Flalok Big Books in the Listening Comprehension of Grade 1 Blaan Learners: Basis for Translation of Reading Materials and Reading Intervention

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Listening to short stories is a fun, exciting and meaningful activity among primary learners. However, listening to a short story in a second language context may prove challenging. Approaches that applied in a first language may not work with learners who are not proficient in English as a second language. In our school, we observed most learners comprehend the stories written in their mother tongue quite easily because they are used to the language system and the stories are also most likely set within a familiar cultural setting. In this study, we explored the effectiveness of Flalok Big Books in the listening comprehension of Grade One Blaan learners in New Canaan Integrated School.

METHODS

A quasi-experimental method of research was used. The subjects of this are thirty Blaan learners who have very poor, poor and fair performance in listening comprehension based on the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) result in the two sections of Grade one. There are two groups of Grade one Blaan learners who are sources of data. One group was the experimental group who are exposed to stories in the Flalok Big Books and the other group was the control group who are exposed on the non-use of the variable treatment. The needed data of this study was gathered using pre-test and post-test from the EGRA tool.

RESULTS

The result of this study implied that there is a positive effect of utilizing Flalok Big Books in the listening comprehension among grade one Blaan learners compare to those who were not using Flalok Big Books. In the pre-test, there is no significant difference in the control and experimental group while in the post-test there is. It can be inferred that there is an improvement in the learning comprehension of the Blaan learners who utilized Flalok Big Books in listening in storytelling compared to the learners who did not utilize the variable treatment.

DISCUSSIONS

The results demonstrate the need for Mother-Tongue Based reading materials in order to improve the listening comprehension of the learners. Being inspired by the Flalok Big Books, the researchers translated stories into Blaan big books and The' Reading Program (TweRP) was created. "The'" comes from the word "Twege' Lagi" and "Twege' Libon", a Blaan term which refers to older brother and sister. It is a reading intervention program that utilizes Flalok Big Books and other modified story books in Blaan context.