THE USE OF BIG BOOK TO PROMOTE READING AND ENHANCE UNDERSTANDING IN THE

PRIMARY CLASSROOM

ABSTRACT

Reading English books for children would be a challenging and utmost important activity to
enhance learning and understanding a language. Various techniques or activities have been
selected during the process to make reading an enjoyable activity in the classroom. Amongst
the many, reading a big book is one of the activities recommended to facilitate pupils
comprehension of a story delivered by the teacher. The intervention techniques used by using
the big book was storytelling, reading aloud and project work. This paper focuses on the use
of the big book to promote reading for year two pupils of primary schools in a rural area in
Malaysia. The objectives were to change pupils perception towards reading by using big
book, assess pupils understanding of the content of the big book and to examine their
comments and opinion on the contents of the big book and its use. Four subjects were
selected at random that consists of two boys and two girls participated in the study. All
respondents were eight years old from two Bestari of Sekolah Kebangsaan Haji Idris. The
method used to collect data for this study were questionnaire and pre-test and post-test.
Findings of the study revealed that there are positive improvement among the pupils about
their perception and interests towards reading in English. The use of the big book seemed to
be of an advantage and can promote reading for pupils as it creates fun and meaningful
learning of English in the classroom, as well as making reading activity an enjoyable one.