Reading Levels of Grade-7 Students of Infanta National High School: Inputs for Reading Program Development

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

In education, reading plays an important role in instruction at every level and in all disciplines. It is the cornerstone of a child's success in school and consequently throughout life. So, early development of the necessary reading skills among students predicts a more progressive academic achievement. On the contrary, this is not evident to all Filipino high school students including majority of the present Grade-7 students of Infanta National High School. In fact, an increasing number of registered frustration readers are noted every year. More so, a number of non-readers, (literally cannot read or without alphabetic knowledge) students have been discovered.

METHODS

This study utilized the quantitative analysis of the reading assessment's result conducted among randomly selected seventy-five (75) Grade-7 students of Infanta National High School this school year 2016-2017. Their Oral and Silent reading comprehension skills were tested to identify their reading level and to find out how their reading comprehension skills affect their reading performance.

RESULTS

The findings show that the students comprehension and reading level in both Oral and Silent reading is "Frustration". Their reading problems are due to lack of needed skills in decoding, phonemic awareness, word recognition and comprehension. Most of the students tested orally had common errors in graphemic, syntactic and semantic aspects. Furthermore, their reading rate is "Slow" and their comprehension reached the Literal level only.

DISCUSSIONS

The comprehension level assessment indicates that the students experienced more comprehension difficulties in silent reading than in oral reading. Also, their skills in comprehension directly affect their reading performance that determines their reading level.