| dc.description.abstract | Materials design and evaluation have been regarded as inseparable processes for a
systematic approach to materials development. But much less attention has been paid
to the role and process of revision. This study reports a two-cycle approach to
reading materials development for Thai undergraduate students: a first cycle of needs
analysis, initial design, implementation and evaluation; and a second cycle of
revision, implementation and re-evaluation. The two cycles involved both learners
and teachers in providing feedback on the materials post-use, in order to enhance
learners’ involvement and motivation and maximise their learning opportunities. The
materials integrated the learners’ specific needs, (i.e. poor L2 reading behaviours)
within a theoretical framework of cognitive/metacognitive strategy instruction and
collaborative work that informed the selection of reading strategies, reading texts and
pedagogical tasks.
In the first cycle, six units of material were implemented with reading classes in
Thailand for a period of six weeks. Evaluation involved students’ tasks-in-process,
end-of-unit and use-of-Thai-or-English questionnaires, teacher’s questionnaires,
learning journals, interviews and classroom observations. In addition to users’
positive comments on the usefulness of strategies, collaborative work, text topic and
a variety of learning tasks, analysis of the findings indicated linguistic difficulties,
insufficient amount of time and support from the teacher, difficulties in expressing
ideas in English and uncertainty about reading purposes and task procedures. This
led to two versions of materials revision—text simplification (TS) and procedural
modification (PM).
In the second cycle, the materials, revised in response to the first-cycle users’
feedback, were re-implemented and re-evaluated through the same procedures, with
the addition of pre-and post-tests, by four groups of Thai students taught by two
different teachers. Analysis of the learners’ perceptions showed that the second-cycle
materials had met their learning needs, in reference to their comments about reading improvements and the usefulness of reading strategies, and that collaborative work
helped increase their awareness of strategy use, text understanding and motivation.
Classroom variables, particularly teachers’ scaffolding, played a significant role in
enhancing learners’ motivation in terms of their perceptions of text difficulty, text
understanding, and text and task enjoyment, as well as positively affecting their task
performance. There was no significant difference between the students’ perceptions
of the TS and PM materials, except that the TS groups had significantly more
perceived text understanding, as they found language use in the texts significantly
more accessible. In terms of progress, all TS and PM groups made improvements in
their post-test, with Group 1 (PM) and Group 4 (TS) gaining significantly higher
means in the post-test.
These two cycles of implementation and evaluation offer clear evidence that the
reading materials featuring explicit strategy training and collaborative work could
raise the Thai students’ awareness of reading strategy use, enhance their reading
performance and increase the level of task enjoyment. The present study also
suggests the benefits of integrating text simplification and the use of L1 in the
reading materials and instruction, as these two measures could build up the students’
motivation as well as level of text understanding. Additionally, to increase
motivation and involvement, it is worthwhile focusing on the selection of interesting
and challenging text topics, on the design of a task response format which does not
require grammatical knowledge and on producing materials with colourful
illustrations. Teachers’ careful scaffolding and the clarity of task purposes and
procedures were shown to be important variables affecting the classroom atmosphere
and the students’ level of task achievement, and thus, need to be taken into
consideration when planning guidance for teachers involved in teaching reading
course such as that investigated in this study. | en |
