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Does pre-teaching help comprehension and build reading speed?
Graduation Thesis
Presented to
the Faculty of the Department of
English Language and Literature
Notre Dame Seishin University
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirement for the Degree
Bachelor of Arts
Yuka Sekiguchi
2009
Contents
Abstract
Chapter One: Reading and the process
1.1. Introduction 1
1.2. The Importance of reading 2
1.3. Intensive reading and Extensive reading 3
1.4. Reading comprehension 5
1.5. What is Pre-teaching? 6
1.6. Schema theory 7
1.7. The focus of this thesis 9
1.8. Conclusion of chapter one 10
Chapter Two: The experiment
2.1. Introduction 11
2.2. The experiment 11
2.2.1. Introduction to the experiment 11
2.2.2. Method 11
1) Subjects 11
2) Instruments 12
a) Reading texts 12
b) Pre-teaching texts 27
c) Comprehension questions 28
3) Procedure 28
2.2.3. Results 31
2.3. Summary 33
Chapter Three: Discussion of the experiment
3.1. Introduction 34
3.2. Summary of the results 34
3.3. Discussion of the results 34
3.4. Further research 37
3.5. Conclusion 38
References 39
Appendices 41
Abstract
Recently, people have noticed the importance of extensive reading. The aim of this research is
to help decide whether pre-teaching aids comprehension and whether there is a difference in
reading speed if students have pre-reading activities or not.
I prepared two reading texts; the first was with pre-teaching and the other was without
pre-teaching. I gave some information to the subjects not only the translation of the important
words in the text but also the concept and explanation of the words as a pre-teaching. I judged
the reading understanding from comprehension question after reading.
Unfortunately the result of the experiment did not show enough evidence. In my
experiment, it wasn’t shown that pre-teaching helped reading comprehension and reading
speed. However I still believe in the usefulness of pre-teaching. I believe if I can change the
way of research, I can find that pre-teaching helps the reader’s comprehension and speed. I’m
sure that it will be useful for both students and teachers if I find out that pre-teaching helps.
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Chapter One; Reading and the process
1.1. IntroductionLately, many people are learning English as a second language or a foreign language
in all over the world. There are a lot of languages in the world but why are most people
leaning English? There are some reasons, for example, “The USA and the UK for a very long
time have controlled a lot of land in many countries” （ Waring, 2007 ） . Also so
many people need to use English as a communication tool in their daily life. Also, “English is
the language of business and entertainment (i.e. movie, music and so on), and knowing
English can be a sign of high education in some countries” (Ibid.). Nowadays, English is the
most widely-used language in the world.
A lot of Japanese people are also learning English. Those people are not only school
or university students but also people who are not related to English in their daily life, such as
office workers and housewives. They learn English in various places such as schools,
conversation schools, and homes and so on. They have their own different goals. For
example, some people learn English to get high scores on their school tests. Some people
learn English to get a good job and a high salary. Some people learn English to speak English
fluently to travel foreign countries. They have different reasons, but it is the case that a lot of
people in Japan are interested in learning English.
So, how are they leaning English? There are a lot of ways to learn English according
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to each person’s aim and goal. The learning process will differ widely in what skill the learner
focuses on. For instance, if people want to develop their speaking skill for their traveling,
they need to remember and practice the words or sentences which are often used. There are
many aims according to the person and also there are many ways to learn. In this paper,
however, I focus on the reading skill and how to build the reading skill because I’m interested
in the reading skill and I want to build my reading skill.
1.2 The importance of reading
We read something everyday, such as novels, newspapers, articles, letters, magazines,
recipes, timetables, food labels, and instructions (Grellet, 1994). We read something for some
reasons and it depends on the situations, for instance, it’s sometimes for pleasure, and
sometimes to get information or to do something with the information we get (Ibid.). Reading
is necessary in our daily life.
We can say the same thing with learning the second language and foreign language. In
English education in Japan, reading skill had been the most important skill for a long time
and it showed how much the person knew about the language, because most tests especially
school examinations in Japan only focused on reading skills. Recently, Japanese government
introduced other skills to the test too; writing, listening and speaking. For example, listening
tests were introduced into the National Center Test for University Admissions in 2006.
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(Wikipedia1 ) This means that not only reading ability but also other skills are required now.
However, there is no change in the importance of the reading skill. Many tests such as TOEIC
and EIKEN have reading parts all the time. There are not many tests without reading tests. It
means that people place a special emphasis on reading.
Through reading texts, “we can get opportunities to study language such as
vocabulary, grammar and punctuation. In addition, we can learn the way we construct
sentences, paragraphs and texts.” (Jeremy Harmer, 2006) The reading texts become a good
model of the language. Also we can choose the interesting topic individually and get the
knowledge about that. There are a lot of kinds of reading materials, and people can learn
some of the above things from them through reading.
1.3 Intensive reading and Extensive reading
There are some ways of reading, for instance extensive reading and intensive reading.
