Pre-training on vocabulary and its effects on educational television programs as medium for literacy education

Abstract

A growing proportion of people leaving school are low-literate. Concurrently, children have an increasing access to watching video content, including educational television programs. Research has shown that exposure to educational television programs among primary school children had positive effects on learning in terms of text comprehension. The given development of the access to and use of video content, argues for reconsideration of this earlier findings. To properly make advantage of educational television programs to improve literacy, additional measures to lower the cognitive load of this programs is necessary. In this study, focus is on pre-training as such a measure. The research question of this study is: Does pre-training on vocabulary enhance the positive effects of educational television programs on text comprehension? To formulate an answer to this question, a pre- and post-test design with three groups was used. The difference in test scores was interpreted as the learning effect and thus the dependent variable. Due to insignificant results, no generalizable conclusions could be drawn from this research. However, the scores on the post-test are higher than the pre-test scores. Therefore, the results encourage further research into the effects of the combination of pre-training and educational television programs on text comprehension.