ARTICLE
A
STUDY ON THE READING COMPREHENSION
ABILITY OF THE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS
ABSTRACT
The main
objective of the study is to find the Reading comprehension ability of the High
school students. The investigator adopted experimental study. The sample
consist of students of 8th standard of Government Vocational Higher
Secondary School, Nedumkandam.
INTRODUCTION
Reading comprehension is the ability to read text process and
understanding the meanings. an individual’s ability to comprehend text is
influenced by their traits and skills, one of which is the ability to make
inferences. If word recognitions is difficult, students use too much of their
processing capacity to read individual words, which interferes with their
ability to comprehend what is reading. There are a number of approaches to
improve reading comprehension, including improving strategies.
Reading
comprehension is defined as the level of understanding of a text/message. This
understanding comes from the interaction between the words that are written and
how they trigger knowledge outside the text/ message. Comprehension is a
creative multifaceted process dependent upon four language skills. Phonology,
Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics. Proficient
reading depands on the ability to recognize words quickly and effortlessly. It
is also determined by an individual’s cognitive development, which is the
construction of thought processes. Some people learn through education or
instruction and others through direct experiences.
Reading
comprehension and vocabulary are inextricably linked. The ability to decode or
identify and pronounce words is self evidently important, but knowing what the
words mean has a major and direct effect on knowing what any specific passage
means. Students with a smaller vocabulary than other students comprehend less
of what they read and it has been suggested that the most impactful way to
improve comprehension is to improve vocabulary.
There
are factors that once discerned, make it easier for the reader to understand
the written text. One is the genre, like folktales, historical fiction,
biographies or poetry. Visualizations is a “mental image” created in a person’s
mind while reading text which brings words to life and helps improve reading
comprehension. Asking sensory questions will help students become better
visualizes. There are informal and formal assessments to monitor an
individual’s comprehension ability and use of comprehension stratergies.
Informal assessments are generally through observation and the use of tools,
like story boards, word sorts, and interactive writings and shared reading. Formal
assessments are district or state assessments that evaluate all students on
important skills and concepts.
NEED AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
Despite the fact that some middle and
high school students have not mastered it, reading comprehension is seldom
taught in the upper grades. When students comprehend or understand written
text, and combine their understanding with prior knowledge, they are able to
perform the reading comprehension skills as literal comprehension evaluative
Comprehension, inferential comprehension. So the reading comprehension is
essential for the student’s career development.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
§ To find out the reading ability of
the students.
§ To find out the problems while
occurring reading.
§ To offer possible remedies.
§ To help students to improve reading
comprehension ability.
METHOD USED FOR THE
STUDY
While correcting the answer paper of the students the
investigator found out that a lot of mistakes are there in the answer sheets. The
investigator also pointed out that the students do not know how to write or
select the proper answer from a passage too. The investigator asked them to
read a short story that is given by him and need to write or pick out the
correct answer to the questions that is given below. So the tool used for the
study consisted of 45 students from Government vocational Higher Secondary
school at Nedumkandam.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The investigator gives a short story
with ten optional questions attached with it and asked the students to read the
story and answer the questions.
All the
forty five students write the answer in the allotted sheets and the
investigator collected them. There were many students those who make mistakes
while at the time of selecting the proper answer from the passage.
FINDINGS OF THE STUDY
When the answers were analyzed, I could find the attitude of students in
using English language, their difficulties in reading writing and analyzing language
content.
Though most
of the students are interested in learning English, they are not that much interested
in speaking and reading English in the classes. Only twenty percentage of the
students prefer English as a medium of communication in the classroom. They are
less interested in listening to classes taken fully in English. Most of them
are not even aware of the importance of English in their life. By analyzing all
these I came to the conclusion that the student’s attitude towards English is
somewhat good but they are not interacted in using English to improve their
language skills.
The students
have inhibition in using English. From the questions provided it is clear that
the students are not confident enough to write the correct answer from the
passage because, they are not familiar with the language. They are not
interested in reading English books and listening to English. In the light of
all these information collected through the reading comprehension text, I
arrived at a point that the students do not know how to read and analyze a
paragraphs meaning and do not know how to find out the answer from a passage.
This result shows several problems of students as lack of confidence, lack of
reading lack of confidence, lack of reading, lack of practice, lack of
motivation etc.
The students do not
have the ability to find out that the answer from the passage because of their
lack of reading and understanding ability.
CONCLUSION
English is an international language spoken in many countries
both as a native, as a secondary language and as a foreign language feeding
comprehension is the ability to read text, process it and understand it’s
meaning. An individual’s ability to comprehend text is influenced by their
traits and skills, one of which is the ability to make inferences.
From this
Reading comprehension text I understood that many of the students do not know
to read and to analyze a paragraph. It’s because of lack of reading and up
proper way of teaching. The whole students do main problem is that the all
English teachers who teach English are not English graduates. So this test
shows the result that above 50% of students are not educated through the
present education system.
REFERENCE
·
Heims,
Frederic phonological processing in language production: time course of brain
activity, London, 2003, print
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