I usually used intensive reading to develop my reading ability in my school life until entering
the college. Intensive reading focuses on the analysis of the language (Waring, 2004). The
amount of the text is usually little and it’s usually difficult (Ibid.). I always translated each
sentence from English into Japanese. I always read English as a subject for school tests not
for my pleasure, so I couldn’t enjoy reading English. I almost never thought about the
content, because I always focused of the language itself. However my idea about reading has
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changed. I began to adopt extensive reading to develop my reading skill. “Extensive reading
is generally associated with reading large amounts with the aim of getting an overall
understanding of the material. Readers are more concerned with the meaning of the text than
the meaning of individual words or sentences.” (Bamford and Day, 1997) Also extensive
reading helps learners to develop their reading speed (Chung and Nation, 2006). Reading fast
is considered an important goal of reading instruction. Some people read word by word, and
thus comprehend poorly. However, I don’t say intensive reading is bad and extensive reading
is good. I suggest that the important thing is the balance of them. When we read intensively,
we emphasize accuracy. So we often use dictionaries, text books and course books etc,
because the text is usually a little bit difficult and mainly the readers focus on analysis of the
language. On the other hand, when we read extensively, we emphasize fluency. So we often
focus on practicing language they already know. The following table shows the difference of
extensive reading and intensive reading. (Waring, 2004)
Intensive Reading Extensive Reading
Analysis of the language LINGUSTIC FOCUS Fluency, skill forming
Usually difficult DIFFICULTY Very easy
Little AMOUNT A book a week
Teacher selects SELECTION Learner selects
All learners study the same material WHAT MATERIALAll learners read different things
( something interesting to them)
In class WHERE Mostly at home
Checked by specific questions COMPREHENSION Checked by reports / summaries
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In Japanese education system, schools and teachers much focus on accuracy when
they teach reading in English classes as I was educated. However, in fact, we should learn not
only accuracy but also fluency.
1.4. Reading Comprehension
When we read something, comprehension is very important. What exactly is reading
comprehension? “If we say that a student is ‘good at comprehension’, we mean that he can
read accurately and efficiently, so as to get the maximum information from a text with the
minimum of misunderstanding” (Swan, 1975). There are many ways to check reading
comprehension. For example, summarizing, writing reports and answering some questions
about the content of the reading material. These comprehension questions are not needed
when we read in our daily life, but in some cases these are really helpful, for example when
teachers check the students’ understanding, and students’ self want to know how much they
understand the content.
To build up readers’ reading comprehension, there are a lot of tactics, for instance,
school teachers give some pictures in the reading text to let them imagine the situation.
Another example is to read questions before reading. This is a really good way to get high
scores on the test, like TOEIC and Society for Testing English Proficiency. There are many
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different ways and people use different methods to read easily individually, however, above
all, I was interested in pre-teaching. I’ll explain about it more in detail in the next section.
1.5. What is Pre-teaching?
Pre-teaching means to give some information before reading to build the readers’ reading
comprehension. There are three major reasons to give some pre-teaching. The first is to
establish a purpose for reading a given text. The second is to activate and build background
knowledge. The third is to establish realistic expectations about what is in the text and thus
read more effectively. (e.g. The title, the author and subheadings) (Jo, Ann, Aebersold and
Mary, Lee, Field. 1997). There is much information that we can give before their reading, for
example, we can give some questions about the topic to give some reasons for reading. Also
we can give an introduction to the topic of an informational text to build the readers’
knowledge.
The reason that I was interested in pre-teaching is some teachers used different ways
of pre-teaching in my classes, but some teachers never used pre-teaching and they let us read
without engaging into the topic and reading. Through my experience, I feel pre-teaching is
really helpful for our reading comprehension. To show the importance of pre-teaching, we’ll
now look at schema theory.
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1.6. Schema theory
The main reason of introducing pre-teaching before reading is to build the readers’
knowledge of the topic. We have a lot of background of knowledge such as culture, beliefs,
and values and so on. All this information is connected to each other in our mind, and we call
it schema. It is a knowledge network in our head and we use it everyday unconsciously. There
are three kinds of schema; language, content and formal schema. Language schema is the
knowledge about language. For example, even if we don’t know a word, we can notice the
word is the verb of the sentence when the word comes after the subject. We can notice that
because we have knowledge of the order. Formal schema is the knowledge of procedure for
everything. For example, when we go to wedding ceremony, we know we shouldn’t wear a
white dress. Also when we have a speech, we know we usually start from greeting. We call
this kind of information formal schema. Content schema is the knowledge about the content.
For example, if I imagine the word “Language”, I can imagine some other words such as
Japanese, Chinese Spanish and French. Also these words are connected to other words and
concepts like this.
island
Japanese Spanish
Sumou Language
French Chinese
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Also, the good thing about schema is it allows us to make new connections. So even if
something is unknown, we can add in our mind using schema when we get the information.
For example, now in this schema above, there is no information connected with Spanish, but
if the person learns something about Spain, the schema will change like this. It means the
connection continues limitlessly.
island Paella
Japanese Spanish
Sumou Language soccer
French
Chinese
All three schema helps us to build our knowledge network by getting information. To
read more fluently, however in this experiment, I focused on contnent schema. I think it is
good to have a lot of knowledge about the text’s topic and the text’s background. According
to give some information as a pre-teaching, the information is added in the reader’s schema.
1.7. The focus of this thesis
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In this chapter I described the importance of the reading skill in Japan and there are
many ways to develop the skill. Above many good ways, I think pre-teaching is the one of the
helpful technique. So now I want to know how useful it is. There are many ways to pre-teach
however in my experiment I gave some meanings not only the translation but also the concept
of the words. In this paper, I want to find out how much pre-teaching helps for better
understand, also if there is some difference of reading speed. By comparing the two texts with
pre-teaching and without one, I want to show how different the results are.
The research questions for this thesis are
1. Does pre-teaching aid comprehension?
2. Is there a difference in reading speed if students have pre-reading activities or not?
1.8 Conclusion of chapter one
In Chapter One, I described the reading skill and introduced pre-teaching to build the
reader’s comprehension. I also described the schema theory to prove the importance of pre-
teaching. In Chapter Two, I will present the details of the experiment.
1 大学入試センター試験 http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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Chapter Two; The Experiment
2.1. Introduction In Chapter One I described the importance of reading and the importance of reading
comprehension. To develop the reading comprehension, I think pre-teaching is helpful. In this
chapter I want to discover how useful pre-teaching helpes to understand the reading text
through an experiment.
