THE EFFECTS OF AN INSTRUCTIONAL EXPERIMENT IN CHINESE READING AND WRITING

The main purpose of this study was to explore the effects of an instructional experiment in Chinese reading and writing. The experimental condition included thematic instruction, increasing the amount of reading, and increasing the use of vernacular instructional materials. The subjects completed pretests and post-tests involving writing abstracts, which were scored according to the following four criteria: grasping the main point, composition and rhetoric, sentence construction and punctuation, and correct use of terminology. The sample consisted of 44 first-year university students, and t-tests were used to analyze the results. The results reflected significant changes in the overall reading and writing performance of the total sample after instruction. Further analysis revealed significant changes due to instruction among both male and female students and among students in both the Department of Child Care and Education and the Department of Corporate Management.