Discussion
Discussion of the results of this study can be divided into two areas: reading motivation and student engagement.
Reading Motivation
There were two results from this study directly related to student reading motivation. The student reading attitude surveys showed that the student’s reading motivation increased more when students were read aloud to than when they listened to audiobooks. This survey was given seven times and the scores from each student’s survey were compared to his or her original score to see if there was any change. The changes for reading aloud were added together and the changes for audiobooks were added together. When I compared the total scores for the two methods, the students’ attitudes towards reading were higher after the read-alouds. Therefore there does seem to be a difference in student reading motivation between the two methods.
However, over the course of the study most of the students showed a decrease in reading motivation. Yet the literature on both methods suggests that both should have a positive effect on student reading motivation. I believe that this result may be explained by the circumstances of the study, which were not ideal. The students involved in the study were attending an after school program. At the beginning of the study the after school program was focused on homework completion, motivational sessions on student conduct and tutorials in science and math. The students were eager to participate in the study. However, as the study progressed, the after school program began to provide other opportunities for the students: basketball and cheerleading, computer and board games, field trips to a local botanical garden and art classes at a local museum. As the after school program became more engaging, the students’ desire to participate in the study decreased noticeably. Their responses to the survey may indicate a negative attitude towards reading because they would rather have been playing computer games.
In addition, the students took the surveys seven times in a period of under two months. Comments by some of the students indicated that some of the negative responses could have been a negative response to taking the survey again, rather than to reading. Either way, the interesting result is that there does seem to be a difference between the two strategies.
Student engagement
I found the dichotomy between the students’ stated attitude towards reading aloud and audiobooks and their observed attitude to be of interest.
In the group interviews, the students stated that they preferred audiobooks to read-alouds. They said they enjoyed the technology; they could hear the audiobooks better. This may have been because for several sessions the room in which the books were read was being used by the entire after school program and was quite noisy. However, the most common explanations the students gave for their preference seemed to involve the issue of “control”. They could control the volume; they could skip around in the tape; they were “in charge” and could listen as long as they wanted to – not as long as the reader wanted to read. On the tape, “the reader does not have to stop for breath and never gets tired,” one student said. Obviously, the issue of control is very important to these students. To use an overused word – the students felt “empowered” by the technology.
And yet, the observations revealed that the students were overwhelmingly more engaged when they listened to a reader than when they listened to an audiobook. It is hard to overstate the difference in student attitudes – they leaned forward rather than slouched; they watched the reader; they listened. They were mostly quiet. They settled down more rapidly. They monitored each other’s behavior more. This is not to say that the students were perfectly behaved – but the difference in behavior was obvious. Brian Sturm, in his article on the storylistening trance speaks of the depth of many listeners’ involvement in a storytelling, which is often so deep that he considers it an altered form of consciousness (Sturm, 1999). These students seemed to be entranced, but only by the read-aloud, not by the audiobook. Why?
When asked about this difference, the students themselves identified three main factors:
- “I think we like audio tapes because we can relate to the technology.”
- “With cassettes we can do what we want, so we do.”
- “When there is a reader you have to try to respect him and pay attention.”
The connection to the technology speaks to the familiarity and ease with which modern children approach technology. While it is possible to overstate their technological abilities (most of the students at my school are not better at using computers than the adults) it does seem when observing them that the students are neither afraid of or tentative about technology.
The other two comments, I think, are part of the “control” issue. Since they control the audiobook they can pay just as much attention to it as they want to – which may, at that moment, be minimal. Yet when they are being read to they are not in control – the adult is. Because of their desire to be respectful, they listened long enough to become involved in what they were hearing and once “hooked” they stayed hooked.
It is also possible that the lack of visual stimulation may have been a factor. When the students were being read to, they watched the reader. Once or twice a few students picked up an additional copy of the book and read along, but did not do so for a long period. Very quickly those students went back to watching the reader. Those students who read along with the tape appeared to be more engaged and less off-task than the other students. Because these students had not had much experience in being read to or in listening to tapes, they didn’t really know how to just listen. In my opinion, they need to be able to follow along with their eyes as well as their ears to cut down on distractions.