2.2 The experiment
2.2.1 Introduction to the experiment
As I described in Chapter One, there are various ways to do pre-teaching. In my
experiment, I gave some information of some words not only language but also the content. It
should help readers to guess what the text is about and to understand the idea of the important
of words in the content before reading in order to add the information into the readers’
schema. I checked the reader’s understanding by using multiple choice tests after reading.
2.2.2 Method
1) Subjects
The subjects of this experiment were 24 Seishin University students. They were 3rd
grade or 4th grade English department students. They have studied different fields, for
example, some people are learning English education and some people are learning English
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literature and so on. However, they have a similarity of learning something through English. It
means they often use English in their school life.
2) Instruments
a) Reading texts
I prepared two different reading texts. The first text was about money and the second
text was about trade. The reason why provided two different texts was that I wanted to
examine how much difference there was between understanding with pre-teaching and
understanding without pre-teaching. I had to find the good texts to meet three conditions. First
one was that the text should not have been very difficult to read, and the second was that the
subjects should have had some background knowledge of the topic but are not totally
unfamiliar with it. The third was that the two texts should have been almost the same length.
I’ll explain about these three things more.
Firstly, the reading material needed not to be difficult to read, because the aim of this
experiment was to examine the understanding of the texts. Therefore I needed to choose the
right level texts for readers to read extensively. It meant they shouldn’t have had complicated
words and grammar. Then I looked for an appropriate text in graded reading books, and I
chose a book “Commerce” written by Paul A Davies which was published by Oxford
University Press. It was written at the 1000 headwords level for the intermediate students’.
Also I put the meaning of some important words in the reading texts so that the reader can
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read it easily. For example, before the first text (money), I put on the meaning of the word,
‘trader’.
Secondly, the text should be one that all the subjects didn’t know well. The reason was
if they had the background of the topics, I couldn’t see the difference between understanding
with pre-teaching and understanding without pre-teaching. To compare the two books better, I
decided to use nonfiction texts. I thought it was easier for me to find what kind of topics
readers didn’t know well and to prepare the pre-teaching paper. The book that I chose had
several texts, and so I decided to use two of them.
Thirdly, the two texts needed to be the almost same length to read. If the lengths were
different, the reading speed might change and it had an influence over the readers’
understanding. The important thing here was to balance the two texts. Therefore I took those
three things into consideration when I chose texts.
After preparing the two reading texts, I asked two people to read them before the
experiment. As a result, both felt that the second text was a little bit longer and more difficult.
Therefore I changed some words into easier words and deleted some sentences. The following
is a short passage that was adapted from the text ‘International Trade’.
A Short History of International Trade
Trade is as old as history itself. In the beginning, people exchanged goods such as food
16
and clothes. Later, they began to use money for buying and selling. But international trade
only became important in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when many modern
countries were formed.
I deleted the first sentence, and in sentence 4 I changed formed to created.
The full texts and comprehension questions are as follows.
Name Starting time : : hour minute seconds
Money*trader = someone who buys and sells goods
Before money, people could not buy and sell. There was trade; but it
had to be two-way trade: people exchanged goods. For example, they
exchanged food for clothes. With money, buying and selling became two
things that could happen at different times and with different people. A
person could sell food to somebody on one day and get money for it; a
week later, he or she could use the money to buy clothes from a third
person.
There have been metal coins for thousands of years. Some of the earliest coins were used in
Turkey, and they were made of gold and silver. But this caused problems. People used to take very
small bits of metal from each coin. Each coin was then a hit smaller, so people wanted more coins for
their goods, and prices went up.
Metal coins were used by the Greeks thousands of years ago. The Greek money was made of
silver. For hundreds of years, it was the most common kind of money for trade in Europe and parts of
Asia. The Greeks even put the money into the mouths of dead people: they believed the money would
pay for their journey to the next world.
The Romans also used silver coins and gold
coins. But the emperor Nero decided to put less
gold and silver into the coins in order to make
money for himself. After that, nobody wanted to
use the coins, and this had a very had effect on
17
the Roman economy. The world had learned a
lesson: money only works if people believe in its
value.
Coins can be heavy. (For example, the people
of Yap, an island in the Pacific, used stone coins;
the biggest were about four metres across!) In the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
people did not want to carry large bags of coins
with them, so they left the coins with traders. The
traders gave them `notes': these were just pieces
of paper with a promise in writing to pay back the
gold and silver coins. Soon, people started to use
the notes themselves as money. Later, governments
began to control money. They made their own notes
for people to use.
In 1950, the first credit card was made. It was the Diners Club card, and it could only be used in
200 restaurants in New York. Today, most shops, hotels and restaurants in the world take credit cards,
so people do not have to carry a lot of coins and notes with them when they travel.
Stock markets *stock = one of the parts into which the ownership of a company is divided
*depression = a long period when there is not a lot of business activity
Stock exchanges began in the thirteenth century. Traders
used to meet in towns to buy and sell their goods. It was easier
for them to use credit notes than money. In France, King Philip
the Fair decided that some rules were needed, and a group of
people began to work full time to see that all the traders
followed these rules. These people were the first `stockbrokers'.
In Bruges, traders used to meet outside the house of a family called Van der Buurse; later, the word
`Bourse' came to mean `stock exchange'.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, other countries began to have stock exchanges. In
London, a group of 150 stockbrokers started to meet in a cafe called Jonathan's Coffee House. In 1773,
this cafe became the Stock Exchange. Over the next hundred years, the London Stock Exchange was
an important part of the UK economy. It lent money to new companies. But it was 200 years before
18
the first women members were able to join the London Stock Exchange in 1973.
The first stock exchange in the USA began in Philadelphia in 1791. A year later in New York,
twenty-four stockbrokers decided to work together. They did not have a building to work in, so they
used to meet under a tree in Wall Street. Over the next few years, they had more and more trading to
do, so in 1817 they decided to form the New York Stock Exchange. Since 1953, there have always
been 1,366 members.
