An Exploration of the Potential of Martial Arts Instruction to Improve the Abilities of Struggling Adolescent Readers and Writers

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the potential for martial arts instruction to improve the reading and writing skills of struggling adolescent learners. The paper begins with a literature review that documents a number of affective states that can hinder adolescent reading and writing skills development. The thesis continues with a review of the literature on learning skills that have been shown to enhance student reading and writing performance. The paper then explores the literature on martial arts instruction, with an emphasis on how martial arts training has been shown to improve the affective states and learning skills which contribute to adolescent reading and writing proficiency. An argument is made that martial arts instruction might be an effective means to improve adolescent reading and writing skills since it has the potential to remediate negative affective states that hinder student reading and writing performance and it also has the potential to build critical learning skills that have been shown to contribute to adolescent reading and writing proficiency