In English education in Korea, there is a critical gap of English curriculum between middle school and high school. In addition, students in English class in high school are different in many factors including cognitive, social, affective factors. These interact with each other, resulting in a learning gap among high school students. In this situation, the remedial treatment for the development of high school underachievers’ English literacy should be needed.
For the purpose, this study aims to show the role and effectiveness of utilizing graded readers on literacy development of English underachievers who are first graders in high school. This study aims to demonstrate how English reading lesson with graded readers can help the underachievers to improve their vocabulary and grammar learning, reading literacy and influence affective factors.
The subjects are five Korean high school 1st graders. During the intervention period, the five students participated English reading lesson with graded readers based on reading stages. During the lessons, the students practiced repeated memorizing vocabularies, understanding the text from words and sentences. At the beginning of each lesson, their practices were evaluated. The whole instruction lasted ten weeks, one or two lessons per week, and fifty minutes per lesson.
The results demonstrate that the five underachievers showed meaningful improvements in acquiring words, grammatical knowledge, and reading literacy. Additionally, the results also show that English reading lesson with graded readers had a positive effect on affective factors such as confidence, interest, participation, and anxiety. Therefore, this study suggests that English lesson with graded readers, which is tailored to English underachievers, is an effective teaching method.

Graded readers/High school underachievers/English literacy/Affective factors