CHAPTER 1

THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

Reading is the window of the world. Reading comprehension skill is a

fundamental skill to obtain further academic learning success. The ability to

read and interpret textbooks and other assigned material is a critical

component of success at every school levels. A good reader means that a

child has gained a functional knowledge of the principles of the alphabetic

writing system. At their young age, they have to gain functional knowledge

of the parts, products, and uses of the writing system from their ability to

attend to and analyse the external sound structure of spoken words.

Understanding the basic alphabetic principle requires an awareness that

spoken language can be analysed into strings of separable words, and

words, in turn, into sequences of syllables and phonemes within syllables.

Reading skills form the basis for learning, thus it is an important element for

obtaining knowledge in academic learning in all subject areas. However,

research on both L1 (first language speakers) and L2 (second language

speakers) reading indicate that proficient reading is a complicated process

that involves a combination of different abilities and strategies at the same

time to compensate for each other in processing a text. By reading, people

can get more knowledge and information from books, magazines,

newspapers, and others. Reading is not only a cognitive psycholinguistic

activity but also a social activity. Reading is a complex developmental

challenge that we know to be intertwined with many other developmental

accomplishments: attention, memory, language, and motivation. It is the

most important component in learning process and social interaction

because reading is an indispensable communication tool in a civilized

society.

Reading is the important subject to be taught in the school. It is

process to transfer the information from book to brain from writer to reader,

and this information will not receive with the readers if they did not

understand what the content of the text. In reading learning process the

student must understand what the content of text to get the information

from it. Through reading activity, the students can enlarge their knowledge.

To get further knowledge, students are required to have critical and

analytical competence in comprehending academic texts, in searching more

academic information through various types of reading materials such as

textbooks, reports, or electronic messages. However, not a students are

good at comprehending the text being read. Most of them understand the

informational of the text; in other words, they are good in decoding the text

but struggling to comprehend what the underlying meaning and purpose

beyond the text are. In this condition Perfetti (1985) asserts that the reason

why some students struggle is due to the lack of reading comprehension

strategies used as parts of background knowledge.

Teachers have duties to develop their skill and ability. Everything

teachers do in reading class should be designed to build students’ ability to

understand increasingly complex content of the texts. The assessment

technique that is chosen and used by the teacher will influence the success

of teaching learning process and student’s achievement. In the teaching

reading activities a good intervention program is needed in this research. A

good intervention program or method can be an effort the students’ reading

ability better. By developing good technique, students are expected to be

able to have an active learning. Active learning can make the students

interested in the reading lesson that given to them, not only silent or passive

in the teaching and learning process.

In this research, we focused on reading skill. In Gregorio Elementary

school some of the students have problems in understanding the text they

read. Thus, they always confused to master the reading text. The problem is

lack of vocabularies, pronunciation, and comprehension. From that many

problems, they will have an opinion that English learning is a difficult in

particular the reading skill. The students know from their test result that

they always failed in the reading text.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The study focused on the Reading Competencies of Non-Readers at

Gen. Gregorio del Pilar Elementary School of the Division of City Schools,

Manila: Basis for Intervention Program.

Specifically, it aims to answer the following questions:

1. What was the profile of the elementary grade school pupils as regards

1.1 Gender

2. What was the pre – screening reading test results of the elementary

grade school pupils based on their respective scores in English and

Filipino?

3. What was the overall pre- screening reading test results in Filipino and

English by grade levels?

4. What difference existed in the pre- screening reading test results

between the male and female grade school pupils in English and

Filipino?

5. What was the post screening reading test results of the elementary

grade school pupils based on their respective scores in English and

Filipino?
6. What was the overall post- screening reading test results by grade

levels in English and Filipino?

7. What difference existed in the post – screening reading test results

between the male and female grade school pupils in English and

Filipino?

8. What intervention program was provided employed to confirm reading

competencies or reading performance?

IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY

The result of this study will be beneficial to the grade 4, 5, and 6

pupils, parents, teachers, and administrators at General Gregorio del Pilar

Elementary school.

Students. They will be given an anticipation and idea about their

performance output in their school. They may realize what possible

shortcomings, disinterest they’ve shown academically and it may serve as a

lesson to learn in their lives. In this way, it could motivate and encourage

their studies for their future.

Teachers: The output of this study could bring them a good approach

for the innovation and implementation of reading program activities

and strategies in their school.

Administrators: This study could serve as one of their instruments in

resolving the problem in reading proficiency landed to the

researched information from its different sources. This could even

present an idea on what remediation they could do in support for the

improvement and standard of the reading proficiency program.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

Terms here are conceptually and operationally defined for better

understanding of the readers.

 Comprehension. The action or capability of understanding

something.

 Intervention. Is a combination of program elements or strategies

designed to produce behaviour changes or to be improve.

 Non-reader. A person who cannot or does not read.

 Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI). is an initiative

of the Bureau of Learning Delivery, Department of Education (DepEd).

The Phil-IRI is an inventory composed of graded passages designed to

determine the individual student’s performance in oral reading, silent

reading and listening comprehension. These three types of

assessments aim to find the student’s independent, instructional and

frustration levels.

