Reading in Elementary School and Its Connection to Motivation and Social Issues

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to increase the levels of reading motivation in English as a foreign language in fifth-grade students from a Colombian public school located in the municipality of Bello, Antioquia, by means of the social features of their immediate context. It was first necessary to diagnose which key factors influence students’ level of motivation to intervene appropriately by implementing short-illustrated stories, such factors were: their attitude towards reading in English, how their social context triggers learning in them, their reading preferences in general, as - well as their current language proficiency level. Only by regarding these aspects, an alternative to approaching literacy processes could be applied by teachers and also be beneficial to students’ learning experience. This research was conceived from a qualitative approach and an action research method to achieve a better understanding of the study object and raise awareness among the academic community about being critical towards students’ own context. Thus, participant observation, journals and semi-structured interviews were selected as the research instruments to test the initial categories of the study.