THE EFFECTS OF USING GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS ON ENGLISH READING ABILITY OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

The objectives of the current study were to explore effects of using graphic organizers in English reading instruction on English reading ability of EFL elementary school students as well as to examine the opinions about using graphic organizers in the English reading course. The participants were 34 fifth-grade Thai elementary school students who studied in a private school in Bangkok in the second semester of the academic year 2013. Five types of graphic organizers: Timeline, Descriptive, Compare-and-Contrast, Cause-and-Effect and Problem-and-Solution organizers were employed in the current study. The research instruments in this study were the English reading comprehension pretest and posttest and the opinion questionnaire. The instruction lasted for 13 weeks. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics to obtain mean and standard deviations, and the scores from the tests wer compared with the paired sample t-test. The findings revealed that the participants significantly gained higher scores on the posttest after learning in the reading instruction using graphic organizers. In addition, the participants were satisfied with the English reading course using graphic organizers. They revealed that the graphic organizers helped them to see the text structures and comprehend reading passages better.