Term

Spring 2019

Capstone

Thesis

Degree Name

MAESL

Primary Advisor/Dissertation Chair

Michelle Benegas

Secondary Advisor/Reader One

Angela Mary Gayton

Peer-Reviewer/Reader Two

Athena Lin

Abstract

The research question addressed in this study was, how do high interest texts mediate Chinese middle school students’ reading comprehension? The author opens up this research territory by exploring four areas including the history of education in China, China’s examination system of high-stakes testing, L2 motivation, and classroom reading materials used at her school. The author focuses on interest as a factor and orientation towards intrinsic motivation, where high interest texts are used to mediate students’ reading experience and reading comprehension. Wigfield and Guthrie’s seminal work on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation along with Saddleback Educational hi-lo books influence the author’s approach to creating her own research methods. For this mixed methods study, the author uses middle school students from mainland China and matches them with high interest texts. The author collects data on student reading experiences via reading comprehension quizzes and a qualitative interview. The author concludes that student interest in the text related to higher reading achievement, although higher performance was on quantitative cognitive thinking skills, not qualitative cognitive thinking skills. In addition, the study found that student interest was elevated via texts with morals and relatable main characters but diminished during stories with repetitious events or less complex themes.

Research Methodology

Mixed-methods

Keywords

ESL/ ELLs

dc_type

text

dc_publisher

DigitalCommons@Hamline

dc_format

application/pdf

dc_source

School of Education Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

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