I.

CONTEXT AND RATIOANALE

Reading is one of the English skills which are essential to be

mastered by the students. Reading skills are necessary for students

in acquiring knowledge and new information. According to Brown that

reading is the most essential skill in the educational context as

it can be the assessments for students’ general language ability.

Reading enhances our understanding of the world around us. It

can be broadening our horizons, introduce us to new cultures, and

help us empathize with people who have different experiences frown

our own. It is also a great way to learn new things, whether that’s

practical knowledge or insights into human nature. Moreover, reading

is a journey of discovery. It enriches our minds, touches our

hearts, and opens up a world of possibilities.

Reading is the third of macro skills. It is the ability to

recognize or pronounce a word or sentence correctly. Moreover,

reading is development, interactive, and a global process involving

learned skills. The process specifically incorporates and can be

positively and negatively influenced by nonlinguistic internal and

external variables or factors.1 Reading is a process which is done

and used by the reader to get a message which is delivered by the

writer through written language. In short, reading is an activity to

get meaning from printed words or symbols and how this ability is

used to recognize, understand and interpret in words.

Reading comprehension is one aspect of language skills that

must be mastered by the student. To be able to interpret and absorb

information from reading material, students should have good

understanding ability. Reading comprehension is required in each

subject, because each lesson is inseparable from the act of reading.

Therefore, students are required to have good understanding

capabilities.

Reading comprehension is a skill that is critical in the

educational success of all individuals. Without adequate reading

comprehension skills, students can struggle in many subject areas.

Reading is an important skill needed for all areas of school.

Subject, other than reading or literature, where comprehension

skills are significantly important include science, social studies

and math. In the areas of science, research indicates that many

students lack prior knowledge and reading strategies to generate

inferences. Thus, the students poorly comprehend science texts. It

is also found that students lack the specific reading strategies to

generate inferences that aid in the understanding of science texts.

Zimmerman, S. & Hutchins, C., define reading comprehension as

the ability to read text, process it and understand its meaning. It

realizes on two interconnected disabilities; word reading (being

able to decode the symbols on the page) and language comprehension

(being able to understand the meaning of the word and sentences).

According to Leu and Kinzer, reading is a developmental,

interactive, and global process involving learned skills. The

process specifically incorporates an individual’s linguistic

knowledge and can be both positively and negatively influenced by

nonlinguistic internal and external variables of factors.[1] In

addition, Tarigan states that reading is a process that are seen,

known, carried out, and used by a reader to acquire a message being

conveyed by a writer through words. In other words, reading is an

activity used to organize, understand and interpret words.

Furthermore, comprehension is the ability of our brain to comprehend

texts. It is a meaningful way of breaking ideas into pieces and

relating these pieces into one. In similar way, comprehension is a

by-product of good literature, background knowledge (prior

knowledge), and real-life experiences. Reading is a complex process,

one of the four (4) macro-language skills, categorized-as input. In

a communication process, it can be said that the writer/author

encodes while the reader decodes the message. In order for the

message to be decoded clearly, a reader should have a profound

background of what type of material being read, otherwise

misconception may occur.

In the fact, there are still many problems in the learning

process of reading comprehension. Sometimes students are only

required to read the text in the heart, and then answer questions

related to the content of the text. It is a way that does not

involve the process of thinking students so that students are not

involved in active reading process. Indeed, each lesson will not be

separated from the communicative method. But if in any learning

simply used by communicative method the students will be visible

only be passive and just as an object of learning do not as a

subject of learning so that will be difficult to develop students’

thinking process.

Not all readers can comprehend. It is an existing problem in

school, not just in primary grades, but also in secondary and even

tertiary levels. It is indeed one of the causes of having poor

performance of students especially during this time , where reading

and comprehension skills are always used to fulfill requirements

asked by their respective teachers or to answer their modules.

Hence, absence of reading comprehension makes the students find

answering their modules a very difficult task.

Hence, this action research project was conducted in order to

improve the reading comprehension among the grade three pupils of

San Agustin Elementary School. The researchers intended to improve

the pupils’ reading comprehension by employing textual mode method.

This technique has been being believed to provide chance for

students to improve their motivation and understanding of text ,

which convey information by means of visual images, According to

Kress, different logics govern the mode of written language and that

of visual image: written text is governed by the logic of time or

temporal sequence, whereas, visual image is governed by the logic of

spatiality, organized arrangements, and simultaneity (Kress, 2003).

That is, meaning is derived from position in the temporal sequence

of written text, whereas meaning is made from the spatial relations

or grammar of visual images (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996). To

understand the written language, temporal sequence or order in which

words appear in a sentence is very important. In visual images, the

position, size, and composition of the contents of the image play a

significant role in the meaning making.

Moreover, learning to read is a complex and continuous process

from the early years of the child’s development and it continues

throughout a lifetime. Reading facilitates the ability to reason,

think, judge, evaluate what has been read, and solve occurring
problems. Reading is indeed an encompassing tool in assisting a

child’s learning.

Thus, this interests the researchers in conducting this study,

mainly to know how to improve and enhance pupils’ reading skills as

well as comprehension through textual mode strategy. The researchers

came up with the idea of using an innovation and intervention, which

is textual mode strategy, for it would be effective and helpful in

order to improve the reading comprehension of the Grade III pupils

of San Agustin Elementary School.

