calculated, respectively. In addition to the calculation of effect sizes, statistical analyses of the effect sizes were performed. For the first purpose of this study, the null hypothesis that the population value of the weighted average of corrected effect sizes equals zero was tested. The second purpose of this study was to identify the moderator variables of SSR. To test the null hypothesis that the variance in effect sizes is significantly different from that expected by sampling error alone, a homogeneity test that is based on a Q statistic [a χ2 distribution with (the number of effect sizes – 1) degree of freedom] (Hedges & Olkin, 1985) was conducted. The statistical analysis that rejects the null hypothesis of homogeneity indicates that the variability of the effect sizes is larger than that expected by chance, sampling error. Then, further analysis was performed to examine whether study characteristics are systematically associated with variance in effect sizes. Results As mentioned earlier in this paper, the purposes of this meta-analytic study were to investigate the overall effects of Sustained Silent Reading on reading attitude and reading comprehension and to identify the moderator variables of SSR on them. Those results included the following: (a) overall effects and (b) moderator variable effects. Overall Effects. Ten comparisons from 7 attitude studies were used to calculate the average effect size of SSR on reading attitude. The mean of effect size (ES) was .12, and its standard error was .04. The statistical test did not support the hypothesis that the population ES is zero (χ2 (1) = 12.11, p < .05). The average effect size of SSR on attitude toward reading was .12, which corresponds to the percentile of .55, indicating that the

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reading attitude score of the average individual in the SSR group exceeds the scores of 55% of individuals in the control group. The result indicates that there is empirical support for SSR affecting students’ reading attitude. Eleven comparisons from 10 comprehension studies were used to obtain the average effect size of SSR on reading comprehension. The mean of effect size (ES) was .11, and its standard error was .04. The statistical test did not support the hypothesis that the population ES is zero (χ2 (1) = 8.29, p < .05). The average effect size of SSR on reading comprehension was .11, which corresponds to the percentile of .54, indicating that the reading comprehension score of the average individual in the SSR group exceeds the scores of 54% of individuals in the control group. Table 2.1 Descriptive Statistics on the Effect Size of Reading Attitude and Reading Comprehension Dependent Variable Number of Studies (Sample Size) Attitude* Comprehension*

Effect Size

Standard Error

95% Confidence Interval

7 (3183)

.12

.04

.05, .19

10 (3022)

.11

.04

.02, .17

*p < .05.

The result indicates that there is empirical support for SSR affecting students’ reading comprehension. Table 2.1 shows the descriptive statistics on the effect size of reading attitude and reading comprehension. Moderator Variable Effects. The purpose of the second question was to identify the moderator variables of SSR on reading attitude and reading comprehension. Table 2.2 displays descriptive statistics for the attitude effect size by duration of treatment and grade level.

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The Qb statistic, the test of homogeneity, indicated that effect sizes are not different by duration of treatment (χ2 (1) = .05, p > .05). Students in the experiments of less-than-6-month duration of treatment (ES = .12) did not gain significantly more reading attitude scores than their peers in the experiments of more-than-6month duration of treatment (ES = .14). This result shows that there is no effect size difference between more-than 6-month duration of treatment and less-than-6-month duration of treatment. That is, SSR equally fosters students’ reading attitude regardless of duration of treatment.

Table 2.2 Descriptive Statistics on the Effect Size of the Moderators on Reading Attitude Moderator

Level

Number of Studies (Sample Size)

ES

Standard Error

95% CI

Treatment Length

Less Than 6 Month More Than 6 Month

5 (2327) 2 (856)

.12 .14

.04 .07

.04, .20 .00, .27

Grade*

Below 3rd Grade Above 4th Grade

3 (507) 4 (2484)

.32 .06

.09 .04

.14, .50 -.01, .14

*p < .05, for the test of homogeneity.

In contrast, the Qb statistic for grade levels showed that effect sizes differed on students’ grade levels (χ2 (1) = 6.67, p < .05). For the lower grade students, the average effect size was .32, which corresponds to the percentile of .63, whereas for the highergrade students, the mean effect size was .06, which corresponds the percentile of .52. These results indicate that the reading attitude score of the average individual in the SSR group exceeds the scores of 63% and 52% of individuals in the control group, respectively. That is, they showed that SSR is a more effective reading activity to increase attitude toward reading for the lower grade students than for the higher-grade students. Table 2.3 displays descriptive statistics for the reading comprehension effect size by duration of treatment and grade level. 39

The Qb statistic, the test of homogeneity, indicated that effect sizes are not different by duration of treatment (χ2 (1) = .05, p > .05). Participants in the experiments of less-than-6-month duration of treatment (ES = .10) did not outperform their peers in the experiments of more-than-6-month duration of treatment (ES = .09) on reading comprehension. This result shows that there is no effect size difference between morethan 6-month duration of treatment and less-than-6-month duration of treatment. That is, SSR equally fosters students’ reading comprehension regardless of duration of treatment.

Table 2.3 Descriptive Statistics on the Effect Size of the Moderators on Reading Comprehension Moderator

Level

Number of Studies (Sample Size)

ES

Standard Error

95% CI

Treatment Length

Less Than 6 Month More Than 6 Month

6 (1807) 4 (1215)

.10 .09

.05 .09

.01, .19 -.03, .20

Grade*

Below 3rd Grade Above 4th Grade

2 (324) 5 (1902)

.20 .16

.06 .04

.07, .42 .07, .25

*p < .05, for the test of homogeneity.

In contrast, the Qb statistic for grade levels showed that effect sizes differed on students’ grade levels (χ2 (1) = 4.77, p < .05). For the lower grade students, the average effect size for reading comprehension was .20, which corresponds to the percentile of .58, whereas for the higher-grade students, the mean effect size was .16, which corresponds to the percentile of .56. The results indicate that the reading comprehension score of the average individual in the SSR group exceeds the scores of 58% and 56% of individuals in the control group, respectively. That is, they showed that SSR is a more effective reading activity to increase reading comprehension for the lower grade students than for the higher-grade students.

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CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY This study was designed to investigate the effectiveness of SSR on reading comprehension and attitude toward reading of fourth-grade Korean students. To address the question, this experimental research tested the following main hypothesis: There is no adjusted mean difference (i.e., mean vector) between the experimental and control groups when they are compared simultaneously on reading comprehension and attitude toward reading. When the hypothesis was rejected, the follow-up null hypotheses were tested to assess which of the dependent variables contribute to the overall differences indicated by the statistical test: (a) there is no adjusted mean difference between the experimental and control groups on attitude toward reading, and (b) there is no adjusted mean difference between the experimental and control groups on reading comprehension. Additionally, a descriptive analysis of the informal daily reading log was conducted. The chapter includes the following sections: (a) research design, (b) participants, (c) instrumentation, (d) research procedures and data collection, and (e) data analysis.

Research Design A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest non-equivalent control group research design was used to determine the influence of SSR on reading comprehension and attitude toward reading of fourth-grade Korean students. The investigator used intact, already established groups of participants, gave a pretest, administered the treatment

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condition to one group, and gave the posttest. This design was very practical and useful in the study since the study made use of intact classes and volunteer classroom teachers (Cook & Campbell, 1979). Students in the experimental group participated in a daily 15-minute practice of Sustained Silent Reading wherein they were given a fixed period of time to read materials of their own choosing with the teacher. Students in the control group participated in a daily 15-minute self-study activity in which they were permitted to engage in any activities such as writing, social studies, arithmetic, or writing old Chinese characters on a voluntary basis. The Korean Reading Comprehension Test, Level 4 and the Korean Version of McKenna and Kear’s (1990) Elementary Reading Attitude Survey were used to measure participants’ reading attitude and reading comprehension at the pretest and posttest. The classroom teachers implemented the reading activity and they also conducted the testing at the beginning and end of the fourteen-week study.

Group

Pretest

Treatment

Posttest

Experimental group ----> Comprehension/Attitude -----> SSR ------>Comprehension/Attitude Control group -----------> Comprehension/Attitude -------------------> Comprehension/Attitude

Figure 3.1 Quasi-Experimental Pretest-Posttest Non-Equivalent Experiment-Control Group Design In this research, the independent variable was the placement or treatment participants received. The dependent variables were students’ reading attitude posttest scores and reading comprehension posttest scores. Additionally, reading attitude pretest scores and reading comprehension pretest scores were used as covariates to control for

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extraneous differences between the two groups (Huitema, 1980). The research design is represented above (see Figure 3.1).

Participants The study included a convenience sample of 119 fourth-grade students from two elementary schools in the southeastern area of Seoul, South Korea. The experimental school chosen for the study had only 3 classes for the fourth-grade students so that participants in the control group was chosen from another school in the vicinity of the experimental school. The control group contained 33 boys and 28 girls (N = 61). They were from two classes (N of Class 1 = 29; N of Class 2 = 32) in the control school. The experimental group included 33 boys and 25 girls (N = 58). They were from two classes (N of Class 1 = 28; N of Class 2 = 30) in the experimental school. The average age of each group was 10 years and 6 months, respectively. All students were identified as native Koreans. Table 3.1 presents demographic description for those participants.

