Enhancing the Reading Skills of Grade 12 Students through Newsela Reading Mobile Application

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Reading comprehension is now the basic need of a citizen to live and to act successfully in his professional and academic contexts. It is even viewed to be the core language skill to build the development of all other language skills and sub-skills such as listening, speaking, writing, vocabulary and grammar. For centuries, limited access to text has been a barrier to literacy. Reading requires books, without them literacy remains out of reach. Today, however, this barrier is receding thanks to the spread of inexpensive mobile technology. Basic mobile phones offer a new, affordable and easy-to use portal to reading material. Thus, the main objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Newsela reading mobile application over Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) in enhancing the reading skills of Grade 12 students of Integrated School of Lawa.

METHODS

Quasi-experimental design was utilized in this study. Twenty (20) students were considered in the group exposed to DRTA who had counterparts oi the group exposed to Newsela on the basis of their pre-test scores for a total of forty (40) match-paired students. Readings and questions used for the pre and post-test were taken from Testing Reading Power IV while thirty-eight (38) articles were taken from Newsela as formative tests.

RESULTS

The mean difference of 9.45 proved that experimental group performed better in the post-test as compared to the comparison group. It was supported by the large effect size of 1.72, thus the significant difference between the post-test results of the two groups of respondents. The result also proved that the Newsela Reading Mobile Application is effective in enhancing the reading skills of the respondents.

DISCUSSIONS

Based on the results, there is a need for the Administration to consider the improvement of their facilities, internet connections and budget for some reading mobile applications because they are not for free. Such action will intensify the 21st century skills of the learners through theuse of reading mobile applications by motivating and reinforcing the teachers to make use of these applications.