The Impact of Balanced Reading Instruction on Students' Reading Ability and Reading Motivation

The purposes of this study were to design a balanced reading program, to explore its impact on elementary school students' reading ability and reading motivation, and to check the range of students' word recognition ability. The participants were 72 fifth graders, with 36 students in the experimental group and 36 students in the control group. The experimental program lasted for nine weeks, and all tests were given before and after the instructional program. It was found that the experimental group scored significantly higher than the control group on the reading subtest of The Wide Range Achievement Test 3 (WRAT 3), the sound and meaning subtests of The English Word Recognition Test, the sentence comprehension subtest of The English Reading Diagnostic Test, and the Motivation for Reading Questionnaire. This meant that the balanced reading program had a generally positive impact on students' reading ability and reading motivation. However, there was no significant difference between the groups on the spelling subtest of the WRAT 3. Furthermore, the variation in these fifth graders' word recognition ability was very great, ranging from an ability level below that of third graders to the ninth-grade level. Based on the results, suggestions were offered to teachers, administrators and researchers.