Stock markets usually go up when a country's economy is doing well. Of course, some
companies' stocks go up or down for different reasons, but each stock exchange has an `index' that
shows how all the stocks are doing together. In Tokyo, for example, this is called the Nikkei index, and
in New York, the Dow-Jones index. People watch these indexes to see how the world's businesses are
doing. Since the end of the Second World War in 1945, stock markets around the world have gone up
greatly because the economy of the world has got much bigger.
Usually, stock markets do not change very much in one day. But on October 19 1987, the
Dow-Jones index fell by more than 500 points. Other stock exchanges around the
world also fell. People became very
worried about this because of what had
happened nearly sixty years earlier.
In 1929, the stock markets fell
quickly and suddenly in the same way -
and for the next ten years the world
economy was in serious trouble. That
time was called the Great Depression.
People lost money, lost their jobs, and
lost hope in the future of business.
Before the Depression, the stock
market in Wall Street was doing well -
very well. People were spending money
and companies were getting bigger.
New companies were appearing as new
inventions filled people's homes: fridges,
electric lights, radios. Buying stocks in
companies seemed like a good way to
make money. Everybody wanted to buy
stocks, so the price of stocks went up - and so people made money. People were borrowing money to
buy stocks and get rich.
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But the economists at that time were worried. They knew that the stock market could not
continue to go up when people were borrowing so much money. In October 1929, the market in Wall
Street began to fall. As it fell, more and more people wanted to sell their stocks, so the market fell
more quickly. Nobody answered the telephones at the stock exchange because it was too busy, so
angry crowds came to Wall Street, trying to sell their stocks. Soon nobody could stop the fall.
The crash of the stock market changed the way Americans felt about money. Suddenly, they did
not want to buy stocks. They did not feel that their money was safe in banks either, so many people
started keeping their money in boxes at home. Banks and other companies went out of business as
people stopped spending. By 1933, there were 13 million people without work in the USA. Some of
these people also lost their homes.
The Depression in the USA caused problems in other countries, too, because a lot of countries
traded with the USA. Businesses closed and millions of people lost their jobs.
Governments and economists have studied the reasons for the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the
Depression of the 1930s. Today, there are more rules in the world's stock markets about buying and
selling stocks. The stock markets still go up and down, but everybody hopes there will not be another
crash like the one in 1929. However, nobody can be sure that it will never happen again.
☆After finishing reading, please write your finishing time.☆
Finishing time : : hour minute seconds
20
Name Comprehension Check Questions
1 This passage is about
a) what money is and the stock market
b) how people should use money and the stock market
c) the history of money and the stock market
d) why people need money and the stock market
2 The Greeks put coins into the mouths of dead people because
a) money was the most important for them
b) their money was the most beautiful in the world
c) they believed the money would make the dead people come alive again.
d) they believed the money would help them go to the next world.
3 People started to use credit cards because
a) a new credit card company was established.
b) Japanese government made a new rule about credit cards
c) people didn’t want to carry a lot of coins and notes.
d) people didn’t want to use coins and notes.
4 Stock markets usually go up when
a) some countries make an agreement about money.
b) a company made a lot of money.
c) a country’s economy is doing well.
d) governments use a lot of money.
5 Before the crash in 1929, the economists
a) knew that the stock market couldn’t keep going up.
b) never expected the stock market to fall.
c) believed that the stock market could continue to do well.
d) encouraged people to buy stocks.
6 After the crash in 1929,
a) the price of stocks went up.
b) the price of stocks went down.
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c) people wanted to buy stocks.
d) people were borrowing money to get rich
Thank you for your kindness!!!
22
☆Please write your name and Starting time before reading.☆
Name Starting time : : hour minute seconds
A Short History of International Trade*trade = the activity of buying, selling, or exchanging goods within a country or between countries
*organization = a group that a lot of people, countries etc
In the beginning, people
exchanged goods such as food and
clothes. Later, they began to use
money for buying and selling. But
international trade only became
important in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, when many
modern countries were created.
In the seventeenth century,
most governments had a very simple
idea of trade. They wanted to sell as
much as possible to other countries.
At the same time, they wanted to buy as little as possible from other countries. This helped successful
countries to become rich. For example, in 1651, the government of England ordered English ships to
control all the trade with countries in the British Empire. The French did the same.
In the eighteenth century,
economists began to see
disadvantages with this kind of
trading. Because every country
was trying to sell more than it
bought, countries were not
working together. French and
English economists told their
governments that a trade
agreement would be better for
both countries. In 1786, France
and England made an
agreement. Other countries made similar agreements, and trade became easier and cheaper over the
23
next hundred years or more.
The beginning of the twentieth century was a bad time for trade. Many countries in the world
were at war between 1914 and 1918. This made trade difficult. Countries no longer wanted to work
together - they only cared about their own economies.
In the 1940s, many countries decided that they needed to make trade agreements to
help the world economy. In 1947, twenty-three countries made an agreement called GATT (General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). This made it easier and cheaper for countries to buy and sell goods.
GATT played a very important part in the development of world trade for fifty years.
Then in 1995, GATT became the WTO (World Trade Organization). The idea of the WTO is the
same as GATT - to make world trade easier and cheaper - but the WTO has more powers to solve
disagreements between countries. In its first five years, the WTO looked at about 200 trade
disagreements.
There are many advantages to the WTO. Firstly, all the countries in the WTO have to follow the
same trade rules. This saves time: countries can make just one agreement instead of a lot of different
ones. It also means that larger, more powerful countries cannot make it difficult for poorer countries to
take part in trade. Secondly, cheaper trade means cheaper goods in the shops. In the past, some
countries did not want goods from other countries in their shops, so they made it very difficult and
expensive for other countries to sell their goods. It often meant higher prices. Thirdly, easier trade is
good for the world economy and probably means more jobs. And finally, some people say that trade
agreements help to keep peace because they help countries to work together.
