The Use of the Storybook Stages and Its Effect On The Appearance of Children's Literacy (1 - 23)

Abstract

Producing children’s reading material according to their reading level is very important. It will not only assist the children to read books but also nurture their reading habits.A suitable book leveling system, therefore, is urgently needed in order to provide children with books that suit their reading levels and abilities. Children in preschools are generally categorized into three groups of reading levels, which are Emergent (Level 1), Early (Level 2) and Fluent (Level 3) readers. This experiment was conducted to investigate the impacts of a book leveling system amongst preschool children in Malaysia. Forty preschool children were chosen randomly and divided into the ‘Experiment’ and ‘Controlled’ groups. Teachers read aloud the leveled books to the children for 20 minutes each day for the duration of 6 weeks. The T-test shows significant impact on all components of emergent literacy; Tahap 1: print awareness (0.030), reading strategies (0.043), phonemic dan phonics (0.015) and comprehension (0.013). Tahap 2: print awareness (0.001), reading strategies (0.001), phonemic dan phonics (0.001) and comprehension (0.001). Tahap 3: reading strategies (0.084), comprehension (0.001) dan fluency (0.003).