CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Reading awakes a sleepy mind; it supplies a lot of learning towards

every individual. It helps us to understand, to analyze, to conclude and to give

us information in various things that we read. It is not merely basic skills in

acquiring knowledge in things but it helps a lot to people specially in today’s

modern world which experiencing a lot of changes and reading is one of the

most important skills that we need to acquire (Grove & Hauptfleisch, 1992).

Reading helps us to understand our culture, our nature, our tradition,

our environment and mostly our past and present (Likosky Libretto 1995).

Reading can bring us into contact with our culture and the values and

principles adhered to by our community. It can help us develop our own ideas

about relationships (Smith & Robinson,1990). It includes the world of thoughts

and emotions (Frank, 1990). Reading is also important specially in pupils.

They need to learn and master the reading skills to compete in advance

demand of education today. Reading is the main ingredient of learning and the

value of reading is likely to be challenged by many people since the essence

of reading has been forgotten and reading without comprehension is useless.

Secretary of Education Br. Armin A. Luistro FSC said that it is important

to assess the reading capability of the pupils because reading is the

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foundation of all academic learning.  “If a pupil fails to master basic reading

skills at the outset, it will be a constant struggle for them to get through other

disciplines successfully, thus depriving them of the chance to become literate

and productive individuals,”.

The value of reading is unlikely to be challenged by many people. It so

much a part of modem society that most people would acknowledge its

importance. Reading is well integrated into our education system generally,

such that educational success is almost synonymous with reading success.

Reading is probably one of the most important skills that a child learns at

school, if not the most important. It forms the foundation for all further learning

and without the ability to read effectively, a child will experience difficulty

learning. "Success in reading very often ensures success in other subjects, as

a sound reading ability is the gateway to the acquisition and expansion of

knowledge in all the school subjects" (Grove & Hauptfleisch. 1992).

An inability to read will impact negatively on the ability to achieve in all

other school subjects, as well as on the ability to succeed in life beyond

school.

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Objective of the Study

This study generally aims to find out the reading skills and its effect on

the academic performance of Grade V pupils in English subject in Bai

Bagongan

Paglas Elementary School. Specifically, this study seeks to:

1. determine the socio-demographic profile of the respondents in

terms of:

1.1 Age

1.2 Sex

1.3 Tribe

1.4 Religion

2. determine the academic performance of the respondents.

3. determine the level of reading skills of the respondents.

4. determine the significant effect of reading skills on the academic

performance of the respondents.

Significance of the Study

The findings of this study will be beneficial to the following:

First, it will provide information and awareness to the teachers

regarding on the level of reading skills and level of academic performance of

their pupils.

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 Second, it will help educators and stakeholders of the school from

where this study will be conducted to be aware of the different supports to

assess the reading skills of the pupils and on how this supports may affect the

academic performance of the pupils.

Lastly, this research hopes to provide information to the readers and to

serve as a reference for researchers who wish to study the same variable in

the future.

Scope and Limitation of the study

The respondents of the study will be limited only to 100 respondents

who are Grade 5 pupils in Bai Bagongan Paglas Elementary School on

December 2017.

Place and Time of the Study

The study will be conducted at Bai Bagongan Paglas Elementary

School during the first semester for the S.Y.2017-2018.

Operational Definition of Terms

For the purpose of clarification, the important terms will be used in the

study.

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Academic performance - refers to the level of performance of pupils in

School.

Reading skills - refers to the skills of pupils in reading and comprehending

statement.

Respondents – refers to the pupils in Bai Bagongan Paglas Elementary

school.

Teacher- a facilitator; the one who teaches.

Stakeholders – the sponsors or shareholders of the school where this study

will be conducted.

ACRONYMS

DepEd – Department of Education

NAT – National Achievement Test

ARMM – Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao

Hypothesis

There is significant relationship between reading skills and academic

performance of the respondent.

Theoretical Framework

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 So far, there are three main theories which explain the nature of

learning to read. First, is the traditional theory or bottom up processing which

focused on the printed form of a text. (2) the cognitive view, or top-down

processing enhanced the role of background knowledge in addition to what

appeared on the printed page. Third, the metacognitive view, which is based

on the control and manipulation that a reader can have on the act of

comprehending a text, and thus, emphasizes the involvement of the reader’s

thinking about what he is doing while reading.

