Chapter II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Relevant literature to the study was discussed in this chapter. The review

was presented under the following sub-headings: Related studies, Foreign

Studies and Local studies which contribute and give a short overview about

reading comprehension and academic performance.

Related Studies

Since the year 1946, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organization,(UNESCO) (n.d) has been stating that they had been at the

forefront of global literacy efforts in advancing the vision of a literate world for

everyone. They believe that literacy is the driver for sustainable development that

enables greater participation in the labor market, improvement of child and family

health nutrition, reduction of poverty, and expansion of life opportunities.

Moreover, aside from the common idea that literacy is a set of reading, writing,

and counting skills, literacy is now understood as a means of identification,

understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly

digital, text-mediated, informationrich, and fast-changing world.

Literacy

According to Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2006, at the first

look, “literacy” would seem to be a term that everybody understands. However, it

is an idea that is proven to be both complex and dynamic. It is interpreted and

defined in multiple ways. And in English history, the word “literate” means

“familiar with literature” or more generally, “well educated or learned”. It is only in

the late nineteenth century that it has also come to refer as the ability to read and

write text, while maintaining its general meaning of being “knowledgeable or

educated in a particular field or fields”. The most common knowledge about

literacy is that it is a set of cognitive skills of reading and writing. Moreover,

numeracy skills and the competencies it comprises is usually

understood either as a supplement to the set of skills encompassed by “literacy”

or as a component of literacy itself. People’s notion of what it means to be literate

or illiterate are influenced by academic research, institutional agendas, national

context, cultural values, and personal experience. The word “literate” has also

been used in a much broader sense just like “information literacy”, “visual

literacy”, “media literacy”, and “scientific literacy”.

Furthermore, Roser and Ortiz-Ospina (2018) believe that literacy is a key

skill and key measure of a population’s education. However, they also believe

that despite of the great improvements in the expansion of basic education and

continuous reduction of education inequalities, there are still many challenges to

conquer ahead.

Domains of Literacy

The Literacy Advance of Houston (n.d.) states that UNESCO defines literacy as

the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute, and

use printed and written materials about numerous contexts. It involves a

continuum of learning that enables every individual to reach their goals, and

develop their knowledge and potential for them to participate fully in their
community and society. Furthermore, UNESCO (n.d.) believes that literacy’s

“multiplier effect” empowers people and allows them to participate fully in the

development of the society. Moreover, literacy is categorized into fourteen

domains that are integrated in the K to 12 Curriculum. These domains are

needed in developing literacy in every learner. These include oral language,

phonological awareness, book and print orientation, alphabet knowledge,

phonics and word recognition, fluency, spelling, writing and composition,

grammar awareness and structure, vocabulary development, reading

comprehension, listening comprehension, attitude towards language, literature

and literacy, and study skills.

Oral language

One’s knowledge and use of structure, meaning and uses of the language

is called oral language. Its development is where literacy development depends

on and one cannot be successful in learning to read (and write) in a language

that he does not understand (Pado, 2014).

Moreover, according to the Center for Early Literacy Learning (n.d.), oral

language is the ability to use expressive language to communicate with others. It

is also the foundation of reading and writing skills that the children will develop as

they enter and progress in school. They will use this in all aspects of their

education and having a strong foundation in oral language will help them become

successful readers and strong communicators as well as build their confidence

and overall sense of well-being (Reeder & Baxa, 2017). Simmons, Kameenui,

and Himmele (in Reeder & Baxa, 2017) state that research shows that repeated

exposure to rich language can help children 15become successful

communicators, readers, and writers. Educating their parents about the

importance of oral language and encouraging them to communicate and read

with their children as early as possible can also help prepare their children for

school. Additionally, giving pupils high quality early-childhood education rich in

oral language and literacy development can also help them become proficient

readers by third grade (Reeder & Baxa, 2017).

According to Mercer and Mercer (2001), between 10 per cent and 15 per

cent of school-going learners have reading difficulties. Teachers should be in a

position to identify a learner’s problem including those related to reading from a

holistic point of view in order to help such a learner manage academically in

school (Dreikrurs, Gronwall & Peper, 1998)

Lerner (2006) also notes that teachers should identify children with

reading problems early and provide them with appropriate early interventions

rather than practicing the policy of wait - and - fail method. A number of learners,

for unexplained reasons, are unable to use reading as a tool for learning, getting

new information, ideas, attitudes, and values from standard for upwards. Even

after they have been taught, it is quite unfortunate that a large number (17.5 per

cent) of them are unable to read efficiently at higher class levels (Lerner, 2006).

Lerner (2006) notes that, more than 17.5 per cent of learners have reading

difficulties.
 Good reading skills will improve performance in all school subjects.

