Effectiveness of Rebus Story in Improving Reading Comprehension in English of Grade Seven Students

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

The number of struggling readers is increasing each year. The number of Filipinos aged 10-64 years old, who do not understand what they read, has grown to 20.1 million. This is based on the latest figures from the 2008 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS). In relation to this, high school students are struggling readers and it is said that reading comprehension is related to vocabulary development. Mastery of vocabulary is not an easy thing for students, especially for young learners because they have limited ability in learning and memorizing the vocabulary. It is not an easy task for teacher to teach vocabulary because of the limitation of students' ability. So, the teacher needs to apply appropriate technique in his classroom.

METHODS

A quasi-experimental design was utilized in this study to compare the formative tests and post test results of the two groups of respondents -comparison and experimental group. Fifty (50) student-respondents were considered in the first group who has counterparts on the second one on the basis of their Phil-IRI level of comprehension scores for a total of one hundred (100) student-respondents. The researcher used the Philippine Informal Reading Inventory to determine the comprehension level of every student-respondent. On the other hand, an adapted validation tool was used to determine the degree of adequacy of the developed rebus reading material and a total of five (5) language and reading experts were requested to validate the reading materials.

RESULTS

It was found out that the developed reading material was generally Good to use in enhancing the reading comprehension of Grade 7 students with the overall mean of 2.84. The graphics used, phrase selected, accuracy of depiction, level of complexity, and degree of challenge were considered. There was a significant difference between the performances of the experimental group and the comparison group as revealed by the computed p-value of 0.00001 which was less than the level of significance of 0.01. Thus, the developed rebus reading material was effective to improve students' reading comprehension.

DISCUSSIONS

Based on the findings and conclusions of the study, it is recommended that the teachers and school administrators may consider utilizing the developed rebus reading materials in teaching literary pieces to Grade 7 students to reinforce the improvement of reading comprehension and the retention skills of the students in English literatures. Also, they may develop a parallel rebus reading materials in other literary texts in all grade levels to uplift the students' performance in Language subjects. In addition, follow up studies and researches about the use of rebus reading materials in improving the students' reading comprehension are encouraged.