A Tailor-Made Intervention to Improve Rural Chinese Students’ High-Level Reading Comprehension Through Dialogic Pedagogy

• In Event: English Language Learners and Literacy Proficiencies

Abstract

This study examined the impact dialogic intervention on Chinese rural students’ high-level comprehension. It revealed shifts in classroom discourse with students’ engagement in exploratory talk and reduced the teacher’s test questions.Treatment students performed statistically significantly better in treatment-specific tests calling for text evaluation, but no better on the PIRLS items requiring text integration. After the intervention ended, despite the teacher reverting to her pre-intervention teaching method due to the use of mandated texts that allow for only one interpretation of issues, students seemed to internalize argumentative skills and sustained their text evaluation ability. This study informs future research regarding dialogue on rural students’ internalization of argumentation skills. It also recommends granting Chinese teachers’ autonomy in selecting more dialogic texts.

Author

• Yiting Zhong, University of Auckland