Web-Based Educational Practice Design for Enhancing Reading Literacy

Abstract

How to improve reading literacy has been an issue since Japan greatly dropped in ranking in the reading literacy section of the Programme for International Student Assessment arranged by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. We believe that to improve reading literacy, it is important to enhance the opportunity to 1) understand and evaluate text, 2) write one’s opinion related to the text, and 3) read various kinds of text.

Thus, we designed a method of educational practice that is able to enhance those three opportunities and constructed a Web site where the practice can be carried out. We decided to use on-line newspaper columns, which are easy to read and excellent as a teaching text. Then, we introduced this Web site in a junior high school and verified its effect on the students’ reading literacy. We obtained results showing the effectiveness of Web-based educational practice and the improvement of the students’ reading literacy.