Levels of Phonological Awareness and Comprehension of the Grade I Pupils in Malapatan Central Elementary School

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Within many elementary schools today, there are countless children with learning disabilities who struggle to acquire basic reading and spelling skills. The ability to read and understand what is written is critical to the success of the educational system. Reading problems stem from several sources. The students may not be able to read the words themselves. This concern has sometimes led to the neglect of the counterpart of "word decoding" and "sentence comprehension" . The students may lack the reading strategies necessary to overcome such challenges. Throughout elementary school, literacy instruction is at the core of every pupil's daily instruction. Numerous problems can occur for the reader at the comprehension level. If students are unable to successfully read and comprehend what they read, they will not only struggle in the language arts content area but also in some content areas. Reading is an integral part of everyday life. It is a lifelong skill that children must acquire to become successful working adults.

METHODS

This study utilized the descriptive method about the levels of phonological awareness and comprehension among Grade I Pupils taking into account rhymes, sound isolation, phonemic blending, phoneme segmentation, phoneme manipulation. The study used descriptive-correlational method considering that this study determined the relationship between phonological awareness and comprehension levels of the Grade I pupils in Malapatan Central Elementary School. The ninety (90) Grade I pupils of the Malapatan Central Elementary School in Malapatan District I, Sarangani Province were the respondents of the study. These ninety pupil respondents were taken from the nice (9) sections of Grade I of the said school.

RESULTS

The level of phonological awareness of the Grade I pupils is High on rhymes, sound isolation, and phoneme manipulation, and only Moderately High in phoneme blending and phoneme segmentation. The comprehension level of the Grade I pupils is generally High.

DISCUSSIONS

Results imply that reading comprehension of Grade I pupils is significantly influenced by their phonological awareness particularly on rhymes, sound isolation, phoneme blending, and phoneme manipulation. This also means that Grade I pupils tend to comprehend better in reading when their phonological awareness is high in rhymes, sound isolation, phoneme blending and phoneme manipulation. Various actions are also needed to help the Grade 1 pupils better improve their level of phonological awareness and comprehension.