Chapter 1

THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTING

Introduction

In today's century where knowledge, skills and values are developed

simultaneously based on the international standards (DepEd, 2017), teachers are

required to develop their skills and practices in attaining national goals.

The onset of globalization forced us to be more competitive in global market,

thus, language plays a crucial role in communicating to other people across the globe.

English is widely spoken language in the world. It is also known as the "language of

communication" since it is used to communicate to different nationalities in the world

(English Domain, 2018).

To fully equipped students with the knowledge, skills and attributes in the field of

communication, the K to12 English curriculum used its spiral approach to develop

communicative skills of learners where pupils should undergo sequential patterns in

developing Grammatical/Linguistic Competence, Sociolinguistic Competence, Discourse

and Competence Strategic Competence

Competence in communication can be developed by acquiring the basic tools,

reading and writing. It is therefore a one tough job among teachers to teach reading

skills among students with diverse culture and background. The culture of “techie” and

with the emergence of worldwide trend of multimedia and the rapid development of the

entertainment industry, reading has been neglected (Lera A. Kamalova & Natal’ya D.

Koletvinova, 2015).
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The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), one of the major

international surveys which measures the knowledge and skills of a 15-year-old in

reading, shows that an average of 19.6% (i.e., one in five 15-year-olds) across the 27

EU countries scored low in reading and find difficulty in reading as a tool for learning

(Mary Shea & Maria Ceprano, 2017).

In the same study conducted in 2017 by Synergeia Foundation among Filipino

pupils from grade 1-6, reveals that 53 percent were frustrated readers and twenty three

percent independent readers. Twenty three percent could not comprehend and 7 percent

could not read at all (Guevara, 2017).

This alarming issues are counteract by the Department of Education (DepEd)

through imposing “Every Child a Reader Prgram” which aims to make every Filipino

child a reader and a writer at his/her grade level (DepEd Order No.14 S.2018)

Despite of the implementation of comprehensive intervention programs, reading

problems among students persist. The Philippine Institute of Development Studies

(PIDS) takes action by urging the Department of Education (DepEd) to forbid promoting

non-readers to the succeeding grade level (DepEd Memorandum No. 067, 2014 of

DepEd NCR)

Thus, this paper tends to determine the practices of English Teachers employed

to improve the English communication skills of their Grade III pupils. By determining the

practices, the best can be adopted by other schools. Likewise, it can be an initiating

point of another research study for the development of reading intervention programs or

teachers’ enhancement program.

Theoretical Framework

According to Chomsky’s Psycholinguistics Theory, “language is innate and part of

our genetic endowment.” He also tried to explain how speakers can create all possible

English sentences by using the universal phrase – structure, rules and transformations.

In both written and spoken words, proper grammatical structure is necessary. It could be

the foundation of improving communicating skills. From the information acquired

regarding the sentence structure, grammar and phrases, individuals can be a better

communicator and can achieved absolute yet effective communication skills.

Another theory is the Sociolinguistic Theory by Edward Lee Thorndike. According

to this theory “language development begins with the opportunity to communicate and

language is used for self-talk and talking with others.” Through interactions people can

be developed their skills and talking of opportunity to communicate perhaps all of us

have the opportunity to use words in expressing ourselves. For effective use of

language, efforts should be given emphasis.

In the traditional view of reading, novice readers acquire a set of hierarchically

ordered sub-skills that sequentially build toward comprehension ability. Having mastered

these skills, readers are viewed as experts who comprehend what they read. Readers

are passive recipients of information in the text. Meaning resides in the text and the

reader has to reproduce meaning. Reading in this view is basically a matter of decoding

a series of written symbols into their aural equivalents in the quest for making sense of

the text. He referred to this process as the ‘bottom-up’ view of reading. McCarthy has

called this view ‘outside-in’ processing; referring to the idea that meaning exists in the

printed page and is interpreted by the reader then taken in. this model of reading has

almost always been under attack as being insufficient and defective for the main reason

that it relies on the formal features of the language, mainly words and structure. The

‘top-down’ model is in direct opposition to the ‘bottom-up’ model. According to Nunan

and Dubin and Bycina the psycholinguistic model of reading and the top-down model are

in exact concordance. Goodman presented reading as a psycholinguistic guessing

game, a process in which readers sample the text, make hypotheses, confirm or reject

them, make new hypotheses, and so forth. Here, the reader rather than the text is at the

heart of the reading process. The schema theory of reading also fits within the

cognitively based view of reading. Rumelhart has described schemata as ”building

blocks of cognition” which are used in the process of interpreting sensory data, in

retrieving information from memory, in organizing goals and sub goals, in allocating

resources, and in guiding the flow of the processing system. Rumelhart has also stated

that if our schemata are incomplete and do not provide an understanding of the incoming

data from the text we will have problems processing and understanding the text.

Conceptual Framework

The concept of this study will be anchored to assess the practices of the

respondents to improve their pupils English Communication Skills.

The researcher wishes to offer an aid for the teachers to use for their

Enhancement program to improve the English Communication Skills of their pupils.

The first box indicates the input variables which is the respondents practices to

improve the English Communication Skills of their pupils and the materials they use. The

process which is the analysis of the survey that researcher will conduct, data gathering

with the aid of a questionnaire, data analysis using frequency percentage and mean.

Lastly, the output variables which are the following: to improved communication skills of

the pupils, enhanced the effective and productive future skilled of the respondents,

improved quality of language according to the level of the usage of the teachers,
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emphasize the value of the educational process improved English Communication Skills

of the pupils through an enhancement program.

Observation
of Classes

verification
Interview of
of gathered
teachers
data

Figure I Research Paradigm

Statement of the Problem

This study described the practices employed by English Teachers in improving

the reading skills of Grade III pupils at Bienvenido R. Fojas Memorial Elementary

School.

The questions to be answered were as follows:

1. What are the observed strategies used by the teachers?

2. What instructional materials do they use?

3. Why do they use the identified strategies?

4. How do the strategies affect the reading skills of the learners?

Significance of the Study

This study will be significant to the following sectors:

To the Respondents. The findings of the study will be a guideline in improving the

reading skills of the learners.

To the Public Elementary Schools in the Municipality of Tanza. This might serve

as reference for them to distinguish the efforts exerted by their English Teachers to

improve reading skills of the pupils. And it can also help them to improve their strategies

in teaching, especially in reading.

To the future researcher. Primarily, this will serve as a reference and a source of

information for other researchers that will conduct the same study or sort of.
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Scope and Limitation of the Study

This study analyzed the practices of English Teachers in improving the reading

skills of their pupils.

The investigation that the researchers conducted covers the English Teachers at

Bienvenido R. Fojas Memorial Elementary School. This period covers S.Y. 2019-2020.

Refererences:

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