The Effects of Reader’s Theatre on Students’ Reading Performance: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Reading skills has always been emphasised in English language classrooms because reading skills is believed to be crucial in helping students become proficient writers and speakers in the process of second language acquisition. However, the “Programme for International Student Assessment” (PISA) 2018 results revealed that most of Malaysian students were still below international benchmark in reading. Therefore, the current systematic review focuses on the effectiveness of Reader’s Theatre, a strategy to teach reading, in improving students’ reading performance. Employing the “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses” (PRISMA) review methodology, a total of 15 eligible articles were selected from two databases, which were ERIC and Google Scholar. The identified articles ranged from the year 2013 to 2022. From the articles, it was found out that Reader’s Theatre was effective in improving students’ oral reading fluency and reading comprehension. Most of the studies in the primary school context focused on the components of oral reading fluency, such as pronunciation, word recognition and prosody; studies in the secondary school context focused more on vocabulary building and reading comprehension. The results also demonstrated the effects of Reader’s Theatre in improving motivation among students. It is suggested that future studies focus more on investigating the effectiveness of Reader’s Theatre with the integration of technology.