“COMPREHENSION LEVEL OF STUDENTS’ IN ORAL READING”

INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study

Reading is one of the important skills in English and it gives many benefits in every in

students. Reading is the window of the world. By reading, people can get more knowledge and

information from books, magazines, newspapers, and others. Reading comprehension is important

for students to become effective readers. Reading begin with decoding letters, letter groups and

the sounding out of words. Later, learners begins to read words, sentences, picture books, short

stories, and other texts. Reading aloud helps learners to develop their decoding skills which can be

a valuable diagnostic aid. This process concentrates on the development of fluency. The movement

from passive to active reading involves the development of reading comprehension skills

(Machado, 2010)

Reading comprehension is the ability to understand what we read where words have

context and texts have meaning. Reading comprehension skills allow us to read proficiently, learn

effectively and to conceptualize. These skills are basically, based on earlier stages of reading

development, including oral reading and reading fluency. Without developing these earlier reading

skills. Students must continually focus on decoding letters and words, rather than progressing to

meaning and understanding (Grabe & Stoller, 2002). The key to developing proficient reading

skills in the early years of education is an even earlier foundation in underlying language learning

skills. Therefore, strong reading comprehension skills are viewed as being dependent on the

strength of the cognitive strategies established in the early years. (Brewster & Ellis, 2002).

Comprehension is the essence of reading and the active process of constructing meaning

from text (Durkin, 1993). Reading comprehension is a complex interaction among automatic and

strategic cognitive processes that enables the reader to create a mental representation of the text
(van den Broek & Espin, 2012). Comprehension depends not only on characteristics of the reader,

such as prior knowledge and working memory, but also on language processes, such as basic

reading skills, decoding, vocabulary, sensitivity to text structure, inferencing, and motivation.

Comprehension also requires effective use of strategic processes, such as metacognition and

comprehension monitoring. As readers mature in their comprehension skills, they are able to

progress efficiently from the stage of learning to read to the ultimate goal of reading to learn

(Yovanoff, Duesbery, Alonzo, & Tindal, 2005)

According to Mokhtari and Reichard (2002), “good readers” are aware of what they are

reading and why they are reading it; in addition they use some plans and strategies to monitor their

own understanding and overcome the problems they face while reading. Reading comprehension

strategies are the cognitive strategies that the reader uses pre-reading, during reading and post-

reading to understand the text better. There are some strategies that the reader uses consciously

and unconsciously. Reading comprehension is not a single step or easily acquired skill. It is a very

complex process that teachers find difficult to teach. Comprehension is a process that involves

thinking, teaching, past experiences, and knowledge (Prado & Plourde, 2005). The foundation of

reading comprehension is word identification and decoding. As individuals get better at these skills

and are able to read words, they have to move into learning the actual meanings of the words they

are reading. Knowing and understanding what is being read is the key to comprehension.

Comprehension is the “interaction among word identification, prior knowledge, comprehension

strategies, and engagement” (Prado & Plourde, 2005, p. 33). Without all of these skills, one cannot

comprehend properly and, therefore, not read properly. Students who have disabilities are more at

risk than others for developing reading and or comprehension problems. Students with disabilities

often do not pick up techniques or reading skills as quickly as their peers who do not have
disabilities. Therefore, students with disabilities greatly benefit from having strategies that they

understand and that they know how to employ in certain situations. Typically developing students

can often develop and use their own strategies, but those with disabilities struggle with this process.

There are multiple reasons why some students have difficulty with reading comprehension.

Some students have difficulties because they have not truly mastered reading fluently. When a

student who is struggling to read words and focuses so hard on just saying the words correctly,

they are not focusing on what they are reading. All of their cognitive ability is being put into

properly calling out the correct words and little effort it put into the meaning of what is being read.

This is especially true for students who have disabilities (Woolley, 2010). Students who have

cognitive disabilities, working memory problems, and difficulties with making inferences are also

likely to have comprehension difficulties. An example of a student would be a student with autism.

This student’s cognitive abilities may make reading comprehension a difficult task (Jitendra &

Gajria, 2010).

Poor reading comprehension may also be related to a lack of prior experiences or a lower

socio-economic environment. (Jitendra & Gajria 2011). To be able to properly comprehend what

is being read, students are often required to make connections with what is being read to their own

lives and experiences. If a student has not had many experiences or comes from a background that

is very different from what is being read in the story, understanding is going to be a very difficult

task. This component of reading comprehension is often called activating prior knowledge. Some

students simply do not have this prior knowledge. Some students do have this knowledge but they

lack the skills needed to activate it.

Reading strategies are tools that teachers use to help students learn to read and comprehend

what they are reading. There are hundreds reading strategies available to help students with their
comprehension at different levels and with different types of text (Prado & Plourde, 2005). One

problem with strategy use is that it is often not taught explicitly enough or it is taught incorrectly.

