Effects of reading instruction using backward design framework and citizenship theme to enhance English reading comprehension and social responsibility of tenth grade Thai EFL students

Abstract

This study aimed to 1) investigate the effects of reading instruction using Backward Design framework and citizenship theme (BD&CT) to enhance English reading comprehension of tenth grade Thai EFL students, 2) investigate the effects of reading instruction using BD&CT to enhance social responsibility (SR) of the students, 3) explore the opinions of students towards the reading instruction using BD&CT. The participants included 36 tenth grade students who took course in English reading and writing as an additional course in the second semester of the academic year 2019. The research instruments were English reading comprehension test and social responsibility questionnaire, which were administered prior to implementing reading instruction using BD&CT and after implementing the instruction, and which was opinion survey questionnaire employed after implementing the intervention. The experiment lasted for 8 weeks. The statistical analysis of t-test along with descriptive statistics was used to analyze the quantitative data from English reading comprehension pretest and posttest, also for analyzing the quantitative data from pre-experiment and post-experiment social responsibility questionnaire. From the opinion survey questionnaire, quantitative data from five Likert scale was analyzed using the descriptive statistics and the qualitative data from the open-end questions part were analyzed using content analysis. The findings revealed that (1) the mean scores of English reading comprehension posttest were higher than the mean scores of the pretest at a statistically significant level (p < .05), (2) The mean scores of post-experiment social responsibility were higher than the mean scores of the pre-experiment social responsibility at a statistically significant level (p < .05). (3) Analysis of students’ opinions suggested that they had positive opinions toward the instruction since the designed instruction was beneficial to them in enhancing English reading comprehension and the students’ senses of social responsibility. Keeping with the results of student’s opinions survey, the findings suggested that they had a high engagement in the reading instruction, meanwhile they found the content of the citizenship theme meaningful to their life.