II. ACTION RESEARCH QUESTION

This action research aims at improving the reading

comprehension skills of Grade III Pupils in San Agustin Elementary

School through textual mode

Specifically, this study sought to answer the following

questions:

1. What is the level of reading comprehension of the Grade III

pupils before using textual mode?

2. What is the level of reading comprehension of the Grade III

pupils after using textual mode?

3. Is there a significant difference between the results of pre-

test and post-test?

4. Is textual mode effective in improving the pupils reading

comprehension skills in English.

III. INNOVATION, INTERVENTION AND STRATEGY

In this study, the researchers aims to determine if there will

be an improvement in the reading comprehension skills of Grade III

pupils in San Agustin Elementary School after using the textual mode

technique. The researchers will employ a material which is a

descriptive text as the innovation and intervention. The researchers

employ textual mode as the method, technique, or intervention that

was beneficial strengthen students' comprehension of what they are

reading. How crucial graphics like photos or images are maintained

in the recollection. What someone observed or sensed could not

quickly forgotten. An illustration or photograph of what occurs

narrates a tale and provides insight on the viewers.

Textual mode are inherently associated with digital

technologies because in many digital texts, different modalities,

aural, visual, gestural, spatial, and linguistic come together to

construct meaning. Textual mode is about understanding the

different ways of knowledge representations and meaning-making,

understanding discourse by investigating the contributions of

specific semiotic resources such as languages, gestures and images,

using various modalities such as visual images to create meaning and

understanding how various modalities co-work to construct a coherent

text. (Eksi & Yakisik, 2015). Other definition about textual mode is

stated by Kress (2010) as a framework that requires a collective

interpretation of two or more scripts, visuals, videos, graphics,

animations, sounds, music, gestures and facial expression for

producing meaning.

Moreover, textual mode are visual materials that can be used

to motivate the students in learning a language. Visuals catch

attention and facilitate retention, so the researches think that it

would be possible that using text with images will impart a great

contribution to learn the story or the text. Some observations tell

us that images really catch attention. Grade school pupils are

scanning books to look at images not just the text. They are more

attentive in looking and searching for images, so they could come

up with various ideas and perspectives. Even modules and books for

elementary students are intentionally made having visuals or images.

In television, internet or mobile, visuals and images are more

prominent and dominant because of their characteristics that offer

retention to the human memory.

The researchers consulted the advisers to what stories to be

used as a strategy and interventions Then, they had chosen the

story, “Picnic with Family” as the pre-test and “A day at the

beach”, as the post-test for the pupils to answer.

In the next day, the researchers will conduct the pre-test for

the pupils. After that, the researchers will teach those pupils with

difficulty in reading. In the next day, the researchers will conduct

the post-test for the pupils to see if the intervention was

effective.

On this study, the story, “Picnic with Family” and “A day at

the beach” were used as a strategy to use the texts with respective

images for each concept of the story and to aid for better
understanding and comprehension. On the other hand, the stories were

adapted from the curriculum guide of the grade level.

According to multimodal theories, by virtue of their co-

presence, text and image meanings multiply each other in ways that

can be described, categorized, and evaluated in terms of impact or

effectiveness.

IV. ACTION RESEARCH METHOD

a. Participants and/or Other Sources of Data Information

This study was conducted in San Agustin Elementary School

located at Barangay San Agustin, Mondragon Northern Samar, and its

principal is Mr. Marben L. Getalado. San Agustin shared a common

border with Doña Lucia, Makiwalo, La Trinidad and Imelda Mondragon

Northern Samar. San Agustin is situated at approximately 12.5122,

124.7188, in the island of Samar. Elevation at these coordinates is

estimated at 9.3 meters or 30.5 feet above mean sea level. San

Agustin is a barangay in the municipality of Mondragon, in the

Province of Northern Samar.

The respondents of this study were the selected grade 3

pupils of San Agustin Elementary School, for an academic year 2023-

2024. The researcher have took all the enrolled pupils as

respondents.
Figure 1. San Agustin Mondragon Northern Samar

b. Data Gathering Methods

In the process of gathering the data, the researchers will

give a letter to the principal of San Agustin Elementary School to

ask permission for the conduct of the study. When the principal will

approved the request, the researchers ask the Grade III teacher for

the total number of their pupils and identified those who were

having difficulty with reading comprehension.

The researchers will conduct the pre-test to determine the

current reading comprehension of grade III pupils of San Agustin

Elementary School. Then the researchers administered the post-test

if the intervention was effective and if it helps improved the

reading comprehension skills. In the intervention the researchers

will let the pupils read the story individually in their seats.

Afterwards, the researchers prepared series of questions relevant to

the story they have read.

Further, to ensure the reliability and validity of the

data, the researchers will follow the right procedures. A letter of

permission and copy of the instructional materials to be used in

conducting the study and this will be submitted to the school

principal and classroom adviser, as well as the necessary revision

will be made before gathering of data conducted. The gathered data

will be computed, interpreted and analyzed using the appropriate

statistical tools.

c. Data Analysis Plan

This part includes the discussion of the results and

reflection of the study. The data will presented in this part will

follows the arrangement of the problems as set in the Action

Research Questions.

This study employ a mixed method research design. The study

utilized a mixed of qualitative and quantitative research design.

The data scores were tallied and quantitatively analyzed by the

researchers to find out if there is a significant difference between

the pretest and post-test results. The researchers also will

record rather personal observations about the learner’s improvement.