The Effects of Teaching Reading Remedial Course Using the Five Pillars of Reading Instruction on English Reading Ability of Lower Secondary Students

Abstract

The objectives of this study were 1) to investigate the effect of an English reading remedial course using The Five Pillars of Reading Instruction on English reading ability of low-achieving students and 2) to examine the opinions of students about English reading remedial course using The Five Pillars of Reading Instruction. The participants were 10 lower secondary students (Grade 8) at Wattana Wittaya Academy who had Grade 7 reading subject’s grade lower than 2.5 and volunteered to participate. The remedial course was composed of five elements according to the Five Pillars of Reading Instruction suggested in Shanahan (2005) which were Phonological Awareness, Phonics, Oral Reading Fluency, Vocabulary, and Reading Comprehension. The treatment lasted 80 hours. The instruments were lesson plans, a reading diagnostic test and a semi-structured interview. The results from the pretest and posttest were analyzed by using Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test and descriptive statistics to compare students’ reading ability. In addition, the participants’ opinions were analyzed by using content analysis. The result of this study found 1) the participants who attended the remedial course had statistically significant impact in all 5 areas. The overall was Z= -2.812 p= .005 and 2) the participants were satisfied towards the remedial course and suggested to have least than 3 hours instruction during academic year for low-achieving readers. The finding can be applied to the normal reading classroom and remedial course.