Table 3.1 Demographic Descriptions for Participants Group

Average Age

Experiment Group (N = 58) Control Group (N = 61)

10 years & 6 months 10 years & 6 months

Sex (Male Female) 33 (56.9%) 33 (54.1%)

25 (43.1%) 28 (45.9%)

However, the investigator could not employ a probability-sampling procedure because schools and classes in this study were predetermined by district and school administrators. Also, data regarding the participants’ socioeconomic status could not collected because the school policy of the participant schools has not allowed the investigator to obtain them. Nevertheless, the two groups are comparable in terms of

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socioeconomic status, ages, academic achievement, and gender proportions since students in the schools were assigned with regard to their demographics, socioeconomic status, and academic achievement at the beginning of the semester. Furthermore, district administrators also classified students in these schools as being from predominantly middle-class homes in the southeastern area of Seoul, South Korea. In addition to students, two classroom teachers in the experimental school and two classroom teachers in the control school were involved in the study. All of them were experienced elementary school teachers, each having taught for approximately five years. The selection of the schools and the teachers was based on teacher’s support, interest, enthusiasm for SSR activity and willingness to participate in the study. Reading, which is one area in Korean language arts (reading, writing, and speaking/listening), at these schools is taught through nationally administered curriculum, curriculum guideline, and textbooks, Reading 4-1 and Reading 4-2. The main objectives of reading instruction for the fourth-grade Korean students include (a) reading to understand the outline of the story and (b) reading to understand the content accurately (Elementary School Curriculum, 1997). Fourth-grade Korean students are supposed to have two 40-minute reading classes a week throughout a semester (approximately 17 weeks). Typically, a reading class consists of a chalk-and-talk with a teacher giving a lecture based on a single reading textbook. Students take notes and, seldom ask questions or have discussions with the teacher or in small groups of students. The teacher’s focus is on reading skills as opposed to reading for pleasure. Students tend to view reading in terms of functional purposes, such as helping to pass examinations (Taylor, 1998). To

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date, no college department offers any course specially designed for reading experts or reading specialists. Each school had a school library containing approximately 4,000 books, some research and reference volumes, several current magazines, and child newspapers. However, no professional school librarian was employed at either school. Instead, some parents volunteered to organize and to manage the libraries with help from a teacher. Each experimental and control classroom also had a classroom library with about 100 books and some reference volumes. These libraries were organized and managed by students. Approximately 60 participants per group are necessary for achieving the statistical power of .80 when assessing a small effect size in the two-group, two-dependent variable multivariate design (Läuter, 1978). The sample was restricted to fourth-grade Korean students since their attitude toward reading begins to decline radically from that points more and more leisure options such as sports, social communities, and the enticements of television, video games, and computers compete with reading (Yoon et al., 2000). For those days, therefore, an effort to alleviate negative attitude toward reading should be required.

Instrumentation Three kinds of instruments were used to collect data for this dissertation research. To measure Korean children’s attitude toward reading, a new Korean Version of McKenna and Kear’s (1990) twenty-item Elementary Reading Attitude Survey was developed. For reading performance, the Korean Reading Comprehension Test, Level 4

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(KRCT) (Lim, 1998) was used. Additionally, the Informal Daily Reading Log (IDRL) was developed as a means of measuring participants’ daily reading behavior inside and outside of the SSR activity. A description of these instruments follows. Reading Attitude Questionnaires A Korean Version of McKenna and Kear’s (1990) 20-item Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERSA) was developed to measure participants’ attitude toward reading because so far, no reading attitude questionnaire for them has been available. A detailed description of the two instruments, an original version and a Korean version, is provided below. It includes several psychological testing procedures used to obtain evidence of reliability and validity of the new Korean test version. The Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS) The Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS) was developed in 1990 by Michael C. McKenna and Dennis J. Kear to measure attitude toward reading of children in grade one through six (McKenna & Kear, 1990). It is a 20-item, 4-node, pictorial rating scale with the cartoon character Garfield. The first 10 items of the survey measure attitude toward recreational reading, whereas the second 10 items measure attitude toward academic aspects of reading. Each item presents a brief statement about reading, followed by four pictures of the comic strip character Garfield. Each pose is created to predict a different emotional state ranging from very negative to very positive. Responses are quantified by assigning from 1 to 4 points to each item, from most negative to most positive, respectively. Thus, three scores for each participant can be obtained: (a) the total for the first 10 items ranging from 10 to 40 points, (b) the total for the second 10 items

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ranging from 10 to 40 points, and (c) a composite total for the two subscales ranging from 20 to 80 points. According to the directions for use of the survey (1990, p. 636-639), the score can be interpreted in two ways. One approach is to identify informally where the score falls regarding the four nodes of the scale. A total score of 50, for example, would fall approximately mid-way on the scale, between the slightly happy and slightly upset figures, therefore indicating a relatively indifferent overall attitude toward reading. The other approach involves converting the raw score into percentile ranks by means of their norm table. The norm was created by a large-scale study conducted in late January 1989, at which time the survey was administered to 18,138 students in grade one through six in the United States. The mean score, which was measured by the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey, for the standardized sample of fourth-grade American students was 56.5. The survey can be administered to an entire classroom in about 10 minutes. Reliability estimates for the two subscales and for the composite scale were based on the coefficient alpha, a statistic developed primarily to measure the internal consistency of attitude scales (Cronbach, 1951). Those coefficients for the two subscales and the full scale at each of six grade levels ranged from .74 to .89, respectively. The mean coefficient for recreational subscale, academic subscale, and full scale were .82, .83, and .89, respectively, indicating these reliabilities are acceptable (Kline, 1993). The coefficients for recreational subscale, academic subscale, and full scale of the fourthgrade American students were .83, .83, and .89, respectively. Evidence of construct validity was gathered by two psychological testing procedures: (a) distinct groups, and (b) factor analysis. The method of distinct groups,

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one way of providing evidence for the validity of a test, is to “demonstrate that scores on the test vary in a predictable way as a function of membership in some group” (Cohen, Swerdlik, & Phillips, 1996. p. 197). For the recreational subscale in the survey, for example, students in the national norming group were asked (a) if a public library was available to them, and (b) whether they currently had a library card. Those to whom libraries were available were separated into two groups (those with and without cards). Then, mean recreational scores of the groups were compared. Results showed that cardholders had significantly higher (p < .001) mean recreational scores (Mean = 30.0) than noncardholders (Mean = 28.9). Additionally, a few further tests of the subscale were performed to compare (a) students who reported heavy television watching and students who reported low television watching and (b) students who presently had books checked out from their school library and those who did not, respectively. Similarly, the validity of the academic subscale was tested by examining the relationship of scores to reading ability. Those results provided evidence of the subscale’s validity in that scores varied predictably with an outside criterion. Two factor analyses using the unweighted least squares method of extraction and a varimax rotation provided additional evidence of validity of the scale. In the first analysis, three factors were identified liberally (using a limit equal to the smallest eigenvalue greater than 1). Of 10 items comprising the academic subscale, 9 items loaded predominantly on a single factor, while item 13 loaded nearly equally on all three factors. A second factor was associated with 7 of the 10 items for the recreational subscale, while 3 of the items (items 6, 9, and 10) loaded principally on a third factor. However, those items loaded more heavily on the second factor (recreational reading) than on the first

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factor (academic reading). A second analysis limited the number of factors identified to two. With exception of one item (item 13), all items loaded nearly equally on both factors, meaning that all items loaded predominantly on the two subscales. With a slight ambiguity, the item 13 was interpreted as an academic item. Taken together, the factor analysis provided strongly supportive evidence of the claim that the survey’s two subscales reflect discrete aspects of attitude toward reading (McKenna & Kear, 1990). The Korean Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (KERAS) To measure the fourth-grade Korean students’ attitude toward reading, a new Korean translation of McKenna and Kear’s (1990) 20-item Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS) was developed. In order to minimize possible linguistic and cultural discrepancies between the original scale and the new scale, several psychological testing procedures necessary for a reliable and valid test were performed: (a) back-translation procedure, (b) internal reliability and test-retest reliability procedures, and (c) exploratory factor analytic techniques for a confirmatory analytic purpose. The back-translation method is required when transposing psychometric instruments from one language to another in order to assure equivalence between an original scale and its translation (Brislin, 1970). For this study, the ERAS was translated using a three-stage-translation-back-translation-translation procedure: (a) the translation from English to Korean was conducted by the investigator, (b) the back-translation from Korean to English was performed by both a fluent Korean speaking American doctoral student in the field of reading and a fluent English speaking Korean researcher in the field of educational methodology, and (c) the back-translation was compared with the original scales to detect any discrepancies by an American reading researcher.

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To evaluate the internal reliability and item homogeneity of the Korean translation, the coefficient alpha internal consistency reliability was used for the full scale and the two subscales (Cronbach, 1951). Additionally, the Pearson product-moment correlation procedure was also used to determine the stability of it over time. For those procedures, the translation was administered to 122 fourth-grade Korean students (62 male, 60 female) from four elementary schools in the southeastern area of Seoul, South Korea. The participants were given written and oral instructions, which asked them to respond on a 20-item, 4-node, pictorial rating scale, with the cartoon character Garfield, to what extent they felt happy or unhappy with each statement on the KERAS. As seen in Table 3.2, the internal consistency of the two subscales and the full scale were acceptable, indicating reliability coefficients ranging from .84 to 90. The 2-week testretest reliability coefficients for the two subscales and the full scale ranged from .82 to .84.

Table 3.2 Internal Consistency Reliability (Coefficient Alpha), Test-Retest Reliability, and Mean and SD of the Scores of the Reading Attitude Scales of the Korean Adaptation of the ERAS (N = 122) ERSA subscales Recreational reading

Alpha .84

Test-retest (2 weeks)

Mean (SD)

.83

a

.82

30.70 (5.57)

a

.83

32.16 (6.03)

.84

62.86 (6.03)

Academic reading

.85

.85

ERSA full scale

.90

.91a

a

indicates that coefficient alpha was based on the SSR participants in this dissertation research (N = 119). Also, the translation was given to 119 fourth graders (66 male, 53 female) who participated in my dissertation research. The internal consistency of the two scales and the full scale were acceptable, indicating reliability coefficients ranging from .83 to 91.

