An Evaluation of Extensive and Intensive Teaching of Literature: One Teacher’s Experiment in the 11th Grade

Research in the Teaching of English Nov 2016

An Evaluation of Extensive and Intensive Teaching of Literature: One Teacher’s Experiment in the 11th Grade

Matthew McConn

Abstract

More than four generations ago, Nancy Coryell’s (1927) study revealed that an extensive approach to reading instruction is more effective than an intensive approach, yet the reading establishment then continued to promote intensive, close reading methods. Recently, the writers of the Common Core State Standards renewed this debate by advocating that teachers implement more intensive, close reading strategies. I replicated a portion of Coryell’s (1927) study to determine the effectiveness of intensive and extensive reading instruction; to do so, I examined the impact each method had on students’ comprehension and analysis of literature. The study used a quasi-experimental, nonrandomized, pretest-post test comparison group research design. I used test procedures to measure the difference in pretest-to-post test scores within and between both groups for both comprehension and analysis. No statistically significant differences existed in the gains on the subtest measuring reading comprehension; however, statistically significant differences in gains on the subtest measuring analysis of literature were found within both instructional methods. At a time when policy seems to drive English instruction toward an intensive approach, this study suggests that we need more research before the field of English education can properly debate the issue.

Journal: Research in the Teaching of English
Published: 2016-11-01
DOI: 10.58680/rte201628874
Open Access: Closed
Topics: quantitative research multimodality multilingual writers