When teaching a student a strategy, the strategy has to be taught with detailed and explicit

instruction. The student has to be shown how to use the strategy through modeling, have supported

practice, and independent practice with feedback. The strategy may also have to be generalized to

other settings. It is being found that some students with reading or comprehension difficulties are

either not taught strategies at all or they do not know how to use them properly. Many students

with disabilities are taught strategies but they do not know how to recall that strategies when they

are engaged in reading (Jitendra & Gajria, 2011).

Reading comprehension is a process that involves memory, thinking abstractly,

visualization, and understanding vocabulary as well as knowing how to properly decode (Ness,

2010). Explicitly teaching students strategies can help them do all of these things better and

become more independent readers. Reading comprehension strategies also encourage students to

become more responsible for their own learning, once the student has mastered the strategy. Also,

research has shown that when students receive proper reading comprehension strategy instruction

and then use these strategies, not only does their comprehension decrease but so does their

vocabulary, decoding, problem solving, team work skills, and self-esteem (Ness, 2010).

Statement of the Problem

1. What are the range of scores of the students from the comprehension test given.

2. What are the weaknesses of students in Oral reading?

3. What are the ways to enhance the comprehension level of students in Oral reading

among grade 4 students.

Objectives of the Study

Comprehension level of students in oral reading aims to study the development of reading

among students.

 determine the reading comprehension skills to the students through their textbook.

 to know the weaknesses of the students when they are reading Orally.

 what are the ways of students to read or learn in oral reading.

Importance of the study

The weaknesses of the students in Oral reading is some of the words in the textbooks are

deep and some of words are difficult to pronounce and understand and some of the students are

easily distracted to their surroundings because of noise.

To help the students experiencing struggles in reading they need to find the book they like,

re-read the part of story that are confusing, write down the words on the note that they don’t know

and read aloud to understand what they are reading.

The study aims to encourage students who have reached the stage of reading materials with

accuracy may continue to characterize by a slow and halting style, read without expression and

despite their excellent recognition accuracy, comprehension maybe compromised. It includes the

readers cognitive capabilities, motivation knowledge and experiences.

Teachers, they motivate students by providing them interests in reading, and help students

with difficulties in comprehension in oral reading also by teaching and guiding the students to

improve their knowledge

Parents can help their children to increase more knowledge about comprehension in oral

reading and by supporting the child to increase their ability in oral oral reading.

Scope and Limitation

This study aims to know the struggles of students in Oral reading. The researchers conduct

a data inside the Saint Jude Parish School and the respondents are grade 4 students

Definition of Terms

To gain a clear understanding, the following terms are defined:

Oral Reading. Fluency reflects the ability of the reader to read smoothly, which includes

paying attention to punctuation, grouping words into meaningful chunks, and using intonations

that reflect appropriate meaning of text.

Fluency. It is the speed, accuracy and prosody (expression) that a person uses when reading

a text.

Comprehension. Reading comprehension is the ability to process information that we

have read and to understand its meaning.

Subvocalization. It is a very common habit among readers. That involves saying words in

one’s head while reading and it is one of the main reasons why people read slowly and have

troubled improving their reading speed.

Prosody. It is concerned with those elements of speech that are not individual phonetic

segments (vowels and consonants)but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech. These

contribute to linguistic functions such as intonation, tone stress, and rhythm.

Metacognition. It is considered a critical component of successful learning. It involves

self-regulation and self-reflection of strengths, weaknesses, and the types of strategies you create.

It is a necessary foundation in culturally intelligent leadership because it underlines how you think

through a problem or situation and the strategies you create to address the situation or problem.

Reading Comprehension. It is the ability to process text, understand its meaning, and to

integrate it with what the reader already knows.

Conceptual Framework

Input Source Output

The researchers need to  Textbooks To know students ability
observe students what are  Internet when they reading through
their weaknesses in oral  Questionnaires comprehension in oral
reading. reading and how can they
easily pick up the texts
when they are reading.

In this framework, all the process and components knowledge sources become points of

interest for analysis and assessment of comprehension skills. In fact, the knowledge sources can

be so general that comprehension can resemble general intelligence, entailing highly general

processing constraints along with the use of general conceptual knowledge. But conflating

comprehension with cognition carries costs to conceptual clarify. One cost is the loss of a focus

for assessment. Indeed, variability of focus is the current state of affairs among published reading

comprehension assessments, each of which differ in the degree to which they test word reading,

background knowledge, and inference skills (Bowyer Crane Snowling, 2005).

Such variability may be inevitable, given different beliefs about what comprehension is

and what parts of it can be efficiently measured. However, adopting a conceptual framework for
comprehension components that reflects both theory and evidence is valuable in guiding

assessment. Use of the framework can make clear which components are being assessed and which

are not. An assessment that makes its focal points clear is useful to test consumers. (Hart & Samols,

2005)