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These reliability coefficients were very similar to those found in studies with the original version of the ERAS. Additionally, principal component analysis with oblimin rotation via SPSS graduate pack 9.0 (SPSS Inc., 1999) was performed to examine whether the theoretical factors of the ERAS could be recovered in this Korean translation of the instrument. The individual items of the KERAS were factor-analyzed with the two factors, recreational reading and academic reading, previously extracted by MeKenna and Kear. All of the 10 items comprising the recreational subscale loaded predominantly on one factor (recreational reading), while 8 of the 10 items on the academic subscale loaded primarily on the other factor (academic reading). Item 13 (i.e., How do you feel about reading in school?) on the academic subscale loaded nearly equally on the recreational subscale and the academic subscale. The result was very similar to that found in the factor-analysis with the original English version of the ERAS. As in the original version, with a slight ambiguity, the item 13 was interpreted as an academic item. The remaining item 8 loaded nearly equally on the two factor. With the exception of one item (item 8), the original two-factor ERAS model tended to fit well the Korean ERAS data. In conclusion, these preliminary findings from several psychological testing procedures provided support for the reliability and validity of the Korean modification of the ERAS in a fourth-grade Korean population. The Korean Reading Comprehension Test The Korean Reading Comprehension Test (KRCT), Level 4, was used to determine the fourth-grade Korean students’ reading performance. The 55-item test measuring reading comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar is a single norm-referenced,

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survey reading comprehension test available for the fourth-grade Korean students in South Korea. Reading comprehension items of the test purported to measure children’s literal and inferential interpretation of the comprehension passages. Thus, they were asked to summarize, to infer the view of an author or character, to compare and contrast statements, or to use inductive and deductive reasoning skills to choose the best answer. The vocabulary items purported to measure their knowledge of the literal definition and denotative meaning of a word. The grammar items were a measure of their grammatical knowledge of the Korean language. Approximately, 60 %, 20 %, and 20 % of the total items were assigned to measure one of the three levels in Bloom’s taxonomy: (a) knowledge, (b) comprehension, and (c) application, respectively. Each item is written in a multiple-choice format with four alternatives. The test should be administered to an entire classroom in about 38 minutes. Additionally, several psychological testing procedures necessary for constructing a reliable and valid test were performed: (a) an internal-consistency estimate and (b) content validity. As shown in Table 3.3, the internal-consistency estimate of reliability obtained by use of the Spearman-Brown formula, in which odd-numbered items were assigned to one half of the test and even-numbered items were assigned to the other half, was .90. To evaluate the content validity of the test, many possible sources of information on whether the test reflects the national curriculum of reading education, if it measures children’s overall reading performance, including grammatical knowledge of the target language, and whether the difficulty of the test fits the fourth-grade students were obtained from reading course syllabi, course texts, and from reading teachers who teach

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reading, specialists who develop reading curriculum, and teacher educators who train teachers in the field of reading. The test was standardized on a national sample of approximately 12,000 students in grade four. Therefore, each raw score could be converted to its percentile and standard score, T score. The stratified sampling design took three variables into consideration: (a) geographic region, (2) enrollment size, and (c) gender (Lim, 1998). On the other hand, the reading comprehension test was also administered to 119 fourth graders (66 male, 53 female) who participated in this dissertation research. The internal consistency of the scores of the test was .75. So far, no alternative forms were developed so that the same test was administered to the same participants at the beginning and the end of the study.

Table 3.3 Internal Consistency Reliability (Split-Half Reliability by Spearman-Brown Formula and Coefficient Alpha) of the Scores of the Reading Comprehension Test (N = 1450) Grade

Split-half reliability (N =1450)

Coefficient alpha (N = 119)a

Fourth grade

.90

.75

Note: Adapted from the Korean Reading Comprehension Test Guide (Lim, 1998), with permission. a indicates that Coefficient alpha was based on the SSR participants of this dissertation research. Informal Daily Reading Log To understand the educational value of the reading activity, it is important to investigate participants’ daily reading behaviors in and out of the SSR activity, including the amount of time the experimental and control group participants spent reading after school. To measure a variety of reading behaviors, the Informal Daily Reading Log (IDRL) (see Appendix B), modeled after the Reading Record Form developed by Hanson

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(1972) and the Daily Literacy Checklist developed by Alvermann, Young, Green, and Wisenbaker (1999), was developed (Appendix B). In addition to data from the standardized tests, this participant retrospective self-report of his or her own reading activities may provide reliable and valid information necessary for making sense of the process of attitude change and reading development which result from their participation in the SSR activity. The reading log consisted of five questions concerning the readability of reading materials they read in the activity, the amount of time the experimental and control group participants spent reading after school, the extent to which they were satisfied to participate in the daily reading activity, the degree to which they participated in the activity, and the degree of interest in reading materials they chose for the activity. For example, as to the question of the readability of the materials participants selected during SSR, they were required to choose one of 4 responses, very easy, easy, difficult, or very difficult. For the degree of participation in the SSR activity, the experimental group recorded one of 4 statements, very poorly, poorly, well, or very well. For the degree of satisfaction of participating in the activity, participants were asked to state their daily opinion about the SSR reading activity on a 4-node, pictorial rating scale with the cartoon character Garfield (very unhappy, unhappy, happy, very happy). As to the question of degree of interest in the materials participants chose during SSR, they were required to choose one of 4 responses, very boring, boring, interesting, or very interesting. Finally, in response to the question about amount of time spent reading after school, all participants in the experimental and control groups selected one of the following 8 statements: (a)

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none, (b) about 10 minutes, (c) about 20 minutes, (d) about 30 minutes, (e) about 40, (f) about 1 hour, (g) 2 hours, or (h) 3 hours. The participants in the experimental class 1 were asked to answer to all of the five questions, while the students in the control class 1 were asked to respond to the last question only concerning out-of-school reading time.

Research Procedures and Data Collection Prior to the study, in February 2001, arrangements were made by electronic email and by telephone with the principal and the classroom teachers of the experimental school to conduct the experiment and the data collection. To serve as a control group, arrangements were also made by e-mail and by telephone with the principal and the teachers of a neighboring elementary school. Permission was granted by each of the principals and the four teachers in the experimental and control groups (see Appendix C). In March 2001, for the teachers to become acquainted with the SSR activity, a few journal articles, research reports, and books regarding SSR were distributed. In July 2001, the investigator held a meeting with those teachers to outline the purpose of the study, the concepts and guidelines of the SSR activity, and the testing and scoring procedures. Then, the investigators and the teachers decided to conduct a 14-week SSR treatment during the spring semester (mid-March through June) of 2002 with fourthgrade Korean students. Every morning before the regular classes start, a daily time of 15 minutes (8:40 – 8:55 AM.) was designated as the reading treatment period. In February 2001, permission regarding a Korean translation and the use of McKenna and Kear’s (1990) Elementary Reading Attitude Survey was granted from the

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first author of that instrument, Michael McKenna. During May through July 2001, a new Korean translation of McKenna and Kear’s (1990) 20-item Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS) was developed. In March 2001, permission regarding the use of the Korean Reading Comprehension Test was also granted from In-Jae Lim, the author of this instrument by telephone. In April 2001, following the guidelines established for conducting research at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA, a formal request was submitted to the Human Subject Office of the Institutional Review Board. Permission was granted from this board in July 2001. In March 4, 2002, a parental consent form was sent to the parents of the students in both the control and the experimental classrooms (see Appendix D). Then, a print-rich environment that can provide opportunities to access easily several kinds of a collection of reading materials of several kinds and levels of difficulty was created in each experimental classroom. Approximately 300 books, several current magazines, and some child newspapers were checked out from a school library on a monthly basis. Participants were always encouraged to bring their own materials from home or from the school library. In addition, the teachers in the experimental group were regularly asked to present interesting book lists, information on the winner of book awards, the backgrounds of authors, or teacher reading logs on a classroom bulletin board. Also, students were encouraged to contribute to the classroom bulletin board. Upon receipt of a parental consent form, the Korean Version of Elementary Reading Attitude Survey and the Korean Reading Comprehension Test were administered to the participants in both the experimental and control group in the morning and in the afternoon of March 16, 2002, respectively. The SSR treatment began

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on March 18, 2002. To increase precision and consistency of treatment implementation (i.e., treatment fidelity), the investigator observed the process of the pretest administered by teachers. Also, the investigator observed the classrooms for the first two weeks of the treatment. Students in the experimental group participated in a daily 15-minute practice of SSR wherein they were given a fixed period of time to read materials of their own choosing with the teachers in classroom. All participants were supposed to adhere to the following guidelines: (a) children should read silently (oral reading was permitted for some struggling readers without making too much noise), (b) teachers should read silently, (c) each child should choose one or two materials, (d) non-accountability or light accountability should be required, (e) the activity should begin with whole classes, and (f) a timer should be used. Additionally, in an effort to maximize the effects of the activity, teachers used regularly a bulletin board to present interesting book lists, information on the winners of book awards, the backgrounds of authors, or the teacher’s own reading logs. Meanwhile, students in the control group participated in a daily 15-minute (8:40 – 8:55 AM.) self-study activity in which they were permitted to engage in any activities such as writing, social studies, arithmetic, or writing Chinese characters on a voluntary basis. After the SSR period, only one experimental class (Experimental Class 1; N = 28) of the two experimental classes and only one control class (Control Class 1; N = 29) of the two control classes were asked to fill in and turn in an informal reading log to teachers throughout the 14-week study. The participants in the experimental group were

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asked to answer five questions on a reading log by indicating the readability of the material read, the degree of interest of the material read, the degree of participation in the activity, the degree of satisfaction of participating in the activity, and yesterday’s out-ofschool reading time. The participants in the control group were asked to answer only one question, yesterday’s out-of-school reading time, on it. Teachers collected children’s logs every morning after the daily reading activity ended. To analyze all responses from the logs of the 57 students from the experimental group class 1 and control group class 1, descriptive statistical procedures were used. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, 28 participants of an experimental class 1 were required to answer to all of the five questions of the log, while 29 students of a control class 1 were asked to respond to one question (i.e., the amount of time they spent reading out of school). In the investigator’s absence, posttests were given on June 22, 2002. Based on the investigator’s direction, however, the tests were administered. The standardized tests and the logs were scored and were databased by the teachers using a Korean word processor. The database was rebuilt and analyzed by the investigator using the SPSS (SPSS Inc., 1999) graduate pack 9.0 for Window.

