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This
study reports on the results found when one hour of weekly in-class
sustained silent reading replaced one hour of instruction within a three
hour per week English Reading course at a college in southern Taiwan.
Four separate groups of 16 year old 3rd year junior college students
from Taiwan were part of this two semester thirty-six week English language
study. The control group was taught given a prescribed three hour per
week syllabus of intensive reading instruction. The experimental group
followed the same syllabus with the exception that one hour per week
was substituted with in-class sustained silent reading, or one-third
of their instructional time. Both groups were given pre-mid-post cloze
as well as pre-mid-post phrasal verb tests. Preliminary results indicate
that both groups made gains in language development as measured through
cloze, suggesting that the time spent in relaxing free reading is as
effective as traditional instruction, a result consistent with previous
reports of the efficacy of in-class reading. |