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However, some people are worried about the WTO. They say that the organization has got too
much power and does not have to explain its decisions. There are also worries about the WTO and the
environment. Sometimes, countries have laws against trade which damages the environment. These
laws are often against the WTO rules.
Many people think that the WTO is on the side of very large companies, and makes trade more
difficult for small companies. For example, in the 1990s there was a trade disagreement between the
USA and the EU about bananas. The EU was paying more for bananas from poor countries in the
Caribbean because it wanted to help their economies. However, this was against the rules of the WTO.
Companies in the USA wanted to sell their bananas in the EU, and because the companies were very
large, they could sell bananas more cheaply than the Caribbean companies. This is just one example of
how trade agreements can make life very difficult for smaller, less powerful countries.
Fair Trade*fair trade = Fair trade is an organized social movement and market-based approach to reducing global
poverty and promoting self-government of each country and company.
Large companies have a lot of power in poor countries. The poor countries need to trade, so they
want to sell their goods to richer countries. However, large companies can control the price of goods.
They do not pay the poor countries very much money for their goods. Also, large companies from rich
countries often control the businesses in poorer countries. The people who work for these businesses
in the poorer countries do not get very much money for their work, but they cannot leave because
there are no other jobs. Because of all these things, the large companies are getting richer and the
25
people in poor countries are getting poorer. Today, the richest 20 per cent of the people in the world
have got sixty times more money than the poorest 20 per cent.
Fair trade organizations
Fair trade organizations are trying to change the way international trade is done. They do not
want all the money from trade to go to a small number of very large and rich companies; they want the
people from poorer countries to get more money for their goods and their work.
These organizations usually work with groups of small companies in poor countries. They help
those companies to make life better for their workers. When they work together in groups, the
companies have more power and can make their goods more cheaply. When they sell these goods the
money does not go to large, rich companies in the USA or Europe; it stays in the towns and villages,
and is often used to build schools and hospitals.
Fair trade organizations work in richer
countries, too. They try to teach people about
fair trade and why it is important. They do
not want people in richer countries to think
only about buying the cheapest possible
coffee, chocolate or bananas. They want
them to think about other things too. Where
do those goods come from? How much of the
money will go to the people who really need
it? How much of the money will go to
countries that are already rich?
More people today understand the ideas
behind fair trade. They want to help poorer countries, and they do this when they buy fair trade goods.
The world trade in these goods is about 400 million dollars a year, and is getting larger. However, this
is still only a very small part of all world trade - about 0.01 per cent. About 25 per cent of world trade
is controlled by only 200 very large companies. Organizations like the Fair Trade ones are trying to
change this, but it is a long and difficult job.
☆After finishing reading, please write your finishing time.☆
Finishing time : : hour minute seconds
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Name
Comprehension Check Question1 This passage is about
a) a history of international trade and Fair trade.
b) what international trade is.
c) how important trade is.
d) who started trade.
2 International trade became important when
a) a lot of people were rich.
b) many modern countries were created.
c) some countries became independent.
d) governments in many countries needed it.
3 Some people were worried about the WTO because
a) few countries applied for WTO membership.
b) the organization has got too much power.
c) only cheaper goods can be traded.
d) it might be caused big problems.
4 The poor countries can’t be rich because
a) they don’t want to sell their goods.
b) large companies can control the price of their goods.
c) large companies never lend money.
d) they have no jobs.
5 Fair trade organizations are trying to
a) control every companies.
b) give money to the poor countries.
c) do away with the WTO rules.
d) change the way of international trade.
6 Fair trade organizations want people in richer countries to think about
a) buying the cheapest goods.
b) poorer countries.
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c) selling their goods cheaply.
d) changing the way countries trade.
Thank you for your kindness!!
b) Pre-teaching texts
I made two handouts to explain some words that appeared in the texts as a pre-teaching.
These had not only the translation of the words but also some explanation and concept are
included. These words were not unimportant details therefore I mean I chose the words which
were connected to the whole content. These are the list of the words that I gave as
information.
First text (Money and stocks) Second text (Trade)
・The reason to start to use money ・International Trade
・Stock market ・WTO
・Stockbroker ・Fair trade
・Wall Street crash in 1929
I gave these words’ translation, such as 株式市場 (Stock market), and after that, I gave
some explanation and concepts of these words. The full pre-teaching papers are in Appendix
B. The important thing here was I made pre-teaching papers in Japanese. The reason was that
I wanted the readers to understand the content of the pre-teaching well. The aim of giving pre-
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teaching was to ensure the readers could understand the meaning of difficult words and help
them to guess what kind of story they would read. Therefore I thought the readers didn’t need
to read them in English.
c) Comprehension questions
I prepared comprehension questions each text. There were six questions and I checked how
much subjects understood the texts. I tried to make these questions to check the readers’
general understanding not for checking the specific information.
The full texts are in Appendix 3.
3) Procedure
To conduct this experiment I needed to make sure that there was no effect for order of
the texts, so I had to divide the two texts into some groups. Firstly, I had to decide two kinds
of orders; the first text was money and the second text was trade, or the first text was trade
and the second text was money. I also had to divide these texts into two groups; one group had
pre-teaching and other group had no pre-teaching. Therefore I needed 4 groups which were
constructed as follows.