Data Analysis Standardized Tests For inferential data analysis, a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was performed. The major reasons for preferring the approach to a multiple analysis of covariance in this quasi-experimental study are that (a) a few correlational studies

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reported that measures of reading attitude and reading achievement produce moderate correlation, ranging from .20 to .40 (Deck & Barnette, 1976, Roettger, Szymczuk, & Millard, 1979; Swanson, 1982), (b) it is a better way of explaining any relationship among dependent variables in terms of a set of underlying theoretical or psychological dimensions (Stevens, 1996), (c) it is an effective means of reducing the chance of making a type I error (Stevens, 1996), and (d) it is a useful method of adjusting the posttest means for initial differences among the groups which vary with intact groups, thereby reducing error variance and increasing power (Huitema, 1980). To perform valid data analyses, however, several important assumptions should be assumed: (a) the observations should be independent (independence), (b) the observations on the dependent variables should follow a multivariate normal distribution in each group (multivariate normality), (c) the population covariance matrices for the dependent variables, the correlations, and the covariances should be equal across the groups (homogeneity of covariance matrices), (d) there should be a significant relationship between a set of dependent variables and a set of covariates (linearity), and (e) the slope of the regression planes should be the same in each group (homogeneity of regression planes) (Barker & Barker, 1984; Stevens, 1996). Before the application of the assumption check-up, diagnostic procedures to detect any observations that demonstrate real uniqueness in comparison with the remainder of the population (i.e., outliers) were used. For these purposes, graphical examination of the data, such as a histogram, a scatter plot, and a box plot, was performed. In addition, to identify multivariate outliers the Mahalanobis D2, which is a measure of the distance in multidimensional space of each observation from the mean

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center of the observations, was used (Stevens, 1996). As a result of these diagnostic tests, no observations seemed to demonstrate the characteristics of extreme outliers. Then, the assumptions of multivariate normality and homogeneity of covariance matrices were checked to see if there were any violations of the assumptions for MANCOVA. These tests resulted in Kolmogorov-Smironov for experimental group = .15, p < .05, Kolmogorov-Smironov control group = .12, p < .05, and Box’s M = 10.7 (F = 3.5, p < .05), indicating that the two assumptions were violated. However, the analysis of covariance indicated that there was a significant relationship between a set of dependent variables (two posttest scores) and a set of covariates (two pretest scores) [Wilks Lambda = .20, F (4, 228) = 70.3, p < .05]. Furthermore, the test for the assumption of regression planes indicated that the assumption is quite tenable [Wilks Lambda = .97, F (4, 224) = .79, p > .05]. After the application of the diagnostic procedures and assumption check-up, the MANCOVA was performed. As a multivariate test statistic, Hotelling’s T2 was chosen because it is a test of the equality of two population mean vectors and particularly, because it is relatively robust to violations of multivariate normality and the assumption of equality of covariance matrices when the group sizes are equal or approximately equal (largest/smallest < 1.5) (Hakstian, Roed, & Lind, 1979; Olson, 1976). When the significance of the multivariate test indicated group difference on the vector of means of the dependent variables, the investigator assessed whether both dependent variables were significantly different or whether only one of the two dependent variables was significantly different. That is, multiple analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) were performed as follow-up analysis. A post hoc test of obvious interest was whether a given

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treatment has an impact on each dependent variable. For the data analysis presented above, SPSS (SPSS Inc., 1999) graduate pack 9.0 for Windows and BMDP (BMDP, 1990) were used. Informal Daily Reading Log Descriptive statistical procedures were used to analyze the responses from the logs of the 57 students (experimental class 1= 28, control class 1 = 29) who were asked to fill in and to turn in their reading logs throughout the 14-week study. Each question was analyzed by summing scores on it across a week and dividing by the number of recorded frequencies for each student. Again, individual participant’s weekly mean scores were summed and divided by the number of weeks for the participant. For example, if one participant turned in a log for 6 days per week, but if he or she responded to a certain question just 5 times, his or her weekly mean score was obtained by dividing the sum of the 5-day scores on the question by the number of the days (i.e., 5 days) he or she answered it. In a few cases in which participants failed to answer to the more than 4 days per week, those questions were not considered in calculating his or her weekly means scores. As mentioned earlier in this paper, the experimental students received a log with five questions, whereas the control participants received a log with one question.

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CHAPTER 4 RESULTS The purpose of this study was to reevaluate the effectiveness of SSR on reading comprehension and attitude toward reading for fourth-grade Korean students. This chapter reported the results of analyses using scores from Korean Version of Elementary Reading Attitude Survey and Korean Reading Comprehension Test. Results of the multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) were reported first, followed by the univariate analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) when the multivariate test indicated group differences on the dependent vector of means of reading attitude and reading comprehension. In addition to these inferential tests, this chapter included the descriptive statistics of the responses from the daily reading logs of the 57 participants (experimental = 28, control = 29) who were asked to fill in their reading throughout the 14-week study.

Main Analysis: MANCOVA A one-way multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was performed to test the following null hypothesis: The two groups have equal vectors of means of reading attitude and reading comprehension as measured by the Korean Version of Elementary Reading Attitude Survey and the Korean Reading Comprehension Test, respectively. Reading attitude and reading comprehension pre-test scores were used as covariates to control pretreatment differences in participants’ reading attitude and reading comprehension. As a multivariate test statistic, Hotelling’s T2 was chosen because it is a

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test of the equality of two population mean vectors and furthermore because it is relatively robust to violations of multivariate normality and the assumption of equality of covariance matrices when the group sizes are equal or approximately equal (largest/smallest < 1.5) (Hakstian, Roed, & Lind, 1979; Olson, 1976). The multivariate analysis of covariance showed that the difference between the experimental and control groups is significant for the set of the two dependent variables considered simultaneously [Hotelling’s T2 = .11, F = 6.08, p < .05, η2= .10]. Accordingly, the main null hypothesis is rejected, indicating that the SSR has an impact on a set of dependent measures, a variate of reading attitude and reading comprehension. Table 4.1 presents the results of this analysis.

Table 4.1 Multivariate Analysis of Covariance for the Dependent Vector of Reading Attitude and Reading Comprehension

Hotelling’s T2

Value

F Value

.11

6.08*

df Group 2

Error

Eta Squared

114

.10

*p < .05. Follow-Up Analysis: Univariate ANCOVAs Due to the significance of the multivariate test showing group differences on the dependent vector, follow-up univariate analysis of covariance was conducted to determine whether both dependent variables are significantly different or whether the results are derived mainly from differences of only one of the two dependent variables. For each analysis, reading attitude and reading comprehension pre-test scores were used as covariates to control for initial differences in participants’ reading attitude and reading comprehension, respectively.

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ANCOVA for Reading Attitude A one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the following null hypothesis: Do fourth-grade Korean students who participated in the daily practice of Sustained Silent Reading significantly outperform fourth-grade Korean students who did not participate in the daily practice of Sustained Silent Reading on reading attitude as measured by the Korean Version of Elementary Reading Attitude Survey?

Table 4.2 Means, Standard Deviations, and Adjusted Means of Attitude Scores toward Reading Group Experimental Control

Pretest Mean SD

Posttest Mean SD

61.28 61.25

66.41 62.11

7.47 11.62

7.45 11.45

Adjusted Posttest Mean 66.34 62.18

Note. Adjusted means were adjusted by using two covariates. Maximum score is 80. As shown in Table 4.2, the experimental group had a pretest mean score of 61.28, a posttest mean score of 66.41, and an adjusted posttest mean score of 66.34 on the reading attitude measure. The control group had a pretest score of 61.25, a posttest mean score of 62.11, and an adjusted posttest mean score of 62.18 on the same measure. A posttest mean score difference and an adjusted mean score difference between the groups were 4.3 and 4.16, respectively. The test produced a statistically significant adjusted mean difference between the two groups on the reading attitude measure in favor of the SSR group [F(1, 115) = 11.68, p < .05, η2= .09], indicating that SSR has a positive influence on reading attitude. The eta-squared statistic indicated that approximately 9% of the variability in reading attitude and reading comprehension vector scores is attributed to the SSR activity. It may be considered as a practical significance in the area of social

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science (Cohen, 1988). Table 4.3 presents several statistics of analysis of covariance for reading attitude scores. On the other hand, a pretest mean score, which was measured by the Korean Version of Elementary Reading Attitude Survey, from the two groups in the current sample of fourth-grade Korean students was 61.3. The mean score, which was measured by the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey, for the standardized sample of fourth-grade American students was 56.5. This showed that the mean score for the current Korean student sample is slightly above the mean score for the standardized American student sample.

Table 4.3 Analysis of Covariance for Reading Attitude Scores Source

Adjusted SS

df

MS

F

Group Error

513.15 5054.07

1 115

513.15 43.95

11.68*

*p < .05. ANCOVA for Reading Comprehension A one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was also performed to test the following null hypothesis: Do fourth-grade Korean students who participated in the daily practice of Sustained Silent Reading significantly outperform fourth-grade Korean students who did not participate in the daily practice of Sustained Silent Reading on reading comprehension as measured by the Korean Reading Comprehension Test, Level 4? As shown in Table 4.4, the SSR group had a pretest mean score of 31.41, a posttest mean score of 34.10, and an adjusted posttest mean score of 33.75 on the reading comprehension measure. The control group had a pretest score of 31.52, a posttest mean

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score of 32.52, and an adjusted posttest mean score of 32.86 on the same measure. A posttest mean score difference and an adjusted mean score difference between the groups were 1.58 and .89, respectively. The test did not produce a significant adjusted mean difference between the two groups on the reading comprehension measure [F(1, 115) = 1.21, p > .05, η2= .01].

Table 4.4 Means, Standard Deviations, and Adjusted Means of Reading Comprehension Scores Group Experimental Control

Pretest Mean SD

Posttest Mean SD

32.41 31.52

34.10 32.52

6.86 6.07

Adjusted Posttest Mean

6.66 6.93

33.75 32.86

Note. Adjusted means were adjusted for two covariates. Maximum score is 55. This result showed that SSR has no positive impact on reading comprehension. The etasquared statistic indicated that approximately 1% of the variability in reading comprehension and reading attitude vector scores is attributed to the SSR activity. Table 4.5 presents several statistics of analysis of covariance for reading comprehension scores. On the other hand, a pretest mean score from the two groups in the current sample of fourth-grade Korean students was 31.97, whereas the mean score for the standardized sample of fourth-grade Korean was 33. They showed that the mean score for the current sample is slightly below the mean score for the standardized sample.

