Hobbs, Renee and Richard Frost. “Measuring the Acquisition of Media-Literacy Skills.” Reading Research Quarterly. 38.3 (Summer 2003): 330-355.

In “Measuring the Acquisition of Media-Literacy Skills” (2003), Hobbs and Frost explore the acquisition of media-literacy skills in a yearlong high school English course and demonstrate how this class improved the literacy of the students. Examining one specific media enhanced English course, Hobbs and Frost look at media-literacy acquisition in the areas of message analysis and purpose combined with reading and writing skills to determine the success of students from various social classes working in the same classroom. Hobbs and Frost present this information to teachers of all grades and disciplines as information presented by research professors distanced from the study in order to show an unbiased evaluation of media usage in the classroom. Hobbs and Frost’s article encourages readers to incorporate media material into their classrooms to aid students in meeting academic goals.

Hobbs and Frost demonstrate an effective study in their work. As distanced observers from the students participating in the study, they allow the reader to put more merit to their study. Overall, the study is effective and supports the argument that media literacies should be used more in the classroom However, this article does not aid in my research for the specific reason that I am not focusing on the classroom itself, but on media acquisition outside of the classroom. Since the methodology of the study involves using live participants, which is not a portion of my research, the article is not useful to my study.