Group 1: With pre-teaching and the Money text was first
Group 2: Without pre-teaching and the Money text was second
Group 3: With pre-teaching and the Trade text was first
Group 4: Without pre-teaching and the Trade text was second
Table 1: The breakdown of the procedure for the giving of texts
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TEXT Money (Pre-teaching) Trade (Pre-teaching )
Group 1 First (Yes) Second (No)
Group 2 First (No) Second (Yes)
Group 3 Second (Yes) First (No)
Group 4 Second (No) First (Yes)
I made 24 files which I divided into 4 groups on the files to recognize which group they were.
Table 1 summarizes the procedure. I checked the difference of the understanding of the two
texts by giving comprehension questions after finish reading.
I asked the subjects to read the texts at their house and gave them the files that I
grouped. Then I explained seven things they needed to be careful of.
1. They had to read according to the order as I suggested in the table. The reason was that I
divided people into four groups as I explained.
2. They had to write their name.
3. They had to write the starting and finishing time (minutes and seconds). The reason was
that I wanted to collect the reader’s reading speed. I thought reading speed was deeply related
to the reading comprehension, so I needed to know the time of reading in order to compare
with the number of comprehension questions.
4. They couldn’t use any dictionaries. It meant even if they met some words they didn’t know
during reading, they should have skipped it. The reason was that the text should have not been
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difficult, therefore they didn’t need dictionaries. Also, if they looked for some unknown
words, I couldn’t see if my pre-teaching helped the readers understanding or not.
5. They had to start comprehension question instantly after reading. The reason was if they
forgot to do comprehension questions or did it a few minutes later, they would forget the
content soon.
6: They weren’t allowed to reread the text during comprehension questions, because the
question was easy to answer if they saw the texts.
7. They had to mark words they didn’t know after finishing reading and doing comprehension
questions. The reason was that I wanted to examine the connection of reading comprehension
and the number of unknown words.
I explained these rules and handed out the files individually. Then I collected the files
according to the order that they finished it.
2.2.3 Results
Text 1 (money) was 1026 words long and text 2 (Trade) was 1180. The two texts were
analyzed against the 3000 most frequent words in English to determine if the two texts were
similar or not. I used Range - a text analysis application to do this. The results are in Table 2.
Table 2: The vocabulary profile of the two texts.
Word frequency band Money Trade
1000 90.2% 89.9%
2000 3.7% 3.0%
3000 1.7% 1.6%
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not in the list 4.5% 5.5%
total 100.0% 100.0%
The percentage of easy and difficult words in the two texts was about the same which
suggests that the two texts were lexically equivalent.
The data show that text 1 (Money) took a mean of 572.46 (s.d. 161.5) seconds to read and text
2 (Trade) took 538.50 (148.73). A paired samples t-test showed there was no significant
difference between the times taken to read these texts. However, there was a significant
difference between the two texts in terms of reading speed measured in words per minute.
Text 1 was read at a mean 115.98 words per minute (s.d. 34.11) and text 2 at 142.45 (s.d.
44.93) words per minute. The t value was 4.47 and was significant. This shows that text 1 was
read faster than text 2.
ANOVA tests were performed on the data to determine if there were significant
differences depending on whether there was an effect for order (i.e. whether it mattered if text
1 was read first or second). There was no significant effect for order F= 0.03 p=0.957 for text
1 and there was no significant effect for text 2 F= 0.16 p= 0.694.
ANOVAs were also calculated to determine if the pre-teaching made a difference to the
comprehension for the Money text and the Trade text. No significant difference was found for
the Money text F=0.096 p= 0.760 nor the Trade text F= 0.920 p = 0.348.
ANOVAs were calculated to determine if the pre-teaching aided reading speed. No
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effect was found for the Money text F=0.181 p= 0.674 nor the Trade text F= 0.695 p= 0.413.
These data show that pre-teaching did not aid comprehension, nor did it aid reading
speed. These data will be discussed in chapter 3.
2.3 Summary
In this chapter I introduced my experiment and tried to show how much pre-teaching
can have an influence on reading comprehension and reading speed. However, unfortunately I
couldn’t get good results as I expected. I can think some reasons, so in Chapter Three, I want
to find some good ways how we should do if we try to do this kind of experiment in the next
research. I want to state what I learned from this experiment.
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Chapter Three; Discussion of the experiment
3.1. Introduction We looked at the importance of reading and I introduced pre-teaching to develop the
reading comprehension in Chapter One. In Chapter Two, we looked through the data by
calculated the number of comprehension questions and reading speed. The result was there
were no differences of both of them. In this chapter, we will look at why they didn’t work
well. I’m sure that to discuss the result will get to the good result of the future research about
pre-teaching. Also to research about pre-teaching help teachers to think what kinds of
materials can give as a pre-teaching.
3.2 Summary of the results
Speaking frankly, I couldn’t get the useful data from my experiment about my research
questions as I expected. It means my experiment did not show that pre-teaching aids
comprehension, and also there was no difference in reading speed if students had pre-teaching
activities or not.
3.3 Discussion of the results
As I described before, I couldn’t get the good result. If I judge only in my experiment, pre-
teaching doesn’t help the reader’s comprehension and reading speed at all. However I don’t
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want to conclude just only this result. Many people never think that pre-teaching isn’t helpful.
So I’m still sure that pre-teaching is helpful for readers. Just one thing that I noticed in my
experiment was even if readers can get information as a pre-teaching it doesn’t always help
them when the condition doesn’t suit them. There are many possibilities that I can think.
Therefore, I‘d like to explain why my experiment doesn’t work as well as I had hoped.
Firstly, it might be there was no difference because of the length of two texts. I
wondered if one text might be longer, however, text 1 (money) was 1026 words long and text
2 (Trade) 1180. It means there was not a big difference.
Secondly, it might be there was no difference because of the difficulty of the texts.
However, as I described, the percentage of easy and difficult words in the two texts was about
the same which suggested that the two texts were lexically equivalent. So if readers felt one
text was more difficult than other one - caused by the difference of difficulty of the grammar.