Table 4.5 Analysis of Covariance for Reading Comprehension Scores Source

Adjusted SS.

df

MS

F

Group Error

23.00 2194.83

1 115

23.00 19.09

1.21

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Descriptive Analysis of the Informal Daily Reading Log This section includes the descriptive results of the responses from the daily reading logs of the 57 participants (experiment = 28, control = 29) who were asked to fill in their reading throughout the 14-week study. Tables 4.6 through 4.10 present participants’ monthly means, grand mean, and their standard deviations for each of the following questions on a log: (a) how did you feel about reading during the SSR activity (feeling), (b) how was interestness of the reading material you read during today’s SSR activity (interestness), (c) how was readability of the reading material you read during today’s SSR activity (readability), (d) how did you participate in the SSR activity in the morning (participation), and (e) how long did you spend reading out of school yesterday (out-of-school reading time)? Figures 4 through 6 show the line graphs of a weekly mean for each of the questions. As shown in Table 4.6, the grand mean for the question measuring experimental participants’ feeling about reading during the SSR activity was 3.9 [minimum score = 1 (very unhappy); maximum score = 4 (very happy)]. This result indicates that on an average, they were very satisfied to participate in the daily reading activity. As seen in Table 4.7, the grand mean for the question to assess interest of the reading material participants read during the activity was 3.77 [minimum score = 1 (very boring); maximum score = 4 (very interesting)]. It shows that they chose reading materials that were of interest to them during the activity. Figure 4.1 presents the line graphs for feeling and interestness, respectively. Such trends have been consistent throughout the 14-week study.

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Table 4.6 Monthly Means, Grand Mean, and Standard Deviations for a Question 1: How Did You Feel about Reading during the SSR Activity? Group

1st 4 week

2nd 4 week

3rd 4 week

4th 2 week

Total

Experiment (N= 28)

3.84 (.19)

3.92 (.19)

3.94 (.10)

3.95 (.13)

3.90 (.09)

Note. Numbers in parentheses indicate standard deviation for each mean. Minimum score is 1 (very unhappy) and maximum score is 4 (very happy). Table 4.7 Monthly Means, Grand Mean, and Standard Deviations for a Question 2: How Was Interestness of a Reading Material You Read during the SSR Activity? Group

1st 4 week

2nd 4 week

3rd 4 week

4th 2 week

Total

Experiment (N= 28)

3.51 (.43)

3.84 (.26)

3.88 (.20)

3.90 (.15)

3.77 (.19)

Note. Numbers in parentheses indicate standard deviation for each mean. Minimum score is 1 (very boring) and maximum score is 4 (very interesting).

Feeling

Interestness

Mean Score

4 3 2 1 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

Time (week)

Figure 4.1 Line Graphs of the Questions of Feeling and Interestness Table 4.8 shows the grand mean for the question to measure readability of the reading materials experimental participants read during the activity. The total mean of 1.36 [minimum score = 1 (very easy); maximum score = 4 (very difficult)] indicates that, on an average, they chose easy reading materials during the activity. As seen in Table 4.9, the grand mean for the question to assess the degree of their participation in the activity was 3.64 [minimum score = 1 (very poorly); maximum score = 4 (very well)]. It shows that, on average, they enthusiastically participated in the activity. Figure 4.2

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presents a line graph for readability and participation, respectively. Such trends have continued throughout the 14-week study. Table 4.8 Monthly Means, Grand Mean, and Standard Deviations for a Question 3: How Was Readability of a Reading Material You Read during Today’s SSR Activity? Group

1st 4 week

2nd 4week

3rd 4 week

4th 2 week

Total

Experiment (N= 28)

1.56 (.46)

1.29 (.37)

1.27 (.37)

1.28 (.37)

1.36 (.34)

Note. Numbers in parentheses indicate standard deviation for each mean. Minimum score is 1 (very easy) and maximum score is 4 (very difficult). Table 4.9 Monthly Means, Grand Mean, and Standard Deviations for a Question 4: How Did You Participate in the SSR Activity Today? Group

1st 4 week

2nd 4week

3rd 4 week

4th 2 week

Total

Experiment (N= 28)

3.51 (.40)

3.67 (.39)

3.65 (.36)

3.68 (.39)

3.62 (.33)

Note. Numbers in parentheses indicate standard deviation for each mean. Minimum score is 1 (very poorly) and maximum score is 4 (very well).

Participation

Readability

Mean Score

4 3 2 1 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

Time (week)

Figure 4.2 Line Graphs of the Questions of Readability and Participation

Table 4.10 presents participants’ monthly means, grand mean, and their standard deviations for the question to measure after-school-reading time of participants in the experimental and control groups. During the intervention, experimental students read 26

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minutes per day after school, while control participants read 14 minutes per day. On average, the experimental students spent more time reading, approximately 12 minutes, than the control participants. Figure 4.3 shows line graphs that for the two groups. No significant change has been observed in the amount of time they reported reading out of school throughout the 14-week study.

Table 4.10 Monthly Means, Grand Mean, and Standard Deviations for a Question 5: How Long Did You Spend Reading out of School Yesterday? 2nd 4week 3rd 4 week 4th 2 week Total Group 1st 4 week Experiment (N= 28)

28.42 (18.85)

25.45 (19.05)

25.06 (20.95)

22.01 (20.62)

25.70 (17.66)

Control (N = 29)

15.42 (17.49)

13.16 (13.35)

13.38 (13.17)

14.00 (13.43)

13.99 (13.52)

Note. Numbers in parentheses indicate standard deviation for each mean.

Mean Time (min)

Experiment

Control

40 30 20 10 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

Time (week)

Figure 4.3 Line Graphs of the Question of Participants’ After-School Reading Time

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CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS Discussion To determine the effectiveness of SSR on reading attitude and reading comprehension, the following hypotheses were tested: (a) Do fourth-grade Korean students who participated in the daily practice of Sustained Silent Reading significantly outperform fourth-grade Korean students who did not participate in the daily practice of Sustained Silent Reading on reading attitude? (b) Do fourth-grade Korean students who participated in the daily practice of Sustained Silent Reading significantly outperform fourth-grade Korean students who did not participate in the daily practice of Sustained Silent Reading on reading comprehension? Results from the analyses of the data show that the activity has a statistically as well as practically significant impact on their reading attitude, while it has no positive influence on their reading comprehension. In the following sections, discussions of those results were presented. SSR and Reading Attitude With respect to the effect of SSR on attitude toward reading, this study provides affirmative evidence of a significant reading attitude gain, over a fixed period of time, for students who read materials of their own choosing either for pleasure or for information. As presented earlier in the results, the experimental and control groups had an adjusted posttest mean score of 66.34 and 62.18, respectively. This adjusted mean difference

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produced a statistically significant difference between the two groups on the reading attitude measure in favor of the SSR group [F(1, 115) = 11.68, p < .05, η2= .09, Equivalent effect size d = .65], indicating that SSR has a positive impact on participants’ reading attitude. The eta-squared statistic of .09 indicates that approximately 9% of the variability in reading attitude and reading comprehension vector scores was attributed to the SSR activity. The equivalent effect size of .65 that corresponds to the percentile of .72 could be depicted as a success rate of 72% in the experimental group compared with 50% in the control group. That is, 72% of the SSR participants are above the control group median whereas only 50% of the control group students are above that level. According to Cohen’s (1988) criterion of the magnitude of effect sizes, this effect size of .65 is considered a large effect size in behavioral research. Also, this result is consistent with findings from several empirical studies (Aranha, 1985; Dully, 1989; Wilmot, 1975), including a meta-analytic study of the effectiveness of SSR on reading attitude (Yoon & Won, 2001a). Furthermore, this result is supported by the models of reading attitude acquisition and development presented earlier in the literature review chapter of this paper. According to Mathewson’s model (1994), attitude acquisition and development are influenced by the following factors, cornerstone concepts, persuasive communications, and affective and cognitive satisfaction. Based on McKenna’s model, three important factors influence reading attitude acquisition and development: (a) beliefs about the expectations of significant others, (b) beliefs about the outcome of reading, and (c) a reader’s metacognitive state. In this regard, several characteristics of SSR such as selfselection, role modeling, and non-accountability are supposed to improve participants’

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reading attitude by several direct or indirect routes as indicated in the models offered by Mathewson and McKenna. For example, a reader’s self-selection of reading material that interests him or her (i.e., self-selection factor) might foster cornerstone concepts or beliefs about the outcome of reading which underlies the attitude toward reading. A nonverbal persuasion offered by the teacher and his or her peers (i.e., role modeling factor) and a pleasure-offering reading context that increases the autonomy of his or her reading (non-accountability factor) might serve as persuasive communications or beliefs about the expectations of significant others, which has a positive impact on reading attitude acquisition and development. Especially, concerning the experimental students participated in the SSR activity with great satisfaction, the possibility that the activity influenced their reading attitude throughout the 14-week study might be high. In summary, it is possible to say that providing a fixed period of time for the silent reading of self-selected material for the purpose of enjoyment or for information is a valuable reading activity to facilitate students’ attitude toward reading. Also, the activity must be a valuable reading activity appropriate for fostering reading attitude of Korean elementary students. SSR and Reading Comprehension This 14-weeks study did not provide evidence of a significant reading comprehension gain over a fixed period of time for students who read materials of their own choosing either for pleasure or for information. As presented earlier, the experimental and control groups had an adjusted posttest mean score of 33.75 and of 32.86, respectively. This adjusted mean difference did not produce a statistically significant adjusted mean difference between the two groups on the reading

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comprehension measure [F(1, 115) = 1.21, p > .05, η2= .01, Equivalent effect size d = .20], indicating that SSR did not have a positive impact on participants’ reading comprehension. The eta-squared statistic of .01 indicates that approximately 1% of the variability in reading comprehension and reading attitude vector scores was attributed to the SSR activity. The approximately equivalent effect size of .20 that corresponds to the percentile of .58 could be depicted as a success rate of 58% in the experimental group compared with 50% in the control group. That is, 58% of the SSR participants are above the control group median whereas only 50% of the control group students are above that level. According to Cohen’s (1988) criterion for the magnitude of effect sizes, this effect size of .20 is considered a small effect size. Also, this result is consistent with findings from several empirical studies (Collins, 1980; Dully, 1989; Evans & Towner, 1975; Reutzel & Hollingsworth, 1991; Summers & McClelland, 1982; Tudor & Hafiz, 1989), including a meta-analytic study of the effectiveness of SSR on reading comprehension (Yoon & Won, 2001b) that produced statistical significance, but weak practical significance (d = .11). In contrast, this result is not consistent with other studies (e.g., Burley, 1980; Farrell, 1982; Langford & Allen, 1983) that reported a significant effect of SSR on reading comprehension. However, these studies have a severe methodological problem with respect to the use of multiple univariate F tests on two related dependent variables, reading attitude and reading comprehension. Therefore, it might increase the possibility for researchers to conclude that the treatment is effective in situations where pure chance is operating. With respect to a non-positive effect of SSR on reading comprehension, a variety of plausible explanations could be provided.