The traditional bottom-up view

The traditional bottom-up approach to reading was influenced by

behaviorist psychology of the 1950s, which claimed learning was based upon

“habit formation, brought about by the repeated association of a stimulus with

a response” and language learning was characterized as a “response system

that humans acquire through automatic conditioning processes,” where “some

patterns of language are reinforced (rewarded) and others are not,” and “only

those patterns reinforced by the community of language users will persist”

(Omaggio 1993, 45-46). Behaviorism became the basis of the audio-lingual

method, which sought to form second language “habits” through drilling,

repetition, and error correction.

Today, the main method associated with the bottom-up approach to

reading is known asphonics, which requires the learner to match letters with

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sounds in a defined sequence. According to this view, reading is a linear

process by which readers decode a text word by word, linking the words into

phrases and then sentences (Gray and Rogers, cited in Kucer 1987).

According to Samuels and Kamil (1988: 25), the emphasis on behaviorism

treated reading as a word-recognition response to the stimuli of the printed

words, where “little attempt was made to explain what went on within the

recesses of the mind that allowed the human to make sense of the printed

page”. In other words, textual comprehension involves adding the meanings of

words to get the meanings of clauses (Anderson 1994). These lower level

skills are connected to the visual stimulus, or print, and are consequently

concerned with recognizing and recalling.

Like the audio-lingual teaching method, phonics emphasizes on

repetition and on drills using the sounds that make up words. Information is

received and processed beginning with the smallest sound units, and

proceeded to letter blends, words, phrases, and sentences. Thus, novice

readers acquire a set of hierarchically ordered sub-skills that sequentially build

toward comprehension ability. Having mastered these skills, readers are

viewed as experts who comprehend what they read.

The bottom-up model describes information flow as a series of stages

that transforms the input and passes it to the next stage without any feedback

or possibility of later stages of the process influencing earlier stages

(Stanovich, 1980). In other words, language is viewed as a code and the

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reader’s main task is to identify graphemes and convert them into phonemes.

Consequently, readers are regarded as passive recipients of information in the

text. Meaning resides in the text and the reader has to reproduce it.

This model of reading has almost always been under attack as being

insufficient and defective for the main reason that it relies on the formal

features of the language, mainly words and structure. Although it is possible to

accept this rejection for the fact that there is over-reliance on structure in this

view, it must be confessed that knowledge of linguistic features is also

necessary for comprehension to take place. To counteract over-reliance on

form in the traditional view of reading, the cognitive view was introduced.

The Cognitive View (top-down processing)

In the 1960s a paradigm shift occurred in the cognitive sciences.

Behaviorism became somewhat discredited as the new cognitive theory

represented the mind’s innate capacity for learning, which gave new

explanatory power to how humans acquired their first language; this also had

a tremendous impact on the field of ESL/EFL as psycholinguists explained

“how such internal representations of the foreign language develop within the

learner’s mind” (Omaggio, 1993: 57).

Ausubel (cited in Omaggio, 1993: 58), made an important distinction

between meaningful learning and rote learning. An example of rote learning is

simply memorizing lists of isolated words or rules in a new language, where

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the information becomes temporary and subject to loss. Meaningful learning,

on the other hand, occurs when new information is presented in a relevant

context and is related to what the learner already knows, so that it can be

easily integrated into one’s existing cognitive structure. A learning that is not

meaningful will not become permanent. This emphasis on meaning eventually

informed the top-down approach to L2 learning, and in the 1960s and 1970s

there was an explosion of teaching methods and activities that strongly

considered the experience and knowledge of the learner.

These new cognitive and top-down processing approaches

revolutionized the conception of the way students learn to read (Smith, 1994).

In this view, reading is not just extracting meaning from a text but a process of

connecting information in the text with the knowledge the reader brings to the

act of reading. In this sense, reading is a dialogue between the reader and the

text which involves an active cognitive process in which the reader’s

background knowledge plays a key role in the creation of meaning (Tierney

and Pearson, 1994). Reading is not a passive mechanical activity but

purposeful and rational, dependent on the prior knowledge and expectations

of the reader. It is not merely a matter of decoding print to sound but also a

matter of making sense of written language (Smith, 1994: 2). In short, reading

is a psycholinguistic guessing game, a process in which readers sample the

text, make hypotheses, confirm or reject them, make new hypotheses, and so

forth.

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Schema Theory

Another theory closely related to top-down processing called schema

theory also had a major impact on reading instruction. It describes in detail

how the background knowledge of the learner interacts with the reading task

and illustrates how a student’s knowledge and previous experience with the

world is crucial to deciphering a text. The ability to use this schemata, or

background knowledge, plays a fundamental role in one’s trial to comprehend

a text.

