Thirty-Minute to Win It: A Literacy Scheme in Improving the Reading Comprehension of Short Stories by Grade 7 Learners at Santiago National High School

Abstract

Introduction

After conducting the individual reading report, the researcher found out that many students come to Santiago National High School with underdeveloped reading, comprehension and vocabulary skills, and low motivation to read, thus, it is widely accepted that it could affect the academic performance of students. The researcher believes that administering additional time for reading comprehension instruction using short stories could be a way to cope up with those mentioned reading problem skills thus, the researchers would like to propose a literacy scheme called Thirty-Minute to Win It.

Methods

The respondents of the study were the 165 Grade, 7 students, at Santiago National High School during the school year 2016-2017. The descriptive research design was used with the self-constructed questionnaire and individual reading inventory and comprehension test report as its tool to seek the answer to the: a. reading comprehension level of short stories, and b. the problems encountered by the Grade7 learners in understanding English short stories. The frequency and percentage were applied as a tool for assessment.

Results

According to the individual reading inventory and comprehension test report, 68 out of 165 students with the percentage of 41 passed the comprehension level, which means that 59% of the total population of grade 7 learners enrolled at Santiago National High School for the school year 2016-2017 has comprehension problems. Instead of this, the researcher’s proposed literacy scheme to improve the reading comprehension of short stories in English by Grade 7 students was initialized with the given schedule of activities: oral reading, answering of the comprehension questions, and recording of results/ feedbacks.

Discussions

The Grade 7 learners of Santiago National High School needed further reading comprehension exercises, therefore, the proposed-thirty-minutes reading literacy scheme is a helpful tool in improving the reading comprehension skills of grade 7 learners since the main problem encountered was grasping the main idea of the text.It is recommended that the adviser of Grade 7 learners would use a checklist to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the literacy scheme.