Effects of the application of linguistics on reading comprehension of Black freshmen students at Texas Southern University

It seems to be a general accepted fact that the Negro speaks a systematic dialect common to his culture. Due to this cultural variable, school learning may become a difficult task. The difficulty is not because the Negro is deficient in language skills but because he is different in his language skills. This difference might interfere with his ability to learn to read. A preeminent and challenging question among educators today is how to teach reading to speakers of nonstandard dialect since standard English is the language of instruction in American schools. Like other educators, the members of the Reading and Study Skills Center at Texas Southern University are vitally concerned. In an effort to answer the above question, a linguistically-based program was employed to determine its effect, if any, on the reading comprehension of disadvantaged Negro students who were enrolled in reading and study skills courses. The Problem The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of a highly linguistically-based reading program on comprehension achievement of beginning Negro freshmen students at Texas Southern University when compared with other beginning freshmen at the same institution who received programmed reading instruction. The Study The total population for the study consisted of two hundred Negro, beginning Texas Southern University freshmen students. The participants were randomly selected from a total of 525 students enrolled in reading and study skills courses; 97 of whom were male while 103 were female. All participants were 1972 high school graduates who were reared and received elementary through high school instruction in the Texas Gulf Coast area. The ages of the participants ranged from seventeen through twenty years old for both the linguistics and programmed instructed groups, respectively. The study was conducted over a sixteen-week period. The linguistics group received instruction based on Paul Roberts' Patterns of English while the programmed instructed group received instruction based on the Science Research Associates' College Reading Program One. A session for linguistically-based instruction was taught simultaneously with a session for programmed instruction on alternate days, Monday through Thursday, twice per week. Each class session was fifty minutes long. The Nelson-Denny Reading Test, Forms A and B, was used to measure any change in reading comprehension achievement that occurred over the sixteen-week period. Group means were compared by submitting raw scores to an analysis of variance. The raw score means were later converted to a grade equivalent score for ease in interpreting any change that occurred in reading achievement. When the comprehension group means for the posttest were analyzed, a change of 1.8 between the linguistics instructed and the programmed instructed group was significantly higher than the .01 confidence level. A change of .3 in vocabulary achievement for the group that received programmed instruction over the group that received linguistics instruction was not statistically significant. Therefore, it may be concluded that the lingustic-based instruction was more effective than programmed instruction in improving reading comprehension of Negro beginning freshmen students at Texas Southern University. Conclusions On the basis of the findings of this study, it may be concluded that: 1. A lingustically-based instructional method is more effective than a programmed-based instructional method in improving reading comprehension achievement of Negro beginning freshmen students who live in the Texas Gulf Coast area. 2. Reading comprehension of Negro beginning freshmen college students in the Texas Gulf Coast area can be improved significantly by employing a linguistic method of reading instruction. 3. Although the specific applications of this study were limited to the two hundred subjects who comprised the research population, other students with similar reading deficiencies might derive benefit from such a program. 4. A measurable gain in reading vocabulary was derived simultaneously with improved reading comprehension for the programmed instructional group as well as for the linguistically-based instructional group. This was a secondary finding. Recommendations for Future Research 1. A larger population sample should be included in the investigation. 2. Negro students of classifications other than beginning freshmen should be included in the population sample. 3. Speakers of Negro dialect from other geographical areas should be included in a similar study. 4. More research at the college level should be conducted on students who speak nonstandard English.Education, College o