ERIC/RCS: The Impact of Television on ReadingAuthor(s): Rodney J. Barth and Thom SwissSource: The Reading Teacher, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Nov., 1976), pp. 236-239Published by: Wiley on behalf of the International Reading AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20194240 .

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ERIC/RCS 1

The impact of television on reading

RODNEY J. BARTH THOM SWISS

Teachers need more information about how television influences

the reading behavior of children. According to the last census, 98 percent of the homes in this country have one or more television

sets. The findings of studies on the number of hours children spend watching television per week vary, but somewhere between four

and six hours of televised viewing per night is an accepted estimate.

When this is added to children's television viewing time on

Saturday morning, it has been estimated that the average child spends about thirty hours per week watching television. Reading teachers, then, are usually dealing with youngsters whose linguistic frame of reference is television. To teach these children, educational planners have to know how they respond to television

and what they have and have not learned about reading from their

television viewing experience. Effects on In "TV's Impact on Children: A Checkerboard Scene" [EJ 129

thinking 357], Rose Mukerji contends that three aspects of the influence of television on children have been studied: cognitive, affective, and

social influences. There appears to be little controversy about the

influence of television on the affective and social realms of child

development. "But there is considerable ferment about the role of

television in concept development and cognitive learning by young children" (p. 3). Although it is obvious that television can and does

provide children with models who read and who urge children to read, there is conflicting evidence at this time about whether children's television programs assist in the formation of concepts that are necessary in developing the reading processes.

Considerable research on the use of television as a means of

instruction has been conducted. Learning from Television: What

the Research Says [ED 109 985] contains a broad survey of research on instructional television, examining a variety of aspects

relating to its effectiveness in the classroom. The introduction

identifies the significant trends that have emerged since the beginning of research into instructional television. Chapter one

reviews the generalized effects of TV on pupil learning, including variations in effect caused by the age of the students and by the

subject matter taught. Chapter two outlines what has been learned

about the efficient use of TV in a school system. Chapter three analyzes thirty variables important to the effectiveness of television

teaching. Among these variables are physical variations in the

broadcast and viewing conditions, the length and timing of

236 The Reading Teacher November 1976

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broadcasts, the use of humor, the teacher's role in televised

instruction, and factors affecting student response to television.

Staff and student attitudes toward the use of television are considered in chapter four, and chapter five is devoted to educational television in other nations.

Research into the effect of television on reading, while still in its TV and infancy, poses several challenging questions. In "Television and primary

Reading in the Seventies" [ED 089 258], Joan T. Feeley reviews the pupils literature on how television affects reading. This literature review

groups reports and studies on the usefulness of television

technology in the teaching of reading into two broad categories: 1) those in which the medium is used to teach sound-symbol

relationships and 2) those in which the medium is used as a motivational device to interest children in print. Sesame Street and

The Electric Company are evaluated with respect to their effectiveness in promoting reading readiness and motivating interest in print. The conclusions of the study indicate that television seems to be dealing mainly with the surface structure of

written language. Several questions are posed: Can television deal

with the higher level communication processes that take place when a reader interacts with a text? Can it help to increase the

productivity and quality of reading instruction? Can it eventually provide a viable alternative route to literacy for developing countries?

The value of several specific television programs in encouraging

reading development has been a much discussed topic. In "The

Impact of Sesame Street on Reading Readiness of Kindergarten Children" [ED 076 945], Judith H. Minton examines the effects of Sesame Street on reading readiness. The Metropolitan Readiness

Test (MRT) scores of children who had attended kindergarten in the two years prior to the first broadcast season were compared

with the scores of children attending kindergarten in 1970, the year of the first season of Sesame Street. The MRT scores were

analyzed by year, total group, age, sex, socioeconomic class, birth

order, and parochial school attendance. In each comparison the

scores of the total test and the six subtests were analyzed

separately. A significant difference was found in favor of the 1970 group on the alphabet subtest but not on any of the other subtests or in the total test. Also on the alphabet subtest, the subgroups of

children from advantaged homes scored significantly higher. No

other significant differences between subgroups were found. It was

concluded that Sesame Street was an effective teacher of letter

recognition to kindergarten children, although the effects were not

uniform.

The Children's Television Workshop, producer of Sesame Street

and The Electric Company, is another source of information on

television's effect on reading. In Reading with Television: An

Evaluation of The Electric Company [ED 073 178], Samuel Ball and others evaluate the first year of The Electric Company. This volume contains a description of the research design, the sampling

procedures, field operations, the measurement instruments, and

the treatment techniques. The findings of the study are included along with an extensive discussion of the conclusions based on the

early research. Additional studies by the Children's Television Workshop have been performed since this report, using the procedures initially reported in the present investigation.

