The Development of an Instructional Model for Thai Reading Comprehension Ability for Prathom Suksa 4 Students

This research was aimed at building and developing an instruction model that enhances Thai reading comprehension for Grade 4 students using comics books and to compare Thai subject achievement of the students taught by this instruction model with students taught by conventional instruction. The sample group comprised students of Prathom Suksa 4 (Grade 4) of Demonstration School, Khon Kaen University, Primary Section (Modindang) during the first semester of academic year 2011. The experimental study was applied with the 80 students divided in 40 in the experimental group and 40 in the control group. Research instruments included lesson plans for the instruction model of Thai reading comprehension using cartoon books, Thai teaching plans based on Grade 4 Teacher's Manual, and a Thai language achievement test. The statistics used was t-test computed by SPSS/PC program. The statistics significance was set at .05 level. Following is the conclusion of the study:The instruction model for Thai reading comprehension lessons was built from the principles and theories of Thai reading comprehension, synthesized into a model with the following steps in the lessons: (1) teaching difficult words in the cartoon pictures, (2) studying the story from the cartoon pictures, (3) reading the cartoon for comprehension, and (4) applying the skill in reading comprehension.The achievement of Grade 4 students learned by the instruction model for Thai reading comprehension was significantly higher than students learned by the conventional instruction at .05 level.