My Buddy, My Mentor: A Strategy to Improve the Reading Comprehension Performance

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Reading is one of the finest habits that a person can have. Its ultimate goal is to be able to understand written material, to evaluate its contents and apply it for some practical reasons. One of the pressing issues in Grade IV Diamond of Tina Central Elementary School is the pupils' poor reading comprehension. It has 36 pupils 30 of which are considered in the Frustration Level in comprehension during the pre-test result in Phil-IRI of School Year 2016-2017. The data show that despite the enhancement activities conducted still the pupils are struggling in terms of comprehension. Thus, this study used My Buddy, My Mentor Reading Strategy to improve the reading level of Grade IV Diamond pupils in terms of reading comprehension in English.

METHODS

This study used non-random sampling of the Grade IV Diamond pupils this S.Y. 2016-2017. The Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI) in English as its main tool in collecting the data. In directing My Buddy, My Mentor Strategy, the English teacher, or the researcher grouped children according to their reading level based on the result of the Phil-IRI pre-test. The frustration-level pupils were the reading peers while the instructional and independent readers were the reading friends or mentors. Percentage and a paired-sample t-test was used to evaluate the impact of the intervention.

RESULTS

All the recipients are at the beginning level during the Pre-test. After having applied the intervention, 27 or 90% among the 30 recipients turn out to be in the Advance level while 3 or 10% are in the Proficient level and none of them is left in the levels with lower performance rating. It is evident that there is a statistically significant increase in comprehension from pre-test (M=71.63, SD=1.497) to post-test (M=94.20, SD=2.905). The computed p-value is 0.000, which is less than 0.05 level of significance.

DISCUSSIONS

The extent of the implementation of the reading interventions is at a very good level. Recipients' reading performance for comprehension shows that there is a consistent increase in the level of reading performance. There is a significant difference and large effect based on the p-value and eta squared statistic as shown and elaborated on the proficiency level of the recipients both in word recognition and comprehension before and after the implementation of the said intervention.