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First, an impact of reading attitude on reading comprehension is not direct so that a positive reading attitude may not necessarily play a crucial role in enhancing reading comprehension. As indicated in the models presented earlier in this paper, reading attitude always contributes to reading comprehension through mediation of an intention to read. That is, attitude toward reading influences intention to read, which increases exposure to reading materials, which in turn improves reading comprehension. However, a positive attitude toward reading may not always increase a student’s reading behavior (i.e., exposure to print). This is especially true when his or her reading behavior must compete with other options such as sports, computer games, taking out-of-school extra classes at the commercial cram schools, social communities, and watching TV. A positive intention to read may not be enough to cause a reading behavior to occur after school. Thus, gains in reading attitude are not likely to enhance a student’s exposure to print or after-school reading, which plays a crucial role in enhancing vocabulary knowledge and background knowledge. Consequently, even significant changes in reading attitude may not directly produce significant changes in reading comprehension. This explanation has also been supported by the findings from several studies on children’s out-of-school activities. According to Yoon et al.’ (2000) survey of Korean children’s after-school activities, reading is a preferable activity in which they want to engage after school next to watching TV, computer games, and playing with friends. Furthermore, more than approximately 40% of elementary school children in South Korea go to commercial cram schools for taking extra classes such as math, English, and Korean language after regular school (Yoon et al., 2000). Also, the results from an informal reading log showed that although attitude toward reading of the participants in

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the experimental group increased, no significant change has been observed in the amount of time they reported reading out of school throughout the 14-week study. This finding indicates that gains in reading attitude did not necessarily contribute to their exposure to reading materials. In turn, a significant change in reading comprehension has not happened. This would be one of the most tenable reasons why the SSR activity did not have a positive influence on reading comprehension in this dissertation research. In regard to the issue of increasing exposure to print and then reading comprehension, as Demos (1986) pointed out, extending the SSR activity into the home environment may be a way of reinforcing attitude toward reading as well as of providing additional reading opportunities for children to promote reading performance. By involving parents in the SSR activity, the effects of SSR on reading attitude and in particular reading comprehension may be maximize. Second, inadequate exposure to print might hinder a significant change in reading comprehension. The effectiveness of the SSR activity on reading comprehension may rely heavily on whether printed materials children selected are appropriate for their levels of reading. According to Carver (1994), inappropriate exposure to print may not provide children with the opportunity to build their vocabulary knowledge, which is one of the major sources to enhance reading comprehension. If the reading materials they chose are relatively easy, for instance, none of the words being read during the activity may be unknown. If reading materials are relatively difficult, many words being read may also be unknown. Due to poor understanding of the words, gains in vocabulary through incidental learning may not be produced. Consequently, participation in SSR may not entail any gains in vocabulary and furthermore in comprehension. This explanation might

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be supported by the results from an informal reading log. According to the log analysis, the mean for the question to measure readability of the reading materials experimental participants read during the activity was 1.36 [minimum score = 1 (very easy); maximum score = 1 (very difficult)], indicating that, on average, they chose easy reading materials during the activity. Such a trend has continued throughout the 14-week study. In a similar vein, if a child depended heavily on a particular topic or genre they might not have an opportunity to obtain world and vocabulary knowledge that plays an important role in understanding reading materials (Bransford & Johnson, 1972; Lipson, 1982; 1983). As a consequence, making significant gains on standardized reading comprehension tests might not be possible because those tests requires substantial amount of the world knowledge generally obtained by wide reading. For SSR success, as put by Carver (1994), children should select reading materials at their reading instructional level or at a more challenging level. In addition to encouraging individual self-selection, children should be provided with careful guidance so they can make an appropriate selection based on their reading levels. Also, they should always be encouraged to read a variety of printed materials. Third, every participant might not be willing to follow the procedures necessary for SSR success. According to Gibbon’s (1997) qualitative study of children’s perspectives about SSR, some children valued the activity because it was a time when they could spend more time reading their materials. In contrast, for some children, it was one of the most painful activities that they are eager to evade desperately in their school lives because it was boring. In particular, poor readers, who are not the skilled readers who rapidly and effortlessly assimilate information from the printed materials, may not

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like reading time because more often than not, it is hard for them to understand what they are reading. It may cause them not to have a good experience with reading in SSR. According to the results from an informal reading log, however, this alternative explanation may not be tenable for the Korean participants in this study. For example, the mean for the question to assess the degree of their participation in the activity was 3.64 [minimum score = 1 (very poorly); maximum score = 4 (very well)], showing that, on average, they enthusiastically participated in the activity. Such trends have continued throughout the 14-week study. Also, the mean for the question to measure a daily experimental participants’ feeling about reading during the SSR activity was 3.9 [minimum score = 1 (very unhappy); maximum score = 4 (very happy)], indicating that, on average, they were very satisfied to participate in the daily reading activity. Such trends have continued throughout the 14-week study. These results indicate that on the whole they enjoyed participating in the daily reading activity with great satisfaction. Nevertheless, if some students who can read independently but pretend to read or stare at books absent-mindedly exist, light accountability such as a comprehension quiz or reading logs for their reading may be required.

Conclusions The purpose of this study was to reevaluate the effectiveness of SSR as a daily, independent reading activity intended to improve reading achievement and reading attitude of fourth-grade Korean students by employing a research design, a multivariate approach, as of yet untried with SSR. A few conclusions were drawn from this research.

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First, the results from the analyses of data showed that the activity has a positive impact on students’ reading attitude. Approximately 9% of the variability in reading comprehension and reading attitude vector scores was attributed to the SSR activity. This effect size is considered a large effect size, indicating that the activity is effective for increasing students’ reading attitude. Unique characteristics of SSR such as self-selection, role modeling, and non-accountability, and print-rich environment appeared to serve as the mechanisms by which to develop reading attitude. Second, the results from the analyses of data showed that the activity has no positive impact on students’ reading comprehension. Only 1% of the variability in reading comprehension and reading attitude vector scores was attributed to the SSR activity. This effect size is considered to be a very small effect size, indicating that the activity may not be effective for increasing students’ reading comprehension. Above all, a positive intention to reading influenced by a positive reading attitude does not always increase a student’s reading behavior (i.e., exposure to print) after school, especially when his or her reading behavior must compete with other options such as sports, computer games, taking out-of-school extra classes at commercial cram schools, social communities, and watching TV. Consequently, even a significant change in reading attitude may not directly produce a significant change in reading comprehension mainly because students may not spend a large amount of time reading after regular school. Finally, the results from an analysis of an informal reading log showed that on the whole students in the experimental group enjoyed participating in the daily SSR reading activity with great satisfaction and enthusiasm. Such trends have continued throughout

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the study period. These results support a recommendation that the activity should be included in Korean language curriculum.

Suggestions for Further Research Further research is required because this study raised more questions than it answered. The following are suggestions for this research: 1. The development of attitude toward reading and reading comprehension takes time and evolves slowly (Sadoski, 1980). To determine the long-term effect of SSR on them, thus, more longitudinal studies (e.g., entire school year or several school years) are needed. 2. Although the preliminary findings from several psychological testing procedures provided support for the reliability and validity of the Korean modification of the ERAS in a fourth-grade Korean population, possible linguistic and cultural discrepancies between the original scale and the new scale may not be totally eliminated. Thus, further research is necessary for developing a new attitude scale for an elementary Korean population. 3. Due to the limitation of a pre-post test research design, this study could not determine if reading attitude gains available through SSR continue after the intervention. Thus, further research is needed into the delayed effects of SSR on reading attitude and reading comprehension. 4. To investigate the process of a change in participants’ attitude toward reading and reading performance during and after the intervention, qualitative measures such as observations and interviews should be used.

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Limitations of the Study Some conditions that are beyond the control of the investigator may have placed restrictions on the results and conclusions of the study. The following are be considered to have been limitations of the study: 1. Due to the inability of random sampling and in particular, of random assignment of participants and experimenters to the experimental and control groups, the outcomes of the study may have resulted from variables that were not actually manipulated, measured, or selected in this study with those variables systematically treated. For example, the educational expectation of reading in the home environment may also have varied from participant to participant and from home to home, respectively. Therefore, these limitations should be taken into account while interpreting the results of the study. 2. The results and conclusions of the study may not be generalized to any other graders and settings because only fourth-grade Korean students from elementary classrooms in the southeastern area of Seoul, South Korea, participated in this study. 3. The development of attitude toward reading and reading performance may be a long-term process and therefore, modification may take place over a long period. The relatively limited amount of treatment time (i.e., 14 week-intervention) involved in the study may be a limitation, which should be recognized when interpreting the findings of the study.

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APPENDICES

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APPENDIX A SUMMARIES OF RESEARCH STUDIES

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SUMMARIEZ OF RESEARCH STUDIES In Oliver’s (1973) study, 28 fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students involved in an experimental group participated in the High Intensity Practice (HIP) which consisted of three different activities: (a) USSR, (b) Sustained Silent Writing (SSW), and (c) SelfSelected Activity (SSA). During the USSR period ranging from ten minutes to thirty minutes, students read books of their own choosing. The reminder of the hourly period was devoted to SSW where students participated in a five minute writing activity and to SSA where they were permitted to engage in any activities such as reading, writing, social studies or arithmetic. Students in a control group received an intensive direct reading program using basal readers and workbooks. Both of the groups were given the Gates MacGinitie Reading Test, Survey D, Form 1M and 2 M, as a pre- and posttest, respectively. The study lasted one month. According to the results, there was no significant mean difference between the two groups on reading achievement. In Evans and Towner’s (1975) study, 24 fourth-grade students in an experimental group participated in a SSR activity in which they read silently books of their own choosing for a 20-minute reading period every day. Another 24 fourth graders in a control group received conventional reading instruction in which they used commercial materials for practice and reinforcement of reading skills. Both of the groups were randomly assigned. The study lasted ten weeks. To determine any significant changes in reading achievement, they were administered the Metropolitan Achievement Test, Form G. No significant mean difference was found between the two groups. Also, no interaction effect was found between gender and treatment.