Schema theory is based on the notion that past experiences lead to the

creation of mental frameworks that help a reader make sense of new

experiences. Smith (1994: 14) callsschemes the “extensive representations of

more general patterns or regularities that occur in our experience”. For

instance, one’s generic scheme of an airplane will allow him to make sense of

airplane he has not previously filed with. This means that past experiences will

be related to new experiences, which may include the knowledge of “objects,

situations, and events as well as knowledge of procedures for retrieving,

organizing and interpreting information” (Kucer, 1987: 31). Anderson (1994:

469) presents research showing that recall of information in a text is affected

by the reader’s schemata and explains that “a reader comprehends a

message when he is able to bring to mind a schema that gives account of the

objects and events described in the message”. Comprehension is the process

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of “activating or constructing a schema that provides a coherent explanation of

objects and events mentioned in a discourse” (Anderson, 1994: 473). For

Anderson and Pearson (1988: 38), comprehension is the interaction between

old and new information. They emphasize: “To say that one has

comprehended a text is to say that she has found a mental ‘home’ for the

information in the text, or else that she has modified an existing mental home

in order to accommodate that new information”. Therefore, a learner’s

schemata will restructure it to accommodate new information as that

information is added to the system (Omaggio, 1993).

The metacognitive view

According to Block (1992), there is now no more debate on “whether

reading is a bottom-up, language-based process or a top-down, knowledge-

based process.” It is also no more problematic to accept the influence of

background knowledge on readers. Research has gone even further to define

the control executed by readers on their trial to understand a text. This control

is what Block has referred to as meta-cognition.

In the context of reading, meta-cognition involves thinking about what

one is doing while reading. Strategic readers do not only sample the text,

make hypotheses, confirm or reject them, and make new hypotheses while

reading. They also involve many activities along the process of reading,

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whose stages can be divided into three, i.e. before reading, while reading, and

after reading. The activities the readers involve before reading are to identify

the purpose of the reading, identify the form or type of the text. In the second

stage (while reading), they think about the general character and features of

the form or type of the text—such as trying to locate a topic sentence and

follow supporting details toward a conclusion, project the author’s purpose for

writing the text, choose, scan, or read in detail, make continuous predictions

about what will occur next based on information obtained earlier, prior

knowledge, and conclusions obtained within the previous stages. Finally, in

the last stage, they attempt to form a summary, conclude, or make inference

of what was read.

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 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Independent variable Dependent variable

Reading Academic
skills performance

Figure 1.A schematic paradigm presenting the conceptual framework of the

study which shows the relationships between the independent and

dependent variables.

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 CHAPTER II

RELATED LITERATURE

This section presents a review of related literature from the different

study that would support the reading skills and its effect on academic

performance of grade 5 pupils in English subject in Bai Bagongan Paglas

Elementary School.

What is reading?

For the purposes of this research, it is necessary to look at the reading

process itself and its various component skills. A review of the literature

indicated that because of the complexity of the reading process, there is no

single, absolute definition of reading.

The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology (Reber, 1995) defines reading as

the process by which information is extracted from written or printed text. It

goes on to say that this process is extremely complex and is dependent on

two critical aspects, namely, 1) the written format of the word and the reader's

ability to decode the phonetic relationships between the letters on the page

and the sounds of the spoken language and 2) a semantic/syntactic process

that has to do with the meaning of the words which are being pronounced.

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 Rosner (1998) also defines reading as an act of reconverting symbols

into a language with which the individual is already familiar. Grove and

Hauptfleisch (1999) also explain reading as the meaningful interpretation of

the written word. They add that the act of interpreting the written word is

achieved through visual perception whereby the word and its meaning are

recalled in the brain. Beyond that, however, the ability to attach meaning to

what has been read is influenced by the reader's experience and language

proficiency.

Dauzat and Dauzat (1998) describe reading as a process that involves

mental activity embedded in other communication abilities and converts

graphic stimuli (letters) into meaning. Kamhi and Catts (1999) term reading as

thinking guided by print and regard definitions of reading which focus on the

skill of transforming printed words into spoken words (decoding), as too

narrow.

Richek, List and Lerner (2000) argue that for beginner readers, word

recognition and reading comprehension (direct and literal) are important,

whereas for older readers underlying or indirect reading comprehension

becomes more important.

