Development of infographic material to enhance young English as foreign language learners’ reading comprehension through close reading instruction

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to: 1) develop infographic materials to help teach young English as foreign language learners’ reading comprehension skills and 2) examine how effective the developed materials were in increasing young English as foreign language learners’ reading comprehension skills focusing upon non-fiction text and 3) examine the effectiveness of close reading instruction in using infographics as reading materials. The participants included 20 year-four students and five foreign teachers who were purposefully selected from an international programme in one of the demonstration schools in Thailand. The instruments used were: 1) semi-structured interviews for teachers, 2) need analysis questionnaires for students, 3) English reading comprehension tests, 4) semi-structured interviews for students, and 5) material evaluation forms for teachers. The qualitative data was analysed through content analysis. The quantitative data was analysed by statistics using percentage, mean, standard deviation, and Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Using Tomlinson’s material development framework (2011) Krauss’s process of creating infographics (2012) and Sisson and Sisson’s close reading instruction (2014) the infographics were developed. The results of the comprehensions tests demonstrated that (1) the students' post-test mean scores of the English reading comprehension tests improved at the significant level of 0.5. (2) the results from students’ semi-interview and teachers’ material evaluation showed the satisfaction of both students and teachers toward the implementation of the developed infographic materials.