Newspaper as medium for comprehension skills development in a remedial reading program

Abstract

This experimental research was an attempt to determine the effectiveness of using newspaper articles in teaching reading comprehension in a secondary Remedial Reading Program as compared to the use of conventional reading materials. This study employed the experimental pretest-posttest design on twenty-six (26) Grade 7 students in the reading remedial class. Thirteen (13) students were exposed to newspaper articles approach and the remaining thirteen (13) were exposed to conventional reading materials. The study made use of selected newspaper articles taken from different sections of various publications such as News, Editorials, Feature, Sports, Classified Ads, Obituaries, and Entertainment. They were gathered, analysed, and used as the reading selection of the students undergoing remedial reading program. Data from the results of the respondents' reading ability were gathered and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The weighted mean was used to determine the average performance of the respondents in reading comprehension test, while the standard deviation was employed to determine the dispersion of the means obtained. The t-test for dependent sample was used to determine the existence, or absence of a statistically significant difference among the reading comprehension performance of the respondents before and after their exposure to newspaper reading and set at .05 level of significance for the analysis. Results showed that using newspaper articles improved the reading comprehension skills of students in the program. It was also revealed that the use of conventional reading materials also enhanced students' reading comprehension but yielded lower mean difference compared to the use of newspaper articles. Furthermore, it was concluded that students exposed to the materials within the context of their environment learn and comprehend better. Schema plays a significant role in the processes of the mind and therefore exposing the readers to materials that could best activate their prior knowledge could improve their comprehension.