From the literature, it becomes clear that the process of reading

consists of two main components, namely, word recognition or decoding and

reading comprehension.

These will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter.

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The reading process

A variety of cognitive skills are required for reading, Fisher (1999)

states that reading "involves sequencing of eye movements, decoding,

encoding, and utilizing linguistic awareness. It demands knowledge of

orthographic regularity and irregularity. It integrates letters, words, sentences,

and passages with past experience. Surely reading is one of our most

complex daily activities". Consideration will now be given to some of these

cognitive processes.

Word Recognition

Possibly the most obvious skill involved in reading is the recognition of

the letters and the words which make up the text. Both visual and aural

stimulation play a role here, in that the reader either recognizes the word from

the visual pattern which it presents to him, or he converts the visual stimulus

into a sound stimulus. Interestingly, these two skills tie in with the two methods

used to teach reading in schools. The whole-word approach to teaching

reading maintains that readers recognize a whole word and don't identify

individual letters and their respective sounds. The phonics approach to

teaching reading argues that readers recognize words by sounding out the

individual letters which make up the word (Doctor & Coltheart, 1990).

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Decoding

According to Carpenter and Just Orasanu, (1996), decoding is the

process whereby the written letters and words are translated into language.

When a child is first taught to read, the emphasis is usually on decoding skills.

He is taught phonics and from learning the sounds of individual letters, he

progresses to putting the sounds together to form words. Early-stage reading

books usually contain a lot of repetition of these first simple words to

encourage practice and the gradual building of a reading vocabulary. At this

early stage, the child is, in effect, learning the ‘code' behind the written words.

It is generally agreed amongst researchers that reading comprehension

cannot occur without the necessary decoding skills having being mastered

(Just & Carpenter, 1997; Vauras, Kinnunen & Kuusela, 1994; Grove &

Hauptfleisch,1992). In a sense, decoding skills are the building blocks of

successful reading. They are the bottom-up skills, which form part of the

foundation for effective reading. It is at the level of decoding that reading

speed and accuracy come into play. A child with good decoding skills is,

generally speaking, able to read with speed and accuracy, although not

necessarily with good comprehension.

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Comprehension

Without comprehension, reading is reduced to a mechanistic and

meaningless skill. The reader must be able to attach meaning to what he is

reading and he will do this largely as a function of his experience, context,

knowledge and language proficiency.

Pretorius (2000) points out that decoding skill does not necessarily lead

to or imply comprehension skill. There are readers who are able to decode

text but who do not always understand what it is that they have read. It is on

the basis of comprehension then, that one can begin to distinguish between a

good

reader and a poor reader. A reader who has good decoding skills but poor

comprehension skills is essentially a poor reader because he is unable to find

meaning in the written word. He will be unable to gain insight or knowledge

from the text, he will be unable to add the new knowledge to his existing

knowledge base and he will be hindered in reaching his full intellectual

potential.

Beckett (2005) stated that if a child is deemed as unable to acquire

functional comprehension of oral language and its associated pragmatics, and

of written language and its different communicative conventions, that child will

be effectively locked out of the benefits of education.

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Factors which influence reading

When investigating reading and its role in academic achievement it is

pertinent to consider the various factors which could influence reading. The

reader does not exist within a vacuum and the process of reading consists of

more than just a reader reading a written text. Consideration will now be given

to other role players.

Language

A child uses language to express himself and he acquires knowledge

and information through language, be it written or spoken. His level of

language proficiency will, therefore, strongly influence his potential to learn

because it is a prerequisite for his ability to read. Many of the children in our

schools are being taught in a language which is their second or even third

language. If the language of instruction is not the child's mother tongue, then

he or she is less able to use the richness and depth of mother-tongue

knowledge to enhance the reading experience. Pretorius (2000) points out that

there are many pupils in the schools who have the necessary decoding skills

to read English text but whose reading comprehension skills are poorly

developed. Unfortunately, this has negative implications for learning because

a reader's vocabulary needs to have been developed to the point where s1he

will be able to understand what is being read.

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Educational factors

Even although school is usually the place where most children learn to

read, it needs to be acknowledged that the school environment itself can also

hinder a child's reading development.

Teachers who are critical, judgmental, sarcastic and rejecting can have

a strong negative influence on the motivation of the children in their classes. If

a struggling reader is criticized for slow pace or inaccuracy or in articulation,

that child will be less likely to keep trying for fear of further ridicule. Under

these circumstances it is much easier for the child to simply give up and take

on the label of 'unable to read'. The path of least resistance may well be the

one which feels safer and less traumatic. Sadly, the label often becomes a

self-fulfilling prophecy and these children then come to expect their reading

behavior to be a 'failure'.

