Selasa, 08 November 2011

A CRITICAL REVIEW OF A JOURNAL J. Ashdown and O. Simic (2000). Is Early Literacy Intervention Effective for English Language Learners? Evidence from Reading Recovery. New York University


A CRITICAL REVIEW OF A JOURNAL
J. Ashdown and O. Simic (2000). Is Early Literacy Intervention Effective for English Language Learners? Evidence from Reading Recovery. New York University
 Written by: Luh Ketut Sri Widhiasih

Nowadays, researchers continue to do some experimental researches upon some techniques to teach English as additional language to find the most effective instructional approaches to provide a meaningful education. When talking about teaching English as foreign language, it should be considered about the inequality achievement between native and non native speaker of English in the class.  Based on Haager (2001), students whose primary language is other than English and are learning English as a second language, often experience particular challenges in developing reading skills in the early grades. Conducting instruction in English, regardless of whether it is students' native language, makes it critically important to develop strategies for addressing students' unique literacy learning needs. There is a considerable urgency to develop teaching strategies for all students within English immersion programs and provide appropriate professional development for teachers.
Seeing the effect of Reading Recovery toward students’ reading achievement is the concern of  Ashdown and Simic’s research  Is Early Literacy Intervention Effective for English Language Learners? Evidence from Reading Recovery. Furthermore, their research explores a question whether Reading Recovery is effective for children who are learning English as an additional language. In the beginning Ashdown and Simic review two kind of studies about reading achievement that conduct using different instruction, first one by using classroom literacy instruction and the second one by using Reading Recovery.
The writers’ review of research addressing the effectiveness of classroom literacy instruction for English language learners shows that the field is dominated by questions regarding the use of a language other than English for instructional purposes. In particular, researchers have compared the academic achievement of students with English as a second language who have received classroom instruction in a variety of first and second language settings. Moreover, Ashdown aand Simic show a strong evidence of the positive impact on reading achievement of initial literacy instruction being conducted in a child’s native language by their review. However, they also find that the reviewed research also suggests that where native language literacy instruction is not available, instructional practices that best support the literacy achievement of English language learners must be identified if inequalities in reading achievement are to be reduced.
In reviewing the studies about Reading Recovery, Ashdown and Simic state that many school systems  want to address the needs of “at-risk” literacy learners including those children who speak languages other than English by implementing Reading Recovery as an early intervention and prevention program (delivered in English) that supplements classroom literacy instruction during first grade. Skilled teachers, specifically trained for the purpose, provide daily, 30-minute lessons to those children identified as having serious literacy learning difficulties and are the lowest performing readers in the cohort. The aim of Reading Recovery is to ensure that children receiving this individual tutoring catch up as quickly as possible with their classmates, usually in 16 to 20 weeks, so they can continue to make progress in reading and writing in a variety of classroom instructional contexts without needing further special assistance.
After reviewing those two studies, the researcher restate their purposes of study are finding whether there are differences in outcomes, rate of completion, and delivery of Reading Recovery as a literacy intervention for children who are English language learners, as compared to native English speakers and whether Reading Recovery narrow the gap in reading achievement between English language learners and native English-speaking children in first grade.
The data used by the writers in this study were drawn from the Reading Recovery Data Sheet, produced by the National Data Evaluation Center at The Ohio State University. This is a national questionnaire used to record reading and writing scores, demographic information, and other data on all children selected for Reading Recovery, as well as on a sample of children randomly drawn from the general first grade classroom population. Ashdown and Simic describe their success indicator in Reading Recovery based on the combined judgments of the child’s Reading Recovery teacher and the classroom teacher and test at exit from the program using all six tasks on An Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement that taken from Clay. The writer have three groups of participants in this study, Reading Recovery Group, Random Sample Group, and Comparison Group. Ashdown and Simic use the database that spans six years of Reading Recovery implementation (school year 1992-93 to school year 1997-98) at 37 Reading Recovery sites affiliated with New York University. They analyze the data in the first research question, which concerned the outcomes, completion rates, and delivery of Reading Recovery, was answered by a comparison of the proportion of children of different language backgrounds who were selected to receive Reading Recovery services, who completed full Reading Recovery instruction, and who were deemed successful in Reading Recovery. Pearson’s Chi-square tests were used to report on the statistical significance of the differences between two groups of English language learners (LEP and fluent ESL) and native English speakers (English). To answer our second question, whether Reading Recovery closes the literacy achievement gap between native-speakers and English language learners in first grade, proved a challenging task, considering that our data derive from a field implementation of Reading Recovery in a variety of educational settings. To search for differences we used analysis of variance, with language (English, Fluent ESL, and LEP) and sample group (Reading Recovery, Random Sample, and Comparison) as fixed factors; Reading Recovery Site as a randomly varying factor; and Text Reading Level as a dependent variable.
Ashdown and Simic therefore conclude that the one-to-one tutoring offered in Reading Recovery constitutes an appropriate setting, in addition to the classroom, to support language and literacy development for children with limited English proficiency.
The authors of the research can therefore be criticized here for invariant sentences that are used in this report. The reviewer sometimes found that there are some repetitions of some sentences. It seems like they are less active in producing sentence to present their data smoothly. It is better to have a more variation sentences to make the report more interesting.
Another questionable aspect of this article is whether the success of the implementation of Reading Recovery in early literacy children is only a matter of the method used or affected by other aspects. Although the authors do not state that the methods that is used to solve the problem in early literacy is the best one, this is what is implied from their way to state their argument about Reading Recovery. Whereas it is suggested that the researcher should be more balance in reviewing some evidence to support their data, not only showing the strength but also the weaknesses. Furthermore, it should be notice that the successfulness of the implementation of Reading Recovery in early literacy reading also affected by other factors inside the children, such as characteristic of the students and characteristics of their educational environments. It will be bias of the data. This same bias can also be found in the background of the population of the research where they came from high socio economic status and the native English speaker come from low socio economic status. Those environments of study really affected the result of the study.
Despite these criticisms, Ashdown and Simic’s article still has some value and we need to judge it in terms of the authors' purpose in writing it. It is not intended to be a accurate piece of academic work, but is intended mainly to proof whether Reading Recovery is the best method in solving risk in early literacy reading achievement. We can therefore understand why the authors choose to be positive about Reading Recovery for early literacy intervention, and why they mostly show about the strengths of Reading Recovery.
How great experimental research, can this result be an evidence of how useful Reading Recovery in solving problem of early literacy children? First of all we need to consider the evidence Ashdown and Simic draw on to support this evidence. The results of the research presented seem persuasive where they can show some strengths of using Reading Recovery in early literacy reading. They show the data in an appropriate portion, so that the reader can understand the result easily. In my view, the writers have already served the data in the systematic and comprehensive way, so that they can compose any firm conclusions in the end of their chapter.
It would be interesting to read this result of research, where Ashdown and Simic opened it with a big topic, so that the reader can generalize their mind about the issue before they go focus on the topic. The way they respond to the big issue can make the reader really want to continue to read their brilliant idea about that big issue. Moreover, from the beginning the writers also started to present their data by addressing some references to support their statement, it looks like they are really know the rule of a researcher. It make it as a kind of a good introduction.


  
References
Haager, Diane. (2001). Early Reading Intervention for English Language Learners At-Risk for Learning Disabilities: Student and Teacher Outcomes in an Urban School. http://www.colorincolorado.org

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