英文摘要 |
This study tried to examine the effects of a comic strip remedial reader, written in Chinese, on young children's reading comprehension. The reader has two features; first, it shows humorous, exciting, or astonishing true stories that could motivate children to read, and on the other, each story is written with 20-30 sentences, with an illustrative image accompanied every one or two sentences, totally 16-18 pictures for one book. To examine the effects on reading comprehension, a 20-item comprehension test was developed, with five items for each story. Then, a 2-factor (2 X 3) true experimental design was conducted to 268 2nd Graders, randomly assigned to the groups of experimental (n=135) and the control (n=133). In the experimental group, students read the stories with images of cartoon illustration while the others in the control without. The independent variables were assigned to group (with or without) and reading ability (high, medium, or low) while the resulted reading comprehension score was the dependent variable. The results showed that an interaction effect appeared between group and reading ability after an ANOVA test. For high reading ability students, reading stories with or without images made no difference; however, for those of low or medium level, a significantly better comprehension score was achieved from the group with images. Moreover, for poor readers, the experimental group outperformed their counterparts in the control group by 26% on the total reading comprehension score. Based on the results, this paper claimed that the benefits of comic strips on reading comprehension could occur at levels of ''factual information retrieval'' and ''integration and interpretation,'' but not at the level of ''reflection and evaluation.'' |