It can also happen that the teacher provides the child with reading

material which is too difficult or too advanced or, in some cases, too easy. In

both cases the reader ends up frustrated and/or bored. French (1998) points

out that the interest of the reader in the reading material and his motivation to

complete a task, are important factors in the reading process. If the material is

interesting and age- and contextually- appropriate, it is more likely that the

reader will engage with it and be encouraged to read further.

Given the pressures in many of the classrooms in our country today, it

does happen that a reader experiencing difficulty simply does not receive the

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extra individual help, which he or she may need. With high teacher to pupil

ratios in some classrooms and with underqualified teachers in others, it is very

often physically impossible for the teacher to render the assistance which is

needed. Consequently, the struggling reader continues to struggle.

The relationship between reading skills and academic performance

In our current education system, much emphasis is placed on the skills

of reading and writing. As a result, academic success is largely dependent on

literacy skills. Children who experience difficulty with reading and/or writing are

likely to find it harder to reach their academic potential at school. It may be

assumed by teachers that the child arriving in grade 1 has the requisite

language and literacy skills needed to cope in an academic setting. For many

children, however, this may not be the case.

Research has shown that students with Iow reading ability are generally

Iow academic achievers (Daneman, 1991; Stanovich, 2000; Gardner, 1991;

NagIieri, 2001; SaviIle Troike, 1984; Wells, 1986; Kokong, 1991). Children

who read effectively have access to numerous sources of written material

which, in turn, enables them to increase their general knowledge, their

vocabulary and their language skills (Elley,1991; Krashen, 1993; Vivas, 1996).

Pretorius (2000) found that these students had distressingly low reading levels

and slow reading speeds and that the better the students were at making

21
inferences while reading, the better they performed academically. Her findings

showed evidence for differences in reading ability in relation to academic

performance.

And in the Philippines in 2003, the simple literacy rate was actually

lower at 93.4 percent for the entire population at least 10 years of age. Girls

show a higher rate of simple literacy than boys (94.3 percent versus 92.6

percent). Not surprisingly, Metro Manila reported the highest rate at 99

percent; the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) had the lowest

at 68.9 percent (and falling compared to the 1994 rate of 73.5 percent).

On December 2013, the NSO's 2010 Census of Population and

Housing (CPH) showed that of the 71.5 million individuals who are 10 years

old and above, 97.5 percent or 69.8 million were literate or could read and

write. This is higher compared to the literacy rate of 92.3 percent recorded in

the 2000 CPH.

97.5% literacy rate is quite an impressive figure but if we will take a look

at the result of the National Achievement Test (NAT). Not many pupils are

reading nowadays. They are all stuck in internet application and online games.

The level of reading skill has decreasing because of the factors that social

media affecting the capacity of interest in reading of the learner’s. 97.5% of

the 71.5 million individuals who are 10 years old and older were literate or

could read and write—an increase from the 2000 CPH record of 92.3% (NSO

2010).

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 CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

Presented in chapter III are the methods used for the fulfilment of the

study. Methods include research design, respondents of the study, sampling

procedure, research instrument, data gathering procedures and statistical

analysis.

Research Design

The study uses descriptive survey in collecting data and information

needed in the study. The collection of data will be done through survey

questionnaire.

Respondent of the study

The respondents of the study will be the Grade V pupils in English

subject at Bai Bagongan Paglas Elementary School.

Sampling Procedure

The researcher uses simple random sampling in choosing the

respondents from Grade V pupils in English subject pupils at Bai Bagongan

23
Paglas Elementary School to determine the reading skills and its effect on the

academic performance of the pupils.

Research Instrument

The questionnaire is composed of three parts. Part I is on the socio-

demographic profile of the respondents. Part II level of reading skills of the

respondents; Part III deals on the significant effect of reading skills of the

respondents.

Rating Scale Description

1.00 – 1.66 Never

1.63 – 2.32 Sometimes

2.33 – 3.00 Always

Data Gathering Procedure

The respondents were randomly selected among the Grade V pupils in

English subject at Bai Bagongan Paglas Elementary School. The

questionnaire was distributed to the chosen respondents.

Statistical Analysis

Data analysis and interpretation were done using descriptive statistics

such as frequency count, weighted mean and percentage.

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