Improving Students’ Reading Motivation through Literature Circles Practice

Abstract

This study attempts to examine the effects of literature circles approach on students’ reading interest. More specifically, the study addressed the following research question: Is there statistically significant difference in students reading interest between the working reading practice and the literature circles practices? This research work was mainly experimental in design. Sixty randomly selected students (30 for the control group and 30 for the experimental group) were involved from Arba Minch. Pre-test and post-test were employed in order to obtain data required for the study. An independent sample t-test was employed to examine the effect of the intervention between the control and experimental groups. The experiment was conducted for two semesters on the experimental group. The effects of literature circles approach on students’ extensive reading was examined through an independent sample t-test. The average scores of the groups are 16.67 and 20.00 respectively for the post-test. The SD in post-test is computed as 5.09 and 3.25 respectively. The t-value is -3.85 and the P-value is 000. The difference between the two scores was found to be statistically significant, indicating that experimental group made significant improvement over its post-test compared to the control group. Therefore, the findings of the tests seem to indicate that the literature circle approach positively affected the students’ reading interest of the experimental group. Finally, based on the results conclusions and recommendations were made.