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In Wilmot’s (1975) study, 288 second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade students involved in an experimental group participated in a silent reading period as part of the daily reading program where they read silently material of their own choosing with the teacher. Another 288 second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade students received a general school reading program. The study lasted six months. To measure the effectiveness of the treatment, the Wilmot Reading Attitude Inventory for reading attitude and the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests, Primary B and Survey D, for comprehension were used. The results indicated that there were significant differences on the fourth- and sixth-grade students’ reading attitude in favor of the SSR group. However, no significant difference was found on the second-grade students’ reading attitude. Also, there was no significant difference between the groups in performance both on the vocabulary knowledge measure and on the reading comprehension measure. In Oliver’s (1976) second study of the effect of HIP on reading achievement, 207 fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students participated in the study. Students in experimental group I received traditional reading instruction of 25 minutes and participated in a halfhour HIP every day, while students in experimental group II participated in 55-minute HIP for two days per week and received traditional reading instruction for three days per week. Students in a control group received daily-based 55-minute periods of traditional reading instruction. For comprehension measure, the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test, Survey D, Form 2M, and the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test, Survey D, Form 1M, were administered as a pre- and posttest before and after the study, respectively. To measure any changes on reading attitude, informal observation and questionnaires were used. The study lasted three months. According to the results, no significant differences among the

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three groups were found in reading speed, reading accuracy, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. However, they showed a positive influence of HIP on attitudes toward reading. In Mikulecky and Wolf’s (1977) study, 135 seventh-grade students participated in one of the following activities of a 20-minute session per week. Students in USSR simply read books of their own choosing and students in Reading Games played reading-related games such as Scrabble, Ad Lib, Spill-Spell, and Password. In Reading Skills Activity, students participated in self-selected reading skill activities such as Sprint, Countdown, Six-Way Paragraphs, Word Power, and Timed Readings. The study lasted 10 weeks. To measure reading attitude, all students were given the Mikulecky Behavioral Reading Attitude Measure (MBRAM) at the beginning and the end of the study. According to the results, there were no significant differences of means among the three groups. Rather, the gain scores for the three groups showed a slight deterioration of their reading attitude. Wolf and Mikulecky’s (1977) nine-week study was designed to determine whether providing reading skills instruction with USSR has an impact on the development of vocabulary, reading comprehension, and attitudes toward reading of seventh-grade students. 125 seventh-grade students participated in the study and they were randomly assigned to one of the following two treatment conditions: (a) skill instruction alone and (b) skill instruction plus USSR. Students in an experimental group received reading skills instruction such as context clues, word structure, and main idea of four 40-minute periods per week, and participated in one 40-minute USSR period per week. Students involved in a control group received the same reading skills instruction of five 40-minute periods per week. The two groups were administered the Stanford

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Diagnostic Reading Test, Level 2, Form W, the Estes Attitude Scales, and the Mikulecky Behavior Reading Attitude Measure. For vocabulary, according to the results, no significant difference was found between the groups. For reading comprehension, mean raw scores for the two groups declined. However, the decline on reading comprehension was significantly smaller in the experimental group. For reading attitude, no significant mean difference between the two groups was found. In Reed’s (1978) study, approximately 1, 300 ninth through twelfth students from an urban high school in New Haven, Connecticut, participated in an investigation of the effects of SSR on attitude toward reading and reading comprehension. The 14 English teachers and 61 English classes were randomly assigned to either an experimental group or a control group. Students in the experimental group received four-day traditional English instruction and a one-day SSR activity of 45 minutes a week. Students in the control group received five-day traditional English instruction without any SSR activity per week. The study lasted five and a half months. The Student Views on Reading for reading attitude and the Metropolitan Achievement Test, Advance Level, for reading comprehension were used to determine the effects of the treatment. The results indicated that no significant differences between the groups for reading comprehension and reading attitudes were found. In Einhorn’s (1979) study, 40 fifth-grade students from a suburban parochial school were involved in an experimental group which participated in a SSR activity wherein they read silently materials of their own choosing with their teacher for a dailybased 10-minute session. 41 fifth graders from the same school in a control group participated in a 10-minute reading skill session in which they independently selected

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their reading materials, kept records of their work, and submitted their tasks to teachers for corrections. Those students were randomly assigned to one of the two groups. The study lasted 10 weeks. They were given the Estes Attitude Scales to measure any changes on their reading attitude. No statistically significant mean difference between the groups was found. Cline and Kretke (1980) conducted a three-year, longitudinal experimental study. 111 junior-high graders in an experimental group have already experienced SSR in their school program for six years, while 138 junior-high grade students in a control group have not experienced SSR in their school program. Both of the groups were comparable in terms of reading ability and socioeconomic status. To measure any changes in reading comprehension, the SRA Assessment Survey, Green Level, Form E, for sixth graders, Lorge-Thorndike Intelligence Test, Level 4, Form A, for seventh graders, and the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills, Level 4, Form S and the Short Form Test of Academic Aptitude, Level 5, for ninth graders were used. For reading attitude, a locally developed reading attitude survey was administered. According to the results, no significant differences on the reading comprehension measures were found. However, they found a significant difference favoring the experimental group on four out of the 12 questions regarding attitude toward reading. In Collins’ (1980) study, 126 students (Grade 3 through 6) involved in an experimental group participated in a SSR activity of a daily-based 20-minute period for 15 weeks, while 94 students (Grades 2 through 6) in a control group received their regular spelling and English instruction. Students’ reading achievement was measured by the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Achievement and the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Their

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attitude toward reading was measured by the How I Feel About Reading and the Attitude Assessment. For reading comprehension, according to the results, the difference in gain scores between the two groups was not significant. Also, for reading attitude a significant difference in gain scores between the two groups was not found. Rather, attitude scores for the two groups declined. Burley’s (1980) study was conducted to investigate the effect of SSR on reading comprehension and vocabulary of upward bound tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-grade students. 85 students were randomly assigned to one of the four treatment conditions: (a) SSR, (b) programmed textbooks, (c) programmed cassette tapes, and (d) programmed skill development kits. Each of the four groups received approximately 33-minute reading instruction and also participated in one of the daily-based 27-minute reading practices. Students in the SSR read silently materials of their own choosing. Students in the programmed textbooks condition worked independently on their assignment from the teacher with specific directions in the programmed textbooks, while participants in the programmed cassette tapes condition worked independently or collaboratively on their assignment from the teacher with specific direction on the programmed cassette tapes. In the programmed skill development kits condition, participants independently worked on their assigned practice skills from the teacher with specific guidelines in the programmed skill development kits. The study lasted six-weeks. The Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test, Form A, Level III, was administered as a pretest and a posttest measure, respectively. According to the results, a significant difference was found only between the SSR condition and the programmed skill development kits on reading comprehension

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in favor of the SSR group. For vocabulary, however, significant differences were not found among the four conditions. In Kefford’s (1981) study, Year 7 (i.e., Grade 7) Australian boys in an experimental group participated in SSR for one English period per week. In the activity, they chose titles from six thematically organized adolescent novels lists, each of which has 25 or more books. They were required to read at least four titles from each list and were asked to change lists every six weeks. The study lasted six months. For reading achievement, the ACER Progressive Achievement Test was pre- and posttested before and after the study. Their performance on the measure was compared to the Year 7 boys’ performance in New South Wales (NSW). According to the results, there were substantial shifts in stanine scores obtained by Year 7 boys towards the upper end of the scale for comprehension and vocabulary, respectively. Furthermore, their performance on reading comprehension increased from 80 % to 84 %. It went beyond the level that the authors of the Progressive Achievement Test regard as satisfactory for boys of their age. Also, their performance on vocabulary increased from 87 % to 95%. The authors of the Progressive Achievement Test regard it as satisfactory for boys of their age. Summers and McClelland’s (1982) study was one of the most comprehensive and well-designed studies to examine the effects of SSR on reading achievement and reading attitudes. 612 fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-grade students in Richmond, Canada, involved in an experimental group participated in 4-5 20-minute SSR sessions per week for five months. 603 fifth-, sixth- and seventh-grade students from another school involved in a control group received their regular reading programs. To make the two groups equivalent, various criteria such as teaching staff, student ability, socioeconomic status,

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type of instructional program, reading achievement, attitude toward school, library facilities, and home environment were used. They were pre- and postested using the Metropolitan Achievement Test, Intermediate and Advanced Form, and Estes Attitude Scales in December and in June, respectively. Pretest scores were used as a covariate. They reported that there were no significant differences between the two groups on both reading attitude and reading achievement. Langford and Allen’s (1983) study investigated the effectiveness of USSR on 250 fifth- and sixth-grade students’ attitude toward reading and reading achievement. 131 fifth- and sixth-grade students in an experimental group participated in a 30-minute USSR session prescribed by McCracken (1971) every day for six months, while 119 fifth- and sixth-grade students involved in a control group engaged in a variety of activities such as units on health, manners, and grooming. All students in the study received the same reading instruction in their language arts classes throughout the duration of the study. To measure any changes in reading attitude, the Heathington Intermediate Scale for Measuring Attitude, the Estes Attitude Scales, and the Scale of Reading Attitude were administered, respectively. For reading achievement, the Slosson Oral Reading Test was administered. According to the results, no significant differences were found between the two groups on both the Heathington Intermediate Scale for Measuring Attitude and the Estes Attitude Scales. On the Scale of Reading Attitude that measures their reading behavior based on the teacher’s observation, however, there was a significant difference in favor of the control group. Also, there was a significant mean difference in favor of the experimental group on the Slosson Oral Reading Test.

