Using Commercially Produced Audio Books

Using Commercially Produced Audio Books to Improve Students’ Reading Levels Laurie Maxey J.E.B. Stuart High School Fairfax County (VA) Public Schools Submitted June 2000

Introduction This is my second year of teaching ESL at JEB Stuart High School in Falls Church, Virginia. As an ESL teacher, I am allowed to select materials for my class, and I knew that I needed something other than basal readers to help my students improve their reading levels. Every year, my department tests our students’ reading levels using the Degrees of Reading Power (DRP) test. This test measures reading levels through the use of cloze exercises. My objective with this research project is to try to raise my students’ reading levels through the use of commercially produced audio books. My students are reluctant readers due to a lack of vocabulary and reading experience in English. The students involved in this study are on the K-2 reading levels according to the DRP. By providing interesting and comprehensible reading materials, I hope to see an improvement in their DRP scores.

Background The study took place during the first three quarters of the 1999-2000 school year at J.E.B. Stuart High School. At Stuart our students, who speak 30 different home languages, represent over 70 countries. More than half of our student population qualifies for free or reduced lunch. My ESL department employees one part-time and 12 full-time teachers. Many of our students are at- risk due to their backgrounds and current living conditions. Many of our students have to work after school and on the weekends to help support their families.

The Students There are twelve students participating in this study: seven boys and five girls. These students represent seven countries: Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, El Salvador, Bolivia, Morocco, and Jordan. Their first languages are Arabic, Urdu, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Farsi. They range in age from fourteen to nineteen. The students are all in the same level of ESL, though the length of time that they have been in the United States varies from as little as five months to as long as three years. All of the students, except three, have been in school continuously since they started. These three students’ reading scores have not improved significantly this year. Of these three students, one student repeated one year of school, one took a one-year break, and one was out of school for three years. I believe that there are other factors in these students’ lives, but officially nothing has been diagnosed. One student will be tested for a learning disability at the beginning of next year. Another student has a speech disorder and, on my 2 request, meets with the speech therapist occasionally. The third student is nineteen years old and will not be returning to this school next year.

The Project—The Method In the beginning of the year, the students were struggling to read on their own and be able to comprehend what they read in order to summarize or react to their reading. During Sustained Silent Reading, or SSR, the students would read silently for twenty minutes, then I would either ask them to write a reaction to what they had read or to summarize the story. Most students would turn in a word-for-word copy of the story. Needless to say, this was not what I had expected. I knew, at that point that I needed to provide a different means for my students to read and comprehend material. At the beginning of this project, each student recorded approximately twenty pages of a book for miscue analysis to be done. Miscue analysis is a term first described by Ken Goodman in 1969 as “children’s deviations from text when reading aloud.” When analyzing miscues, the instructor looks at the types of miscues in order to know what students need to work on. From the first analysis, I learned that most of my students needed a lot of work with the –ed sound at the end of past-tense verbs. For example, they would pronounce “looked” as “look ed.” Therefore, we had a few lessons on pronunciation. Another issue that came up after the miscue analysis was a syntactic cue (Hill, 1994). Some of the students were not reading aloud with an understanding of punctuation. The stories became one incredibly long sentence. For one session, I worked individually with students who were not applying the punctuation with reading orally. The initial miscue analysis was done on March 5. Two months later, we did the second analysis. While no students read perfectly the second time, the majority of the students read more fluently. Although all but one student read with punctuation, I still saw a need to work on this, as well as to work on sound endings. For the next stage of the project, students working in teacher-assigned groups of two and three first listened to a book, read the book together, discussed the book as a group, and then individually or as a group answered comprehension questions about their stories. Later, each student recorded a second reading of the book for a final miscue analysis to be completed. The students met in their groups at least once a week. Each session took sixty minutes for the entire process to be completed. The students were placed in groups according to their reading and IRA (Individual Reading Assessment) level. Each group had a high reader, a low reader, and a middle level reader. If there were only two students in a group, there were both one high reader and a low reader, or two middle readers. By “high reader”, I mean that the student is reading at or above the second-grade level. A low reader would be reading at the pre-primer or primer level. A middle reader would be reading at the first grade level. At first, the students did not realize why they were put in different groups. By the third time we did the process, the students had figured it out and the low readers frustrated the high readers. A few of the low readers were so low that the 3 whole process frustrated them. At that point, we took a week off from the process. The following week, I allowed some of the high readers, by their choice, to work by themselves. I, in turn, helped the low and middle readers who were left in the groups. The books chosen for this project were from the “I Can Read Books” series, a group of books published by HarperTrophy, which is a division of HarperCollins Publishers. The books ranged from levels one to level three. Level one is PreS-Grade 1, level two is grades one through three, and level three is grades two through four. I started each group with a level one book. After the first time, however, each group chose its book with a consensus. According to Marie Carbo (1986), recorded books are a helpful tool for students who are not fluent readers because they “enable them to see and hear words simultaneously” while “providing a correct reading model for students to imitate.” Listening to the books first allows them to hear words pronounced correctly which they might otherwise pronounce incorrectly. While Carbo does not promote the use of commercially produced audio books, preferring to tape the stories herself, she does acknowledge the benefits of using this method in the classroom. After the students listened to the book for the first time, they read the book a second time in a reading circle format. Students were asked to help each other pronounce words correctly and to ask the teacher if they were uncertain about a word. At first, the students were eager to use the tape recorders and books. Students from other classes outside of the study would listen to books during free time in class or between classes. Some students asked to take books home with the personal cassette player to listen at home or to share with their siblings. As we continued the audio book process, it became clear to me that some students were still enjoying the project, while others simply wanted to get through it to get a grade. At that point I changed one small aspect of the process. I allowed each group a choice. They could either answer the teacher-made questions, or they could create their own comprehension questions from the book. I allowed the students to work by themselves or as a group. While most students felt more comfortable answering my questions, one group decided to make up their own questions. This group was made up of two high readers and one middle reader. The two high readers usually rushed through the teacher-made questions and always achieved high grades (A or B+). Working together, they seemed to work well as a group to come up with comprehension questions. At the end of the period, I asked this group of three which method they preferred, and they all agreed that they liked making the questions. I believe the opportunity and more challenging assignment intrigued them. While I am not sure that method would work with the lower-level students, I am willing to try it with them in the future.

