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Move Beyond Intermediate: A Teacher's Guide For Improving English Proficiency of Taiwanese Students Through Reading Children's Literature
ABSTRACT MOVE BEYOND INTERMEDIATE: A TEACHER‟S GUIDE FOR IMPROVING ENGLISH PROFICIENCY OF TAIWANESE STUDENTS THROUGH READING CHILDREN‟S LITERATURE by © Ying-Hsuan Lee 2011 Master of Arts in Education Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners Option California State University, Chico Spring 2011 The purpose of this project is to create a teacher‟s guide for Taiwanese English teachers to incorporate children‟s literature into English classroom curriculum with an ultimate goal of improving English proficiency of Taiwanese students, as well as encouraging Taiwanese students to develop critical, personal, and aesthetic responses toward literature. To create such a guidebook, current English education and general English proficiency is introduced; research about second language theories, the relationships between four English language skills, children‟s literature, and the transactional theory in reading and writing are reviewed. Based on the reviewed literature, this teacher‟s guide is designed according to a series of children‟s literature. Thirteen books of this series, A series of Unfortunate Events, are used to create literature-based reading activities. The literature-based reading activities in the guidebook are divided into pre-reading activities, during-reading activities, and post-reading activities. These reading activities are selected because they provide learning experiences that Taiwanese students lack in their current English classes, and they enable students to learn in a cooperative and supportive environment. It is hoped that this guidebook could be a teaching resource that aids Taiwanese English teachers to make use of the rich language in literature and value the power of literature that may have a life-changing effect on their students.