Experimental research in reading and comprehension skills of sub-literate adult students

Abstract

The hypothesis generated by earlier research that sub-literate adult students will show a greater gain in the development of reading and comprehension skills when taught by a multimedia program than a gain in achievement made by a matched group taught by the teacher-text book method was tested using adult students chosen from the local population of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. A control group and an experimental group each comprising of 20 adult students were selected and equated on the basis of their age, Intelligence Quotient, and scores obtained on Level E, Form 1 of the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE). The control group was taught reading and comprehension skills by an instructor at Dingwall, Nova Scotia, using materials prepared by Follett Publishing Company, Science Research Associates, and Readers Digest Publishing Company. The experimental group was taught the same skills using a multimedia, multimodal, and multilevel communication skill system designed by the Educational Developmental Laboratories (EDL), a Division of McGraw-Hill Company. Instruction was carried out at Point Edward, Nova Scotia. Both groups received an average of 265 hours of instruction. On completion of the study, both groups were posttested using Form 2 of the TABE. The t-values were calculated using the gain in scores between the pretest and the posttest. Results were significant at the five percent level of confidence. A mixed analysis of variance was also carried out which confirmed this level of confidence and thus supported the hypothesis that adult sub-literate students tend to respond more favorably to machines and programmed instruction than to the conventional classroom approach.