The effects of using video clips on critical reading skill development of high school students

It is believed that using video clips as an instruction tool can help improve four English language skills: reading, writing, speaking, and listening (Mekheimer, 2011). However, little has been known regarding the relationship between the use of video clips and critical reading. Thus, this study aims to bridge the gap by investigating the effects of using video clips on critical reading skill development among high school students. Fifty eleventh-grade students in a private school in Bangkok, Thailand classified as a low-proficiency group (25 students) and a high-proficiency group (25 students) participated in the study. Two aspects of critical reading skills were assessed through a pre-test and post-test research design. The results revealed that there was a statistically significant improvement in critical reading ability of students at p < .001. Moreover, the result seems to suggest that the higher proficiency group performed better than the lower proficiency group on the critical reading test after using the video clips because they gained higher mean scores. However, when Cohen’s d (effect size measure) was adopted to measure the degree of improvement, the findings indicated that the lower proficiency group had a higher improvement (d =1.622) in critical reading when compared to the higher proficiency group (d = 0.710).