Introductory information:
- Previous studies have found a link between motivation and reading achievement
- Motivation in this study was framed with the expectancy-value theory: - Motivation is viewed as an interplay between an individual’s expectations for success (expectancy) and the subjective attractiveness of some particular activity (value)
- The researchers in this study reasoned that enhancing meaning, creating situational interest, and activating imagination would increase motivation - Situation interest, in particular, is generated by the adventures of the imaginary letter characters in short narratives
- Letter sound knowledge is foundational in learning to read, being more predictive of learning to read than letter names are
- Integrated, or embedded, mnemonics: letter shapes embedded in a familiar action, object, or character - Example: the letter “d” is embedded in a picture of a duck named “dippy” - Previous findings show that integrated mnemonics help children remember and retrieve the links between letter shapes and their associated sounds by creating a meaningful and strong paired-association between them
What questions does this study aim to answer?
- What instructional features may promote both motivation and literacy learning in preschool children?
- Does explicit academic instruction designed to promote motivation and learning actually increase motivation and learning?
- What is the relationship between motivation and learning?
How was this study conducted?
- 38 preschool children were randomly assigned to one of two explicit teaching treatments to teach alphabet letter sounds: - Use integrated mnemonics and short narratives about the letter sound characters - Use plain letters and alphabet books
- The two treatments differed on 3 dimensions: 1. introduction of the letter sound with an integrated mnemonic pictogram of the lowercase letter vs. introduction of the letter with no pictogram 2. hearing and identifying the target letter sound in initial position in words in an imaginary story about the pictogram character vs hearing and identifying the letter sound in the same number of individual words depicted in an alphabet book 3. letter writing instruction paired with an integrated pictogram vs paired with a lowercase letter with no pictogram
- 32 lessons of 25-min duration each across 7 weeks
- Children’s motivation was measured by having the students point to a cluster of one, two, three, four, or five stars, depending on their interest in the lesson
- Children’s learning was measured by having the students speak letter names and letter sounds in response to a randomly ordered presentation of individual letters
- Children’s letter and word writing was measured by having the students write on a blank sheet of paper six letter sounds and five words dictated by the examiner
What were the results?
- The motivational features included in instruction did not lead to significant increases in motivation in comparison to a carefully matched control
- Integrated mnemonics for taught-letter sound identification and initial phoneme identification and blending are effective and beneficial - Children who participated in integrated mnemonics instruction learned almost twice as many letter sounds as control children - Integrated mnemonics children identified more than 1.5 times as many initial phonemes in meaningful whole words - Integrated mnemonics instruction also resulted in significantly higher achievement in comparison to the treated control on or phoneme blending, a skill not taught during instruction
- There is a possibility that children’s motivation naturally increased over time or children responded more positively because they understood the content better
- The researchers found a moderate and reliable relationship between motivation and literacy skills that is consistent with other research
What are the implications of this research for the classroom?
- Preschool teachers can be encouraged to explicitly teach letter sounds using integrated mnemonics and to embed target letter sounds within words in interesting and imaginative stories with anticipation of positive motivation and learning outcomes for children