However, I couldn’t find the any big difference. I could count more difficult grammar in Text
1 rather than in Text 2, such as the past passive form and the present perfect. For example,
there were 4 sentences of the present perfect in Text 1 but there were 2 sentences in Text 2.
This means I couldn’t find any reasons of the difference of the grammar. I also can think the
difference of the difficulty of the two contexts. Both topics; stock and trade might be difficult
for them but some subjects might think one topic was easier than the other.
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Thirdly, it might be there was no difference because I let subjects do this experiment at
home so I couldn’t control their reading. Perhaps, they might have skipped some sentences
during reading or they might reread during comprehension questions. Also their motivation
might cause this result because people might become dull at their home. The problem is I
don’t know if the subjects did as I said. If they had done it badly I presume the same number
of subjects would have done this for both texts, so this is probably not a factor.
Fourthly, it might be there was no difference because the pre-teaching was not good. I
quoted all the meaning of the words in pre-teaching from Wikipedia. I didn’t change the
words or pictures at all. The topic was not easy so it might have been difficult to understand.
Fifthly, it might be there was no difference because my comprehension questions were
not good. I tried to make them not for checking the detailed information but for the general
understanding. However some questions might have been the latter one. For example, I asked
“The Greeks put coins into the mouths of dead people because….” It might have been
assessing specific details.
Sixthly, I have to explain that I made a big mistake. Carelessly, in Text1, I deleted some
sentences and doubled some sentences. Eleven sentences were affected by this so it might be a
one of the big reason that I couldn’t get a good result. I described the six reasons that I
couldn’t get the good result for reading comprehension with pre-teaching and without pre-
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teaching. I can say the same reason that I couldn’t get the good result for reading speed with
pre-teaching and without pre-teaching.
So what should have done this experiment to get good result as I expected? I’ll state
these things making use of the reflection of above.
I have a lot of reflections in my experiment so when I’ll do the same experiment I want to
change some things. Firstly, I’d make subjects do this experiment in the controlled situation. I
asked them to do it at home so I don’t know if they didn’t skip some sentences during
reading, whether they timed the reading correctly or they didn’t see the reading text during
comprehension question. Secondly, I’d make more appropriate pre-teaching papers. The topic
was difficult so I should have given some information with some pictures and examples.
Thirdly, I’d ask some male students and other department student too. In my experiment I
asked limited people so I can ask another people too.
3.4 Further research
In my experiment, I couldn’t get the answer; “Does pre-teaching aid comprehension?”
and “Is there a difference in reading speed if students have pre-reading activities or not” So I
need to research them more. I have another research question now which is how much the
pre-teaching of vocabulary helps comprehension and reading speed? Vocabulary is a big
problem for students to read texts so I want to find a good way to pre-teach vocabulary before
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reading.
3.5. Conclusion
In this experiment, I couldn’t show how much pre-teaching can help reading
comprehension and reading speed. However, I can’t say that pre-teaching is not helpful at this
moment. If the pre-teaching becomes useful information for readers, they can build their
knowledge and store them in their schema. If they can do these things properly, I’m sure that
pre-teaching works well. I noticed that even if readers get some information as a pre-teaching,
there is a possibility that the information doesn’t help reading comprehension and reading
speed when the information is not useful for them.
Through this experiment, I noticed that teacher have to choose a good material for their
students. I realized teachers’ role is really big, so we need to consider what kinds of activity
and materials are really helpful for our students.
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References
Bamford, Julian and Richard, R. Day. 1997. Extensive Reading: What Is It? Why Bother?
Accessed 1 September 2008.
< http://www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/files/97/may/extensive.html>
Carrell, Patricia L.; Eisterhold, Joan C. 1983. Schema Theory and ESL Reading Pedagogy:
TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 17, NO. 4, December 1983
Chung, Mihwa, and Paul Nation. 2006. The Effect of a Speed Reading Course:
English Teaching Vol.61 No.4,. 12. pp. 181~204 (24 pages)
Davies, Paul, A. Commerce: Oxford University, Press, China, 2002
Grellet, Francoise, 1981. Developing Reading Skills: Cambridge University Press,
Great Britain,
Harmer, Jeremy, 2006. How to Teach English: Longman, Malaysia.
Jo, Ann, Aebersold and Mary, Lee, Field. 1997. From Reading to Reading Teacher Issues and
strategies for second language classrooms: Cambridge University Press.
Swan, Michael. Inside Meaning Proficiency reading comprehension: Cambridge University
Press, Great Britain, 1975
Waring, Robert. 2008. Getting an Extensive Reading Program going. Accessed 20 September
2008.
