UPSI Digital Repository (UDRep)
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UPSI Digital Repository (UDRep)
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| Full Text : Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris |
| Preschool children required to attain reading skills before they move to First Grade. Previous studies reported Readers Theater instruction enable to improve fluency and comprehension skills, social and emotional development of preschool children. In this study Readers Theater has been implemented to investigate its effectiveness towards improving fluency and comprehension skills, social and emotional development of preschool children in Malaysia. By using quasi- experimental research design and qualitative methods, data was collected from 50 preschool children (25 in experimental group and 25 in control group) in District of Batang Padang. Convenience sample of 2 preschool classrooms were located in 2 different schools in the same neighborhood. The experimental study periods was carried out for five weeks where the control group was given the passage of the story, while the treatment group received Readers Theater scripts of the same story. Result of the study showed that a total of 24 students (45%) were at levels 1, 12 children (26%) were at levels 2, and followed by 14 children (25%) were at level 3. This descriptive analysis showed that 45 percent of the children were emergent readers. Wilcoxson test result showed there was a significant differences in fluency levels between the treatment and control groups. Result of the analysis by the rank test clearly indicated the significant differences between the two groups (T= 0.00, p < .05). Test statistic also indicated significant differences between the treatment and control groups; Z = -3.00, p .05 in comprehension skills. It can therefore be concluded that the use of Readers Theater technique were incapable to improve the comprehension levels of the preschool children. Qualitative and quantitative finding on social and emotional development showed that children from experiment group were more active in social interactions and better in emotional expressions compared to control group. Overall, researchers concluded that Readers Theater instruction is beneficial for preschool children in Malaysia; to increase fluency, social and emotional skills. However, Readers Theater instruction did not affect preschool children’s comprehension due to certain reasons. For future research, it would be advantageous to collect data for bigger sample as bigger sample will also involve different ethnic groups that will give different view about the impact of Reader’s Theater towards children who employed Malay Language as second language. Bigger sample will also enable to investigate further the effect of the instruction towards reading skills of different levels. |
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