The MA dissertation discusses the relationship between Year 6 students' reading comprehension achievements and the medium of reading input in English. It also considers other factors, such as reading speed, reading enjoyment and motivation for further reading of English interactive e-books. In the literature review, I defined reading and presented some essential concepts: reading ability, reading comprehension (in the first and foreign language, and the impact that the latter has on the former), attitudes to reading (reading culture and reading motivation), reading speed and reading fluency. Furthermore, the literature review describes a brief history of the formation and development of books, followed by the definition of electronic books and their comparison with traditional printed books, and a portrayal of the advantages and disadvantages of e-books. It concludes with a description of the pedagogical application of English interactive e-books in the classroom. The empirical part demonstrates the results of a quantitative research study conducted on a sample of 203 Year 6 students from Slovenia. The main objective of the research was to determine how different medium of reading input in English affects students' reading comprehension achievements in English. Firstly, the students did a grammatical and vocabulary placement test, which was designed for the purpose of the study, and was the basis for the interpretation of the results within three equal groups. The central part consisted of reading two authentic English literary books of different semantic and syntactic complexity, which were originally designed for reading on an e-reader (iPad), but were converted from digital form to the form of traditional printed books. After the students had taken the reading comprehension tests, they completed a short questionnaire, which was also designed for the purpose of this research. The results show that there were no significant differences between the two media of reading input with respect to the students' reading comprehension in English. However, there were statistically significant differences between different medium of reading input in English and reading speed, namely the students read the printed text faster than the electronic one (there can be many reasons: relatively unknown method of reading, a complex management of the e-reader, time-consuming interactive functions of e-books etc.). The obtained results show that more than half of the students preferred the electronic format of the book. Reading enjoyment and motivation for further reading of interactive e-books in English are high, but there is no statistical significance between these variables and reading comprehension achievements. The results of the survey also show that the main advantages of e-books (as opposed to printed ones) are authentic storytelling accompanied by animated images and sound effects that are directly related to the storyline.
|