Intermediate grade students also show the influences of Older television on their reading abilities and skills. John D. Starkey and children's

Helen L. Swinford found, in Reading? Does Television Viewing skills Time Affect It? [ED 090 966], that the average viewing time per week for girls was twenty-eight hours and for boys thirty hours.

Two hundred twenty-six fifth and sixth graders were the subjects of this study to correlate amount of television viewing and reading

ERIC/RCS 237

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scores. A slight relationship was reported between reading ability and amount of leisure time spent watching television. The better

readers were found to watch less television than poor readers.

Among the students surveyed, little parental supervision of

television viewing was reported. Only 38 percent of the students

stated that they were not allowed to watch some shows. No

relationship was shown between access to a private TV and viewing time or reading ability. Other studies on the influence of television

viewing on youth are discussed throughout the report. The authors

conclude that not all television viewing is a bad influence and that

youngsters should be taught to be discriminating television viewers.

Seventh Studies also show that there is a relationship between television

graders' viewing and reading interests. A study by Harlan B. Hamilton, interests "jne Relationship between Televiewing and the Reading Interests

of Seventh Grade Pupils" [ED 095 524], analyzes television's influence on reading interests. The relationship was examined

through the use of 300 television tie-ins comprised of eighteen different titles. Television tie-ins were defined as films which are

adapted from literature. The subjects were 253 students

representing four seventh grade classes from low, middle, and high socioeconomic backgrounds in a suburban setting. The subjects

were pretested to determine IQ, social environment, television

influence, and reading preferences. After the pretesting, the

subjects were given six weeks to freely read (or not read) the

literature that had a TV tie-in. The subjects were then posttested

using two questionnaires to discover the comprehension and

personal reactions of the students to the TV tie-ins and the types of

books (non-TV tie-ins) read voluntarily by the students during the

period of study. The results indicated that TV tie-ins were preferred over non-TV tie-ins of the books used by the total population

regardless of socioeconomic background; both boys and girls

reported spending three times as much time watching television as

they did reading books; parents exerted almost no control over the

kinds of television programs their children watched; if students

spent much time watching television they were inclined to read TV

tie-ins; and none of the students felt that TV tie-ins were difficult to

read.

While there is a definite relationship between television and

reading, the exact nature of television's impact on reading is not

known at this time. Those teachers wishing to explore this topic further will be interested in a number of investigations which are

now in progress, including those by the Children's Television

Workshop and the Educational Testing Service. Additional information may be obtained by consulting the monthly issues of

Resources in Education (RIE) and Current Index to Journals in

Education (CUE).

References

Ball, Samuel and others. Reading with Television: An Evaluation of The Electric Company. New York, N.Y.: Children's Television Workshop; Princeton, N.J.: Educational Testing Service, 1973. [ED 073 178]

Chu, Godwin and Wilbur Schramm. Learning from Television: What the Research Says. Washington, D.C.: National Association of Educa tional Broadcasters; Stanford, Cal.: California Institute for Commun ication Research, 1975. [ED 109 985]

Feeley, Joan T. Television and Reading in the Seventies. Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the International Reading Association, New

Orleans, La., 1974. [ED 089 258] Hamilton, Harlan B. The Relationship between Televiewing and the Read

ing Interests of Seventh Grade Pupils. Ed.D. dissertation, Boston

University, Mass., 1973. TED 095 524] *Minton, Judith H. The Impact of Sesame Street on Reading Readiness of

Kindergarten Children. Ph.D. dissertation, Fordham University, Bronx, N.Y., 1972. [ED 076 945]

238 The Reading Teacher November 1976

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*Mukerji, Rose. "TV's Impact on Children: A Checkerboard Scene." Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 57 (January 1976), pp. 316-21. [EJ 129 357]

Starkey, John D. and Helen L. Swinford. Reading? Does Television View

ing Time Affect It? DeKalb, 111.: Northern Illinois University, 1974. [ED 090 966]

*Not available from the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS).

USING THE ERIC SYSTEM The ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills is

sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English in cooperation with the National Institute of Education, U.S. Department of Health,

Education, and Welfare. ERIC's objective is to keep educators informed

about current developments in education. Information collected by the

ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills and the

other ERIC clearinghouses can be ordered from the ERIC Document

Reproduction Service (EDRS), P.O. Box 190, Arlington, Virginia 22210.

For complete ordering information consult the monthly issues of

Resources in Education (RIE) or contact the ERIC Clearinghouse on

Reading and Communication Skills, 1111 Kenyon Road, Urbana,

Illinois 61801. Documents with ED numbers are indexed in Resources in

Education. Those with EJ numbers are indexed in Current index to

Journals in Education (CUE). And those with CS numbers are recently

acquired materials; ED or EJ numbers will soon be assigned.

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ERIC/RCS 239

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