teaching reading through "letter – syllable –word" method using multimedia in comparison with the conventional method (using board and tablet)

reading is one of the most important basic skills for the growth of children’s intrinsic abilities which was taken into consideration by many researchers. inability in reading usually brings about many problems in learning for students. this paper reports the result of a two-groups with pre-test and post-test semi-experimental design which was done in elementary schools of mahidasht region of kermanshah province in the academic year 2009-2010. its objective was to determine the degree of the effect of teaching reading through the method of “letter-syllable-word” using digital multimedia in comparison with the conventional method (using board and tablet). in this project which was done on 54 students, first the pre-test measure of reading ability was performed for both groups, and then reading persian language was taught to the experimental group using multimedia in 16 sessions of 45 minutes. during this time the control group used board and tablet. at the end of teaching, post-test measure of reading ability and measurement of vocabulary were performed. the findings resulted from independent t test and analysis of co-variance indicated that teaching with the use of multimedia in comparison with the current method, was more impressive on the reading ability performance of students in three components of accurate-reading, reading- speed and vocabulary- reservoir. it can be concluded that teaching with the use of such multimedia, especially in high-populated classes, and in case of creating the necessary facilities in rural schools in which teachers have less opportunity for individual teaching of weaker individuals, can be an effective help in teaching reading skills.