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Elley and Mangubhai’s (1983) study was conducted to determine if repeated exposure to highly interesting English storybooks produced rapid second language learning in ESL students. 535 nine- and ten-year-old students from Class 4 and Class 5 of Fijian schools were assigned randomly to one of the three treatments: (a) Shared Book Experience, (b) SSR, and (c) control group. Students in the Share Book Experiment participated in a variety of daily activities such as teacher reading-aloud activity, discussion of books, role-playing, word study, art work, and writing activity for 20 minutes out of their regular English class. Students in the SSR treatment read silently books of their own choosing for 20 minutes every day without any accountability. The other students involved in the control group participated in the traditional SPC/Tate audio-lingual program wherein they received their daily lesson consisting of two 15minute oral English lessons. The study lasted eight months. As a pre- and posttest, students from Class 4 were given a reading comprehension test, while students of Class 5 were given the reading comprehension test consisting of a sentence-completion test of 35 multiple-choice items developed by one of the two authors as a pre-test. The STAF Reading Comprehension, Form Y, was also administered as a posttest for Class 5. The pretest scores were used as a covariate. For Class 4, the two treatment groups outperformed the control group. However, no significant difference was found between the Share Book group and the SSR group. For class 5, the two experimental groups also surpassed the control group. The Share Book group outperformed the SSR group. Even in the one-year follow-up study, the two experimental groups surpassed the control group for Class 4, and Class 5. However, there was no significant difference between the two experimental groups.

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In Box’s (1984) study, 116 third-grade students from a Mississippi school involved in an experimental group participated in a daily 10-minute SSR session received in a regular reading program. 118 control group students only participated in a regular reading program. The treatment period lasted 13 weeks. The California Achievement Test and the Estes Reading Attitude Scale were pre- and posttested to determine any changes on reading comprehension and attitude toward reading, respectively. According to his analysis of covariance, no significant difference was found between the two groups in comprehension and reading attitude. However, there was a significant difference of means on reading vocabulary in favor of the experimental group. Further, a lowachieving experimental group significantly outperformed a low-achieving control group on both reading comprehension and reading vocabulary. For a high-achieving group, however, there were no significant differences on reading comprehension and reading vocabulary, respectively. For an average-achieving group, there was a significant mean difference on reading vocabulary in favor of the experimental group. Manning and Manning’s (1984) study was conducted to determine the relative effects of three recreational reading models on reading comprehension and reading attitude. 24 teachers and 415 fourth-grade students randomly assigned to one of the four groups involved in the study. As independent variables, three recreational reading models and one control group were selected: (a) control group, (b) sustained silent reading, (c) peer interaction in which students interacted with their peer about their reading, and (d) individual teacher-student conferences in which a teacher interacted with an individual student about his or her reading. Teachers conducted their usual developmental reading activities for one hour with an additional thirty-minute recreational reading model per

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day. Teachers in a control group conducted their usual developmental reading activities. The Manning Reading Attitude Inventory and the California Achievement Test were used as the measure of reading attitude and reading comprehension, respectively. According to the results, students involved in the peer interaction and the individual teacher-student conferences group obtained significantly higher scores than students in the other two groups on the measures of reading attitude. Only those students who participated in the peer-interaction group obtained significantly higher scores than students involved in the other three groups on a measure of reading achievement. However, they reported no significant difference in reading achievement and attitude toward reading when comparing 99 fourth graders in the SSR group with 117 fourth graders in the control group. Schon, Hopkins, and Vojir’s (1985) study was conducted to determine the effects of special reading time on reading achievement and attitude toward reading of Hispanic junior high school students (Grade 7 and 8). Approximately 200 seventh- and eighthgrade Hispanic students involved in an experimental group participated in a 45-minute free reading session per week in substitution for one of their daily reading classes for 8.5 months. In the activity, they were encouraged to read a variety of the Spanish reading materials of their own choosing. Another 200 seventh- and eighth-grade Hispanic students who were seventh- and eighth-grade students at the same junior high school prior to the implementation of the experimental treatment were used as a control group. To measure the effects of the experimental treatment, all of them were given the Spanish Reading Comprehension, the Spanish Reading Speed, and the Spanish Vocabulary test.

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According to the results, the experimental group had a significant gain in Spanish vocabulary as well as Spanish reading speed for the eighth graders. Aranh’s (1985) eight-month study was conducted to determine whether SSR has an impact on reading comprehension and reading attitude in Bombay, India, for fourthgrade students who spoke their own dialects at home and used English as a medium of instruction at school. Experimental and control groups consisted of high, middle, and low language ability readers. All of them participated in the same language program. Additionally, children in the experimental group were engaged in SSR twice a week. To measure the treatment effect, the Estes Attitude Scales and a cloze test were pre- and posttested before and after the study. She reported that the mean change of 2.33 in attitude scores was significant favoring the experimental group. In particular, the low and high language ability subgroups involved in the SSR showed a higher gain. On the contrary, students’ attitude scores declined in the control group. For reading achievement scores, the mean change showed a significant difference of 2.19 in favor of the SSR group. In Davis’ (1988) study of the effectiveness of SSR and Directed Reading Activity (DRA) on reading achievement, 56 eighth graders were randomly assigned to an experimental group or a control group. Students in the experimental group participated in a 40-minute SSR and a 10- minute DRA, while students in the control group received a 40-minute DRA and participated in a 10-minute SSR. The treatment was delivered on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays of each week throughout an entire school year. Both groups were assigned the task of writing answers to post-questions that followed the sections. The Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS), Level H, Form U, was used

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for both the pretest and the posttest. The pretest was used as a covariate. For mediumability readers, according to the results, a significant difference was found in favor of the experimental group. However, for high-ability readers, the difference was not significant. The low-ability readers were not analyzed due to a high attrition late among those students. In Dwyer and Reed’s (1989) study, 19 fourth- and fifth-grade students involved in an experimental group participated in an additional 15 minutes of SSR activity for six weeks, while 21 fifth-grade students involved in a control group received an additional 20 minutes of regular reading instruction. The two groups were almost equivalent in terms of the socioeconomic status and racial composition. The same teacher participated in the two conditions, which would eliminate any teacher effect. The changes in reading attitude were measured by Rhody Secondary Reading Attitude Assessment at the outset and at the end of the study. According to their results, there was no significant mean difference between the groups. In Barton’s (1989) study, 112 second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students involved in an experimental group participated in a daily 10 minute SSR session and received their regular reading program for 12 weeks. 111 second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth grade student involved in a control group participated in the regular reading program. All of them in the study were enrolled in the independent college preparatory day school located in a southern city. The Heathington Attitude Scale and the GatesMacGinitie Reading Comprehension Test were pre- and posttested to determine any changes on reading attitude and reading comprehension, respectively. Additionally, teachers’ subjective comments and observations regarding the implementation of USSR

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were also recorded by using a daily log and a final USSR questionnaire. According to the quantitative results, there were no significant differences in both reading comprehension and reading attitude between the two groups. However, her qualitative data based on the teachers’ comments and observations showed that USSR produced positive changes toward reading attitudes in both students and teachers. Tudor and Hafiz’s (1989) study was conducted to determine the effect of a threemonth extensive reading program on the second language skill development of the ESL students in Leeds, the United Kingdom. 16 10-11 year-old Pakistani students involved in an experimental group participated in an extensive reading program in which they read silently books of their own choosing after school for one hour every day over 12 weeks at the work place of one of the authors. They were required to give an oral report on what they read once a week. Another 15 ESL students involved in a control group I and II, respectively did not receive any special treatments. The National Foundation for Educational Research Tests was pre- and posttested to measure students’ reading achievement at the beginning and end of the study, respectively. According to the results, no significant difference was found among the three groups. In Dully’s (1989) study, 10 at-risk fifth-grade students involved in an experimental group participated in 15-minute SSR sessions at least four times per week for approximately 8 months, while 9 at-risk fifth-grade students involved in a control group received basal reading instruction at the developmental reading class. All of them were randomly assigned to one of the two groups. The California Achievement Test and the Coopersmith Inventory were pre- and posttested for reading comprehension and reading attitude, respectively. Although the mean gain of 1.38 years in the experimental

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group was higher than that of .33 year in the control group, no statistically significant difference between the groups was found. However, a significant difference in selfconcept measured by the Coopersmith Inventory was found in favor of the experimental group. Holt and O’Tuel’s (1989) 10-week study was conducted to explore the effect of SSR plus sustained silent writing (SSW) on reading comprehension and attitude toward reading of seventh and eighth grade poor readers at two or more steps below reading level. 54 seventh and 58 eighth poor readers participated in a 20-minute silent reading activity for three days a week and a 20-minute silent writing activity for two days a week. 49 seventh and 50 eighth grade readers in a control group received a 20-minute basal reading instruction for five days a week. The Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test, Form E1, for comprehension and the Estes Attitude Scale for attitude were pre- and posttested. According to their results, significant improvement for the seventh-grade students was found on reading vocabulary, reading comprehension, and reading attitude in favor of the experimental group. For the eight-grade students, a significant difference was found in vocabulary in favor of the experimental group. In Reutzel and Hollingsworth’s (1991) study, 114 fourth- and sixth-grade students were randomly assigned to one of the five different treatment conditions: (a) locating details, (b) drawing conclusions, (c) finding the sequence, (d) determining the main idea, and (e) SSR as a control group. Students in each treatment condition received the 10 researcher-constructed specific reading skill lessons over 10 days. Each skill instruction lasted approximately 27 minutes per day. Students in the control group participated in the daily-based 27-minute SSR activity in which they read literature books in the school

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media center. The SSR activity lasted 10 days. During the remainder of each reading lesson, all of them in the five conditions received regular reading instruction based on Houghton-Mifflin basal reading series. The Barnell Loft Specific Skills Tests was preand posttested to measure any changes in the four comprehension skills. According to the results, no significant mean differences among the five treatment were found on the four reading comprehension skills.

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APPENDIX B INFORMAL DAILY READING LOG

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INFORMAL DAILY READING LOG (
 ) Name ():

Date ():

1.

How did you feel about reading during today’s SSR activity (    )?

2.

How was interestness of a reading material you read during today’s SSR activity (        )? A. Very boring ( ! "#$) C. Interesting (%&'$)

3.

B. Boring ("#$) D. Very interesting ( ! %&'$)

How was readability of a reading material you read during today’s SSR activity (      ()  )? A. Very easy ( ! *'$) C. Difficult ((+$)

4.

B. Easy (*'$) D. Very difficult ( ! (+$)

How did you participate in the SSR activity today (    ,  -.)? A. Very poorly (/0 -.1 23$) C. Well (-.5 4$)

5.

B. Poorly (-.1 2 4$) D. Very well ( ! 678 -.$)

How long did you spend reading out of school yesterday (.9# :;