Reading helps in information gathering and learning of concepts. Through

reading, the learner is exposed to new vocabulary, new sentence structures and

different registers. Reading also acquaints the learner with good models of

language use. A good foundation of reading should be laid in form. This is

because reading is a very important component of language learning. It will also

help in the study of all other subjects.

Phonological awareness.

According to the Center for Early Literacy Learning (n.d.), the

ability to distinguish between and manipulate sounds in spoken language; hear

similarities, difference, and patterns in sounds is called phonological awareness.

It involves word with rhymes, syllables, onsets and rimes. In developing

phonological and phonemic awareness, a child should have a practice of

detecting rhyming words, number of syllables in words, giving the beginning

sound of words (onset), and the ending syllable of words (rime). Furthermore, it

is an awareness of sounds in spoken words (Pado, 2014). It is an important

precursor to success in reading, especially in reading English words. The reader

must be able to listen to the onset and rime of a word, for example, the onset of

cat is c; the onset of clap is cl. On the other hand, the rime of cat is -at; the rime

of clap is -ap. A reader who thinks it’s difficult to recognize a word may be given

oral drills on sounding out the beginning (onset) or ending (rime) sound of a word

(Department of Education-Bureau of Learning Resources, 2018).

 According to Lerner (2006) the National Reading Panel of 2000

recognized several strategies that had a solid scientific basis of instruction for

improving reading comprehension including: Comprehension monitoring:

Students learn how to be aware of their understanding of the material.

Cooperative thinking: Students learn reading strategies together. Use of graphic

and semantic organizers, including story maps: Students make graphic

representations of the materials to assist their comprehension. Question

answering: Students answer questions posed by the teacher and receive

immediate feedback. Question generation: Students ask themselves questions

about various aspects of the story. Story structure: Students are taught how to

use the structure of the story as a means of helping them recall story content in

order to answer questions about what they have read. Summarization: Students

are taught to integrate ideas and to generate ideas and to generalize from the

text information.

Academic Performance

Hanson (2000) reported that Student performance is affected by

different factors such as learning abilities, gender and race. Simmons, et al.

(2005) concluded that family income level, attending full time, receiving grant aid

and completing advanced level classes in high school having statistically

significant effects on college persistence among first generation college students.

Garton, et al. (2000) carried out a study with college students to evaluate

the efficiency of student learning style and other university admission

variable in predicting student academic performance and retention. Act

composite score, high school class rank, high school core GPA, and

learning style were used as predictors. Results showed that core GPA and

Act score were best predictors for predicting academic performance of the

student. Mckenzie and Schweitzer (2001) conducted a prospective study to

explore the psychosocial, cognitive, and demographic predictors of

academic performance of first year university students. Results

demonstrate that previous academic performance was identified most

significant predictors of university performance. Integration into school, self

efficacy, and employment responsibilities were also predictors of the

performance.

Hijazi and Naqvi (2006) conducted a study to find out the factors which

affecting students’ performance. In this study researcher mainly focus to explore

the factors that associated with performance of students in intermediate

examination. The study conclude that attitude towards attendance in classes,

time allocation for studies, parents level of income, mother’s age and

mother’s education were main factors that affect performance of students.

There are numerous factors which affect the academic performance and

retention of students in higher education institutions. We discuss those

important factors which we used in this study.

Williams 2010 in learner (2006) However suggests that students with

learning disabilities require a different type of comprehension instruction than

typical learners and that just as students with learning disabilities need explicit

structure instruction to learn word-recognition skills, they need explicit, highly

structured instruction to learn reading comprehension skills. Williams (1998)

emphasizes a “Themes Instruction Program”, which consists of a series of twelve

40 minutes lessons and each lesson is organized around a single story and is

composed of five parts namely: pre-reading discussion on the purpose of the

lesson and the topic of the story that will be read, reading the story, discussion of

important story information using organized (schema) questions as a guide,

identification of a theme for the story, stating it in general terms so that it is

relevant to a variety of stories and situations and finally practice in applying the

generalized theme to real-life experiences.

