The animated storytelling in an EFL classroom: The effect on students’ reading aloud ability

Abstract

This study investigates the effectiveness of the animated storytelling in improving reading aloud ability of junior high school students in Aceh. The study concerns with 3 aspects of reading aloud, accuracy, rate, and fluency. A total of 34 male and female junior high school students were chosen randomly in SMPN 11 Banda Aceh. 17 students were selected randomly for the experimental group, and the other 17 were in the control group. The control group was taught by the regular teacher while the experimental group was supervised by the researchers. In obtaining the data, the researchers used oral reading test, a short text consisting of 100 words, administered to students in 2 (two) classes as the pretest and posttest. The data revealed that the experimental group showed better performance that the control group on measure. The gain score achieved by the experimental group is considerably higher, 11.37, than the control group, 3.92. Also, the results also show an improvement in rate aspect that substantially rose from 10 to 28. It then indicates that the animated storytelling has a significant positive effect on the development of students’ reading aloud ability, particularly in rate aspect.