Context Clues as Strategy in Improving Reading Skills of Select Grade 7 Students in DGANHS

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Reading is getting meaning from a printed page. It requires a thorough understanding of the reading material, but there are instances wherein reading comprehension is compromised by the student's limited range of vocabulary knowledge. That's the reason why one of the goals of the teacher is to insert the hidden curricula which means that the teacher will try to supplement or to integrate a strategy that would help the students have a higher vocabulary proficiency level without the use of dictionary. This strategy is achieved with the use of context clues; this strategy would allow them to discover meaning on their own.

METHODS

The researcher made use of the descriptive method of research. The respondents of the study were selected Grade 7 students that were chosen through the purposive sampling method. The researcher created an examination to assess the contextual ability of the students and the examinations was guided in Blooms taxonomy. The self-made examinations also followed as well as item analysis. The researcher also pilot tested its validity. Afterwards, it was validated by the researcher's co-teachers. The data gathering instrument used in this study was a questionnaire. The questionnaire had three parts. The first part was the demographic profile of the student-respondents which included the age, and grade in contextual ability. Part two was composed of the test item questions that tested the contextual ability of the respondents and the last part was composed of checklists which used the Likert Scale.

RESULTS

Results showed that majority of the respondents were aged twelve (12) years old. It was also revealed that the respondents belonged to the grade bracket of 90-94. Results showed that context clues were effective in discovering the meaning of unknown words. The clues that are easily identified by the respondents, were example clue, definition clue,and restatement clue. The common problems encountered by the students in using the strategy were the following: (1) they found it hard to understand the meaning of the word when the context is not suggestive and supportive; (2) they can't understand the word that they just encountered once, and (3) students get confused analyzing comparison clue in the sentence.

DISCUSSIONS

Moreover, vocabulary enrichment activities will serve as the output of the study that any teachers could utilize in improving the reading skills of the students.