SCOPE AND DELIMITATION

This study focuses on the reading skill of the non-readers

through intervention program created by the school to determine if it is

effective in making a child read. The coverage of this study is to Grade 4, 5

and 6 pupils specifically 50 pupils in the year 2018-2019 at Gen. Gregorio

del Pilar Elementary School. This study only focuses in specific skill

(Reading). Any other skills, methods, strategies and approaches related are

not included in the study. Thus, other factors in reading comprehension (e.g.

physical and psychological) are not within the study.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

This chapter presents the related literature and studies after the

thorough and in-depth search done by the researchers. This will also present

the synthesis of the art, theoretical and conceptual framework to fully

understand the research to be done and lastly the definition of terms for

better comprehension of the study.

Becoming a successful reader requires the mastery of many concepts

from phonemic awareness to comprehension. Reading instruction research

has shifted its focus from one skill to another in search of the best way to

improve reading instruction. Although all the concepts needed for reading

are important, reading comprehension stands out for its difficulty to teach

and assess. The challenge has been finding the best way to increase the

efficacy of reading instruction (Van Keer and Pierre, 2005). The instructional

practice has moved away from assuming that comprehension was a skill that

was mastered alongside decoding (Dole, 2000). Rather it is now known that

even though comprehension does depend on the development of decoding, it

has to be taught explicitly (Van Keer and Pierre, 2005). To better

understand the reasons why metacognition was chosen as the focus of this

study, first other strategies will be discussed. Then, the discussion will focus

on metacognition: what is it, how can it be taught, and how the concept of

schema can be used to enhance its effect on reading comprehension.

There are numerous approaches that have been presented to teach reading

comprehension. Many strategies have been identified as beneficial such as

monitoring comprehension, metacognition, using graphic organizers, and

comprehension questions among others (Adler, 2001). These strategies aid

comprehension in many ways.

Comprehension monitoring and metacognition are similar strategies in which

students are given tools to monitor or track their comprehension. Both

require students to be very involved and aware of the effectiveness of their

reading (Adler, 2001). Students are explicitly taught that while reading they

should be thinking. However, the thinking they do depends on their own

experiences and thus is subjective. Students are taught to give their thinking

a name. They learn that they should be aware and recognize the moments

when their comprehension is limited or lacking. Likewise, they should make

notice of all the background knowledge that is activated as they read

especially any connections they can make to their own life and other texts

they have read

Graphic organizers help students focus on text structures and help them see

relationships between texts (Adler, 2001). The organizers usually give

students a more visual way to synthesize the information they gather from

the text. The summarizing strategy asks students to synthesize what they

have read usually focusing on the main idea and supporting details (Adler,

2001).

Another commonly used strategy is using comprehension questions to teach

students concepts like main idea and to assess what information they have

extracted from the text while reading. Using comprehension questions allows

teachers to monitor student comprehension based on whether or not they

can respond correctly to the questions. The questions can be tailored to test
skills like identifying literary elements or to test a student’s understanding of

the text with basic recall questions.

Van Keer and Pierre (2005) define metacognition strategies as “self-

monitoring and regulating activities that focus on the product and the

process of reading, support readers' awareness of comprehension, and assist

in the selection of cognitive strategies as a function of text difficulty,

situational constraints, and the reader's own cognitive abilities” (p. 292).

Among these activities are the use of thinking stems like “I’m noticing” or

“I’m wondering” to activate more in depth thinking about the reading at

hand, the use of schema to help student make sense of ideas in a text using

their background knowledge, and the use of inferencing to help students use

reasoning to make deductions about a text (McGregor, 2007).

Fitzgerald (Fitzgerald, 1983 in Grey, 1987) states that metacognition

consists of four key aspects. First, you must know when you understand and

when you do not. Second, you must know what you do know. In other

words, you must be aware of your background knowledge. Third, you must

know what your purpose for reading is or what you need to know from a

text. Lastly, you must know useful strategies to help you intervene when

you do not comprehend a text.

Furthermore, comprehension monitoring is considered “one kind of activity

under the umbrella of metacognition, [which] consists of any behaviors that

allow readers to judge whether comprehension is taking place and that help

them decide whether and how to take compensatory action when

necessary.” (Casanave,1988, p. 288). In essence, comprehension

monitoring involves being able to recognize you level of understanding while

reading and to make a plan to fix whatever plans arise (Paris & Myers,

1981).

Studies have found that proficient readers are aware of the thinking that is

happening as they read. Although some students may develop this

awareness as they are learning how to read, the students with the most

need are the ones who are least likely to develop that awareness (Casanave,

1988). Thus it is crucial for teachers to explicitly teach students how to think

about their thinking while they are reading. As Van Keer and Pierre (2005)

confirmed in their study, explicitly teaching metacognitive strategies yield

significant gains in reading comprehension in students in 2nd grade. Thus,

this intervention revolved around teaching students about the value of

metacognition as well as one strategy.

https://sites.google.com/a/asu.edu/applied-project_roman-salazar/literature-review