LEXICAL QUALITY

According to the lexical quality hypothesis, reading comprehension skill

strongly depends on the quality of lexical representations of words (Perfetti,2007;

Perfetti & Hart, 2001). In essence, the theory posits that for reading

comprehension to function smoothly and successfully, the mental

representations of words must be based on accurate lexical representations

which can be retrieved rapidly, that is, without much cognitive effort. The three

lexical representations, consisting of orthographical, phonological, and meaning

components, are assumed to be of high quality when all three components are

fully specified and tightly bound together so that the retrieval of one type of

information (e.g., a word’s spelling) also leads to the activation of the other types

of information associated with the same word (e.g., its correct pronunciation and
meaning). This latter assumption has attracted considerable research and has

received support in studies with adult readers (e.g., experiments investigating

form-meaning confusions, Perfetti, 2007). Evidence has shown, however, the

components are typically not (yet) closely associated with one another in

developing readers, forming loosely related dimensions of lexical skills rather

than tightly bound constituents of the representations of words (Perfetti & Hart,

2002). This lack of association raises the important question of how these lexical

skills act in concert to achieve good reading comprehension in developing

readers. In the present study, we attempted to answer this question by

investigating the relative contribution of the three main components of lexical

quality (i.e., phonological, orthographical, and meaning representations) and the

extent that they account for grade-level differences in the reading comprehension

skill of primary school children.

The lexical quality hypothesis posits that high-quality lexical

representations of words are a necessary precondition of skilled reading

comprehension (Perfetti, 2007; Perfetti & Hart, 2001). Lexical quality is based on

the availability of accurate lexical representations, which can be accessed

efficiently during comprehension (verbal efficiency, Perfetti, 1985). Readers with

poor lexical representations risk retrieving imprecise or incomplete lexical

information during comprehension, resulting in the need to allocate more working

memory capacity to word-level processes that is no longer available for higher-

level comprehension processes such as knowledge-based inferences (Perfetti,

1985). Both problems can affect reading comprehension on the text level.
 The link between lexical quality and reading comprehension skill is

particularly important in developing readers. Reading instruction in primary

school places a strong emphasis on word-level reading skills (e.g., phonics

instruction, vocabulary instruction, and fluency training, National Reading Panel,

2000) and not so much on higher-level reading skills such as reading strategies.

This emphasis is consistent with the hypothesis that most (if not all) of the

differences in reading comprehension skill between grades 1 to 4 can be

accounted for by individual differences in lexical quality.

A number of studies have already shown that word-level verbal abilities

and vocabulary knowledge in young readers are closely related to reading

comprehension skill on the text level (e.g., Juel, Griffith, & Gough, 1986). The

simple view of reading posits that reading comprehension skills are a product of

word-level skills and listening comprehension, proposing not only that the

knowledge and skills involved in visual word recognition are important for reading

comprehension but also that they are the only skills which are specific to reading

(Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Kendeou, Savage, & van den Broek, 2009).

Foreign Studies

According to studies conducted in Kenya by Chege (2010), Kirigia (2008)

and Njoroge (2000), learners with reading problem in English have problems in

school performance in general.According to Kenya Institute of curriculum

development, secondary education syllabus volume one (2002), the ability to

read fluently is vital both in school and for life.

 The Expert Panel in Ontario, (2003) on their study “ Early Reading

Strategy Help for Children With Reading Difficulties”, opens with a firm conviction

; “ That a child’s success in school and throughout life depends in large part on

the ability to read.” Educators have the profound challenge of making reading a

reality for all children. Many young children experience some kind of difficulty

learning to read. For many children, reading difficulties can be identified in

Kindergarten or Grade 1 and can be prevented or to meet very clear: children

who continue to experience difficulties in Grade 2 seldom catch up in later

grades.

The consequences are well documented. These children are at risk of

failing school and dropping out, and they may have limited career opportunities in

adulthood. Therefore, it is important to have the conditions and resources –

including time, manageable, class size, materials, and learning opportunities that

enable teachers to meet the challenges of ensuring that all children learn to read.

The foundations of good reading are the same for all children. All readers,

regardless of their age, gender, or aptitude, need to develop fluency,

comprehension, and the motivation to read in order to become successful

readers. Children who experience reading difficulties are no exception. They too

must develop the basic foundations for reading, and they require the same types

of learning experiences to do so. In Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan,

USA: John E. Mceneaney, Mark K. Lose, Robert M. Schwartz in their study “ A

Transactional Perspective On Reading Difficulties And Response to

Intervention”, disclosed that learners with serious reading difficulties are those

whose difficulties are not resolved by the interventions.

From the findings of the research conducted by Bacal, oral reading

difficulties of pupils can be corrected by providing different activities suited to the

pupils’ level, employing different techniques for remediation and intensive

supervision of teachers, parents and school administrators. The teacher’s

creativity, resourcefulness and diligence count most in the success of the

program and project. The pupil’s interest in reading can be developed and

enhanced by engaging in different reading materials. Utilization of varied and

appropriate instructional materials can facilitate pupil’s understanding of what he

is reading. Finding the right materials is particularly important for a student who

experiences reading difficulties (Bacal, 2005).

Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education

(CBASSE), USA, on “Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children “(2002).

