| Educational researchers have found that there is a strong correlation betweenreading proficiency and academic success.The ability of academic reading isconsidered one of the most important skills that M.Edstudents need to acquire. Andas we know, students who read a lot and who understand what they read usually attainmore information they want. However, to most of the M.Ed. students, academicreading appears to be very difficult. Due to their weak English reading abilities, M.Ed.students often spend much time to understand academic terms, grammar, and moresuch details in English academic texts. The structure, main ideas, logical relations andacademic genre are often neglected. Most of M.Ed students think their academicreading is low efficient, and they need some useful strategies to promote theiracademic reading abilities.This study aims to explore the role of Graphic Organizers in promoting M.Edstudents abilities in academic journal article reading and in what way group workmode help them improve their academic journal article reading abilities.The subjects in this study are22M.Ed. students enrolled in the year2010studying English education in School of Foreign Languages and Literature. They areall in-service teachers from different primary schools, middle schools and vocationalschools, and they take courses only during winter and summer vocations. Theiroverall academic reading ability is not satisfactory and few of them read academicjournal articles before.In this thesis the author used interview, questionnaire and tests as researchinstruments. Testing results indicate that Graphic Organizers are effective inpromoting the M.Ed students academic journal article reading abilities, and group work mode is regarded to be useful and effective in helping students bettercomprehend the journal articles. However, there are some limitations in this research.One limitation is that the sample size is relatively small. Also, the training process ofusing graphic organizers need some modification. |
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