<http://www.extensivereading.net/er/get_ER_going.pdf>
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Appendix 1 : Reading speed and comprehension questions of the two tests for the two conditions
NameMoney text Trade text
Pre-Teaching
Order Time CQUnknown
wordswords per minute
Pre-Teaching
Order Time CQUnknown
wordswords per minute
A Yes 1 495 4 2 124.4 No 2 520 6 1 136.2B Yes 1 610 5 7 100.9 No 2 552 5 2 128.3C Yes 1 656 5 0 93.8 No 2 614 5 3 115.3D Yes 1 584 4 0 105.4 No 2 529 5 0 133.8E Yes 1 450 3 0 136.8 No 2 510 6 0 138.8F Yes 1 465 5 0 132.4 No 2 480 2 0 147.5G Yes 2 641 4 0 96.0 No 1 803 5 1 88.2H Yes 2 554 4 6 111.1 No 1 615 5 1 115.1I Yes 2 600 4 2 102.6 No 1 540 4 5 131.1J Yes 2 506 5 0 121.7 No 1 581 5 1 121.9K Yes 2 287 5 0 214.5 No 1 285 5 0 248.4L Yes 2 696 5 3 88.4 No 1 630 4 1 112.4M No 1 500 4 0 123.1 Yes 2 312 4 1 226.9N No 1 620 5 0 99.3 Yes 2 530 4 0 133.6O No 1 662 4 1 93.0 Yes 2 604 5 1 117.2P No 1 527 5 0 116.8 Yes 2 581 5 0 121.9Q No 1 364 4 0 169.1 Yes 2 302 6 0 234.4R No 1 607 4 0 101.4 Yes 2 589 5 0 120.2S No 2 410 5 0 150.1 Yes 1 520 5 0 136.2T No 2 673 5 7 91.5 Yes 1 700 4 0 101.1U No 2 552 4 0 111.5 Yes 1 477 2 0 148.4V No 2 900 4 0 68.4 Yes 1 420 5 0 168.6W No 2 360 5 0 171.0 Yes 1 330 4 0 214.5X No 2 1020 3 0 60.4 Yes 1 900 3 0 78.7
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Appendix 2
Pre-teaching (Money, Stock markets)
貨幣はどうして使われるようになったの？
貨幣が使われるようになる前、人々は物々交換を盛んに行っていました。
しかし、欲しいものがすぐに手に入らないなど、物資の交換に伴う不便が生じるため不便を取り除くため、
(1)誰もが欲しがり、(2)集めたり分けたりして任意の値打ちを表すことができ、(3)容易に持ち運び、保存できるような品物が、交換の媒介物として用いられるようになりました。
これが物品貨幣と呼ばれるもので、日常的に良く使うもの（貝類、石類、穀物や布等）が利用された。時代が下ると、青銅や鉄、銅、あるいは金・銀などの金属が貨幣として使われるようになりました。その後、重い貨幣を持ち運ぶのが嫌になった人々は、紙幣を使うようになり、そしてクレジットカード（Credit card）を使うようになったのです。
“株式市場”(Stock market)って何？
株式市場 とは、私たちのような一般投資家が株式会社の株を売買するための専用の場所のことです。
株式市場は、証券取引所という場所で取引されます。証券取引所は、主に株式や債券の売買取引を行うための施設であり、資本主義経済における中心的な役割を果たしています。経済の発展に欠かせない資金調達と資本運用の双方が効率的に行われるようにするため、株式および債券の需給を取引所に集中させ、流動性の向上と安定した価格形成を図ることがその主な役割です。
ニューヨーク証券取引所
東京証券取引所
“株式仲買人”(Stockbroker)って何？
株式仲買人 とは、もと株式取引所において、株式の売買・取引を顧客に委託されて
行った人であるが、現在は、証券会社がその任務を行っています。証券会社とは、価証券の売買や売買の仲介などを行う会社のことです。
1929 年の株式市場の大暴落”(Wall Street Crash of 1929)って何？
世界恐慌 とは 1929 年 10 月 24 日にニューヨーク株式市場（ウォール街）で株価が大暴落したことに端を発した世界規模の恐慌です。
アメリカの株式市場は 1924 年中頃から投機を中心とした資金の流入によって長期上昇トレンドに入っていました。しかし、この好景気は長くは続かず、間もなく売りが膨らみ株式市場は売り一色となり、株価は大暴落しました。
ウォール街周囲は不穏なこの空気につつまれ、警官隊が出動して警戒にあたらなければなりませんでした。シカゴとバッファローの市場は閉鎖され、投機業者で自殺したものはこの日だけで 11 人に及にました。この日は木曜日だったため、後にこの日は「暗黒の木曜日（Black Thursday）」と呼ばれるようになりました。
ニューヨーク・ウォール街の群衆
Pre-teaching (A Short History of International Trade, Fair Trade)
“国際貿易”(International Trade)って何？
国際貿易 は、国境や領土を超えて行われる商品 サービスの交換のことです。･
多くの国で貿易額は国内総生産のかなりの比率を占めています。国際貿易は有史以来長い間存在するものの、経済・社会・政治の各局面で国際貿易の重要性が高まったのはここ数世紀のことです。工業化、交通機関の発達、グローバル化、多国籍企業、アウトソーシングはみな国際貿易に大きな衝撃を与えています。国際貿易の拡大はグローバル化の基礎になっています。国際貿易は経済学の一分野として扱われ、国際金融とともに国際経済の一部門を形成します。
“WTO”って何？
世界貿易機関 （World Trade Organization、略称WTO）は、自由貿易促進を主たる目的として作られた国際機関のことです。
GATT（ガット）ウルグアイ・ラウンドにおける合意に基づき、マラケシュ宣言により 1995年 1 月 1 日に GATT を発展解消させて成立しました。
1) 自由（関税の低減、数量制限の原則禁止）2)無差別（最恵国待遇、内国民待遇）3) 多角的通商体制、を基本原則としています。物品貿易だけでなく金融、情報通信、知的財産権やサービス貿易も含めた包括的な国際通商ルールを協議する場となっています。
WTO は GATT を継承したものですが、GATT が協定（Agreement）に留まったのに対し、WTO は機関（Organization）であるのが根本的な違いです。
2005 年時点の世界貿易機関 (WTO) の加盟国（青） イスラム圏に非加盟国が目立つ
“公正取引”(Fair Trade)って何？
公正取引 （英：Fairtrade、フェアトレード、公平貿易）は、発展途上国の原料や製品を適正な価格で継続的に購入することを通じ、立場の弱い途上国の生産者や労働者の生活改善と自立を目指す運動のことです。
国際貿易における先進国と途上国の公平さを図り、立場の弱い途上国の生産者・労働者により良い取引状況を提供し、彼らの権利を強化することで、持続可能な発展が実現できるように貢献します。
