Improving Pupils' Reading Comprehension by Using Shared Reading

Abstract

This action research aims to investigate the effectiveness of shared reading to improve Year 5 pupils' reading comprehension. The focus of this study is to implement shared reading strategy and improve the pupils' reading comprehension skill. In the preliminary investigation, a diagnostic test was conducted. The result shows that most of the pupils did not manage to answer reading comprehension questions correctly as they cannot locate the answers from the text since they did not understand the text. Pre and post-tests, formative assessments, field notes and unstructured interview are used as data collection methods. The marks from pre and post tests were tabulated to make comparison on the achievement of the pupils before and after intervention. Formative assessments were carried out during the intervention sessions in order to evaluate the pupils' performance during the intervention session. Field notes were used to record the pupils' behaviour during the intervention sessions. Unstructured interview was used to gain the responses from the pupils about the implementation of shared reading. From the data collection methods, it was proved that scaffolding using shared reading helped to improve the pupils' reading comprehension as the pupils showed improvements from pre-test Cycle 1 to post-test Cycle 2. Suggestion for further research is by doing some improvisation of scaffolding such as prepare focus questions and pre-teach vocabulary before start the lesson, introduce the characters list, provide visual aids to accompany the reading session and read aloud the text by using right pronunciation and intonation.