Reflection This project turned out to be very successful. I was happy to see an improvement in my students’ reading scores for the majority of the class. All of the students, with the exception of the three students mentioned earlier in this paper, will be moving to the next level of ESL next year. I am glad I was able to 4

provide an alternative method for my students to not only improve their reading scores but also their pronunciation. Another benefit of this project was the impact the audio center had on my other students that were not a part of this study. I enjoyed seeing other students pick up a book and tape player during the break before the class started and listen to a story. Just yesterday, when we were going to have a “traditional” SSR time (no audio), a few students, instead of going to the bookcase, went right to the audio center to choose one of the books that they hadn’t read or listened to yet. Another side benefit of this project for me was hearing my department chair mention that my audio center was brought up as a discussion topic during a county-wide high school ESL department chairs meeting as a method that more people should try in their classroom. I realize that my project is not a new teaching method, but I was still thrilled to have had it mentioned at this meeting. My students are also featured in the ESL picture gallery on the school’s website. Overall, I believe that this project has benefited my students in many ways. Through audio books, they were able to work on the four core skills of ESL: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. My students also improved their teamwork skills. I believe the audio center played a major role in improving their DRP scores this year. This project has also had an impact on me as I am planning to use the audio center next year and for many more years. I am also planning to expand my audio book collection so that I can use the audio center with other levels of ESL. Hopefully, more teachers will be interested in using this method in their classrooms in the future.

Results The chart below shows the students’ DRP scores in September 1999 and their DRP scores in May 2000. Student Age Sex Country Sept. DRP May DRP Comments A 18 Male El Salvador -15 31 B 18 Female El Salvador 26 32 C 15 Male El Salvador 19 42 D 16 Male Iran 20 20 speech impediment E 14 Female Bolivia ** 29 F 14 Male Bolivia ** 30 G 16 Female Pakistan 20 20 out of school for one year H 16 Female Pakistan ** 34 I 17 Female Vietnam 20 32 J 19 Male Iraq 21 23 out of school for three years K 14 Male Morocco ** 30 L 16 Male Jordan ** 27

Code: ** means the student arrived after September and was not tested. 5

References Carbo, Marie and Rita & Kenneth Dunn. (1986). Teaching Students to Read Though Their Individual Learning Styles. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Hill, Bonnie Campbell & Cynthia Ruptic. (1994). Practical Aspects of Authentic Assessment: Putting the Pieces Together. Massachusetts: Christopher- Gordon Publishers.