While the second and third grade students of middle schools are in the important period when their thinking abilities are being actively developed as well as their senses of values are being built, they don't read books much.
That is because they are...
While the second and third grade students of middle schools are in the important period when their thinking abilities are being actively developed as well as their senses of values are being built, they don't read books much.
That is because they are not interested in reading, and one of its reasons is the lack of reading ability. So a 20 hour-program for reading debate was developed in order to improve students' reading ability.
Through studying and analyzing literatures, it is determined that the factors of reading ability are comprehension ability, critical ability, and expression ability ; the contents of a program to improve reading ability are organized with a teaching-learning curriculum and a debate workbook. The debate workbook consists of <understanding contents> which is to read the contents of materials and analyze it ; <thinking more> which is to criticize a story based on its analyzed contents ; <debating> which is to debate on the extracted issues from the process of analyzing reading materials.
The developed program applied to reading debate classes which are organized in the form of a group with same purpose, a specialty and aptitude class and a special activity class, respectively. While applying the program to students, they were observed, interviewed, and inquired using questionnaires in order to grasp the students' opinions exactly. The analyzed results are as follows.
1. The level of program contents
The level of contents of reading materials is considered to be comparatively appropriate as those are selected from the recommended book list for the second and third grade students.
2. The properness of program hour
The hour for reading debate program was developed on the basis of 2 hours per one reading material, which seems to be appropriate, while the more a group has reading interest the more they feel it long and the less a group has the interest the more they feels it short.
3. The part of most interest among the debate workbooks
Of three realms of debate workbooks, <understanding contents>, <thinking more>, and <debating>, all of the three classes are interested in them in order of <debating>, <thinking more>, and <understanding contents>.
4. The improvement of reading ability
Reading ability was defined as comprehension ability about contents, critical ability in various points of view, and expression ability describing oneself's opinion or feeling, and when analyzing the change thereafter, the program appeared to be effective for those three abilities.