The use of Islamic: based reading materials among students in Southern Thailand

The objectives of the study were to evaluate upper secondary Islamic – based reading materials, to study the improvement of the students’ vocabulary skills through the Islamic – based reading materials, and to examine the students’ opinions toward Islamic – based reading materials. The mixed – mode approaches between quantitative and qualitative models with quasi – experimental design were used as the main research methodology. The research was conducted through three stages, namely; the reading material development, reading material implementation, and reading material evaluation. The research tools were the achievement tests, questionnaires, and the semi-structured interviews. The data were analyzed by using means and standard deviations. The data was also tested by using t-test for paired - sample statistics. The results of the Islamic- based reading implementation indicated that the students’ achievement mean scores and the total mean scores after using the revised reading materials were statistically higher than the students’ achievement mean scores in the same group before using the revised reading materials at 0.01 level of significance. The students’ vocabulary mean scores after using the revised reading materials were also statistically higher than the students’ achievement mean scores in the same group before using the revised reading materials at 0.04 levels of significance. Moreover, the students’ opinions toward the revised reading materials were positive, they were satisfied with the teaching-learning process of the revised reading materials at higher at 0.05 levels of significance. As a conclusion, Islamic – based materials could improve students’ reading skills and most of students were satisfied with the Islamic – based materials. The study implied that the Islamic – based reading materials were effective and could be promoted to be used in classrooms to improve reading skills among students in Southern Thailand.