The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the program using the fairy tales on the preschoolers\' reading ability and meaning comprehension.
The subjects were 26, six-year old preschoolers selected from two kindergartens in Gwangyang, Jeollanamdo. They were assigned two treatment conditions: experiment and control. Before the intervention, the child reading ability test by Seok-Soon Yee and the test for language comprehension by Hae-Won Jeong were used for pre-test.
For six-week period, the program based on six fairy tales, three of which were Korean traditional fairy tales, two of which were western stories, and one traditional western fairy tales. The program lasted about 30 minutes five days a week for six weeks for experimental group. After the intervention, all the subjects were tested for post test. The data were analysed in SPSS WIN 12.0 program, by frequencies, percentile, mean, standard deviation, correlation, t-test, cross-tabulation analysis, and analysis of covariance(ANCOVA).
The results were as follows:
1. The reading ability test results were not different in the control and experiment group before the program was conducted. After the intervention, the preschoolers\' in the experiment group had higher reading ability scores than those in the control group.
2. The comprehension test results were not different in the control and experiment group before the program was conducted. After the intervention, the preschoolers\' in the experiment group had higher meaning comprehension scores than those in the control group.
That is, the program using the fairy tales gave positive effects on the preschoolers\' reading ability and meaning comprehension.