Americans want their children to start school ready to learn, a goal that includes

preparedness for reading instruction. Children who are particularly likely to have

difficulty learning to read in the primary grades are those who begin school with

less prior knowledge and skill in certain domains, most notably letter knowledge,

phonological sensitivity, familiarity with the basic purposes and mechanisms of

reading and language ability. The process of learning to read is a lengthy one

that begins very early in life. Given the importance identified in the research

literature of starting school motivated to read and with the prerequisite language

and early literacy skills, the committee recommends that all children, especially
those at risk for reading difficulties, should have access to early childhood

environments that promote language and literacy growth and that address a

variety of skills that have been identified as predictors of later reading

achievement`

The children learn grapheme-phoneme correspondences, blending, and

phonemic analysis. However, some children experience difficulties in beginning

reading that the existing educational procedures are not adequate to resolve.

One possible solution being implemented is the Prevention of Reading Difficulties

Project, which precludes reading difficulties by predicting the at-risk children,

assessing their expected difficulties and teaching reading in such a way that

reading difficulties do not occur.

Local Studies

People read every day, therefore, reading is indispensable. However,

despite of being indispensable there are still problems that everyone should

know just like the new data from UNESCO Institute for Statistics that show 617

million children and adolescents around the world who are unable to achieve

minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics. The data signal

“learning crisis” that could threaten the progress towards the sustainable

development goals or SDGs (UNESCO, 2017). Moreover, these are some

recommendations offered by the Philippine Education for All (EFA) Review

Report 2015 that include instilling programs to enhance the reading habits of

primary school children; revitalizing and/or strengthening ECARP (Every Child a

Reader Program); and providing necessary extra support for children lagging in

reading and numeracy skills. These only shows that reading should not be taken

lightly.

In the Philippine educational system, reading is one of the top priorities

especially in elementary education. It is a basic communication skill (Heilman,

Blair & Rupley, 1990). And today, everyone is expected to possess basic skills in

reading, writing, and arithmetic. Being able to read is being literate, which

enables humans to understand and participate in the transformation of the

society. Therefore, reading is a primary way of learning in our society (Heilman,

Blair & Rupley, 1990).

Simple literacy is the ability of a person to read and write with

understanding a simple message in any language or dialect. Functional literacy,

meanwhile, is a significantly higher level of literacy that includes not only reading

and writing skills, but also numeracy which leads to a higher order of thinking that

allows persons to participate more meaningfully in life situations requiring a

reasonable capacity to communicate in a written language.

The simplest, most direct measure of functional literacy is the ability to

follow a written set of instructions for even basic tasks. Thus, functional literacy is

the more important indicator of competence when it comes to adults in the

workforce. For decades, the Philippines has reported a simple literacy rate in the

mid-to-high 90s. In 2003, the simple literacy rate was actually lower at 93.4

percent for the entire population at least 10 years of age. Girls show a higher rate
of simple literacy than boys (94.3 percent versus 92.6 percent). Not surprisingly,

Metro Manila reported the highest rate at 99 percent; the Autonomous Region in

Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) had the lowest at 68.9 percent (and falling compared

to the 1994 rate of 73.5 percent). Over the last 10-year period (measuring simple

literacy is part of the national census taken once a decade); there has been a

disturbing occurrence. Nine of 15 regions (under the old regional configuration)

showed a slight decline in simple literacy from 1994 to 2003. These included two

of the three Visayan regions (VII and VIII) and all of the Mindanao regions.

Overall, simple literacy for the entire country fell by 0.5 percent from 1994 to

2003. Deped: National reading skills assessment to continue this year MANILA,

Philippines – The Department of Education (DepEd) will again administer a

reading skills assessment test to public elementary school students to determine

their reading proficiency or lack of it.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro said that the administration of the

Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI) to Grades 2 to 6 pupils will

continue this school year. Luistro said that it was important to assess the reading

capability of students because reading is the foundation of all academic learning.

“If a pupil fails to master basic reading skills at the outset, it will be a constant

struggle for them to get through other disciplines successfully, thus depriving

them of the chance to become literate and productive individuals,” he added.

For Grade 1 pupils however, Phil IRI will not be used until such time that a

national reading assessment in mother tongue have been implemented. Hence,

all schools are encouraged to strengthen the locally-developed, school-based

assessment in support of the Mother-Tongue-Based Multi-Lingual Education

Based on DepEd Memo No. 143, series of 2012, teachers are still required to

accomplish the pupil’s individual reading profile and consolidate reports for the

schools profile. The information culled from the assessment shall serve as one of

the bases in making decisions for planning an appropriate school-based teaching

and learning instruction as well as a reading program to improve the performance

of the pupils. The assessment results shall also be considered in the preparation

of the school improvement plan. Literacy improvement is a high priority of the

DepEd and the national government.