Concept Paper in Masters Degree

1. Students’ Word Recognition
and Reading Comprehension
Level and their Academic
Performance
ALONA DE LA PEÑA-BETITA
MAED ENGLISH
Section: 4220

2. In the mainstream of teaching, the Filipino
children are the priority of all educational endeavors
and the center of the educational process. Teachers
teach them because they recognize their needs.
Teachers respect his individuality and value his
future.
To realize this end in teaching, one of the most
crucial skills that have to be developed in the
individual’s initial stage of formal education is
reading. The nature of present-day life is such that a
person can hardly exist without being able to read.
Everybody knows that reading is the primary avenue
to knowledge. It is the most important task of
learning. Purely teaching without injecting strategies
would somewhat create a monotony.
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3. students become purposeful, active readers who
are in control of their own reading
comprehension.
Taxter (1974) said that reading underlies all
teaching in school and has the most pervasive
influence on pupil’s success and adjustment in
living. Reading offers an effective access to
information, ideals, aspirations, and happenings
both past and present.
Schools systems are often challenged to
meet the needs of students who are not
performing at grade level expectations and
provide support services to help those students
to close the achievement gap (Cimiyotti, 2013).

4. The Department of Education from the
national level down to the school level
launched different programs to solve the
problem in reading. One of such is the
Program PHIL IRI (Philippine Informal
Reading Inventory) anchored by of the
Division of Zamboanga Sibugay. PHIL IRI is
a program aimed to identify the level of
reading difficulty among the students.
Currently, it has been implementing and all
hoped that the objectives will be achieved
after its implementation and will solve the
problems in reading.

5. The aforementioned situations above
triggered the researchers to conduct an
action research on the reading difficulties of
grade seven pupils in Bulawan National
High School like the cooperative learning
strategies which promote students learning
and academic achievement, increase pupils’
retention, enhance students satisfaction
with their learning experience, help students
develop skills in oral communication,
develop students’ social skills, promote
students’ self-esteem and help them to
promote positive race relations.

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According to schema theory,
comprehending a text is an interactive
process between the reader’s
background knowledge and the text.
Efficient comprehension requires the
ability to relate the textual material to
one's own knowledge. As Anderson
(1977, p.369) point out, "every act of
comprehension involves one’s
knowledge of the world as well."

7. This study was conducted to
determine the current reading level
of all Grade 7 students of Bulawan
National High School. Moreover this
study will assess its relationship to
the students’ performance.
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Specifically, this study
sought to answer the following
questions:

8. 1. What is the word recognition level of the students?
2. What is the reading comprehension level of the
students?
3. What is the academic performance of the students?
4. Is there a significant relationship between word
recognition level and academic performance of the
students?
5. Is there a significant relationship between reading
comprehension level and academic performance of the
students?
6. Based on the findings, what action plan can be
developed to enhance the students’ performance?

9. The researchers, employed the mixed
method (descriptive correlational research
method) which refers to a type of study in which
information was collected without making any
changes to the study subject (ORI) as it aimed
to seek the relationship between the word
recognition and reading comprehension level
and academic performance of Grade 7 students
of Bulawan National High School. It was a
research design that aims to discover the word
recognition and reading comprehension level
and academic performance of the students to
determine if the three variable correlate with
each other.
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10. This study was conducted at Bulawan
National High School , Bulawan, Payao,
Zamboanga Sibugay.
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11. All Grade 7 students were the
respondents of this study with a
total of one hundred fifty one (151)
respondents.
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12. The research instrument on cooperative learning
strategy is sourced from Kagan (1977).
The research instrument that is used to measure
the word recognition and reading comprehension is
adapted from the materials given as handouts by the
Department of Education.
The reading instrument is called Reading
Recovery Running Record, which recorded the miscues
that was committed by the learner when reading a
text. Scoring of the instrument will be done using the
frequency of committed miscues for word recognition
level. The computation involved getting total number
of words in the selection minus the total number of
miscues committed. The difference will be divided by
the number of words in the selection. The formula is
as follows:
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13. Word Recognition Level = Total Number of Words –
Miscues
Total Number of Words
Computation for the comprehension level of
reader involves multiplying the new score in the
comprehension test by 40; the result will be
divided by the number of items in the test, plus
60. The following formula will be used.
Comprehension Level = Raw Score x 40 x
100
Number of Test Items

14. Also, the first and second
grading grades of all the Grade
students were collected. Average
grade was computed out of the
grades of the two grading. After
the results had been completed,
the data were interpreted and
analyzed.

15. statistical treatment: frequency count, percentage and chi-
square test.
The frequency count determined the number of
respondents that belongs to the word recognition and
reading comprehension level which are “Frustrated”,
“Instructional” and “Independent”. The percentage
determined the percent of respondents that belongs to the
word recognition and reading comprehension level which
are “Frustrated”, “Instructional” and “Independent”. The
academic performance scale are “very low”, “low”,
“average”, “high”, and “very high”.
The chi square test determined if there is a significant
relationship between word recognition and reading
comprehension level and academic performance of the
students.
All the inferential statistics was set at 0.05 level of
significance.
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16. The researcher ensured that the
conduct of this study must not be the
cause of any mischief or disruption to
the research participants upon
participating. The researcher observed
the ethical management practices below
and conduct research that attains the
scientific standards in education to
ensure that the study was carried out as
thoroughly and ethically as possible.
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17. The following considerations were given
importance before the conduct of the study:
Consent/Permission
Informed consent
Voluntary participation
Confidentiality