ONLINE READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES …

ONLINE READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES AMONG GENERAL AND SPECIAL EDUCATION ELEMENTARY AND MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS By Hsin-Yuan Chen

A DISSERTATION Submitted to

Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education

08.05.2009

ABSTRACT

ONLINE READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES AMONG GENERAL AND SPECIAL EDUCATION ELEMENTARY AND MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS By Hsin-Yuan Chen According to government reports, new Internet technologies present readers with

new reading opportunities and challenges (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000; RAND Reading Study Group [RRSG], 2002). However, we are just beginning to understand the specific complexities that Internet text imposes on the reading comprehension process (Coiro, 2003; Leu, Kinzer, Coiro & Cammack, 2004), and we know even less about what these complexities mean for particular student populations who are reading texts in a variety of online environments. The present study purposefully targeted the online reading strategies of upper-elementary and middle school students with and without learning disabilities (LD), in the U.S. and in Taiwan, as they read expository text. Several aspects of the comprehension process were studied, including: (1) Internet navigation strategies and behaviors, (2) students' sensitivity to the organizational structure of hypertexts, (3) online search strategies, and (4) online reading strategies. Data collection involved surveys, structured metacognitive interviews, observations, reading comprehension activities, and online search tasks that were administered to 119 American and Taiwanese students in the fifth and sixth grades.

The results suggested that the fifth- and sixth-grade students in this study (1) had opportunities to use computers and use the Internet, but they were not taught sufficient online reading and search strategies; (2) were easily disorientated by the non-linear nature

and unfamiliar structure of online texts, especially when Websites or Web pages lacked appropriate tabs or organizational cues for informational passages; (3) did not employ recommended online search strategies; and (4) had weak before-reading strategies, and had difficulty distinguishing before- and during-reading strategies, although their afterreading strategies were often advanced. The study findings suggested that: (1) students needed to be taught necessary online reading and search strategies, and (2) educators and instructional Website designers needed to be mindful of the characteristics of non-linear and unclearly structured text when designing Websites and hypermedia for upperelementary and middle school students.

Copyright by Hsin-Yuan Chen 2009

To my family v

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download