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Loh, Jason Kok Khiang
Preferred name
Loh, Jason Kok Khiang
Email
jason.loh@nie.edu.sg
Department
English Language & Literature (ELL)
ORCID
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- PublicationRestrictedExcuse me, are you a model?(2006)This case study investigates whether teachers in one primary school in Singapore model reading during Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading (USSR). The hypothesis in this study is that in spite of the evidence that reading is an important determinant of a student’s growth in language skills and ability, and that modeling the act of reading is essential in influencing students, especially the middle- and low-ability ones, teachers do not model. This study seeks to find out if the teachers believe in the importance of reading and modeling, and whether they put such a belief into action.
This study uses an observation log, questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews. The morning session teachers were observed during USSR daily for ten weeks. Purposeful and systematic sampling were used to identify the teachers for the interviews. Maximum Variation sampling was used to identify the students for the interviews. All the 50 morning session teachers were surveyed and stratified sampling was used to identify the students surveyed.
The study found that even though the teachers believe in the importance of reading and modeling, they do not model reading. The consequence of this lack of modeling was that the teachers’ influencing power was greatly diminished as borne out by the fact that two-thirds of the students did not care whether the teachers read together with them, and one-third did not even want the teachers to read together with them.
Students need to perceive reading as meaningful and worthwhile before they would engage in them. Since the very people who can create this positive perception of reading were not doing so, the students invariably would not engage in reading. Herein lies the problem. As a result, the low-achieving and -ability students who do not read are caught in a never-ending spiral of poor academic attainment. To break out of this spiral, teachers must do their part in modeling reading in order to encourage students to engage in this worthwhile activity.415 65