Using literature circles to teach graded readers in English: an investigation into reading performance and strategy use

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Graded readers can help English language learners to improve their reading ability. Literary texts with simplified language often differ from expository texts for teaching EFL learners. Although reading strategies have been used to facilitate comprehension, how students use strategies to process literary texts is underexplored. The present study investigates the effect of graded readers, literature circles (LCs) and reading strategies on university students in Taiwan.

Design/Methodology: This study adopted a quasi-experimental design with 60 first-year students reading two graded readers from the Oxford Bookworms collections. Of the 60 participants, 30 were in the control group and the other 30 who received the LC intervention were in the experimental group. Reading comprehension tests and a questionnaire for reading strategies were adopted.

Findings: The findings revealed that the students with the LC intervention outperformed the control group. The tasks in the LC were found to promote reading comprehension and strategy practice. In general, though reading strategies were similarly adopted, monitoring strategies were more frequently used by the experimental group. Originality/Value: LCs offered EFL learners a way to build linguistic and cultural schemata, to develop and practice metacognitive reading strategies, to enhance main-idea comprehension, and to form long-term memories for retention.

KEYWORDS:

• Literature circle
• graded reader
• reading comprehension
• reading strategy
• EFL intermediate learner

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 According to Cohen (1988), eta squared of .01 indicates a small effect size, .06 refers to a medium effect size, and .14 indicates a large effect size.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministry of Science and Technology: [Grant Number 109-2410-H-160-015].

Notes on contributors

Mu-Hsuan Chou

Mu-Hsuan Chou is an associate professor in the Department of Foreign Language Instruction at Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages, Taiwan. Her current research interests include educational psychology, language assessment, learning strategy, and EFL teaching and learning.