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Chapter 2

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

The literature reviewed in this section focused on the central theme of reading

ability to provide understanding of the complexities and influences involved in the

development of reading skills.

Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is the process of simultaneously extracting and

constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. It

consists of three elements: the reader, the text, and the activity or purpose for reading

(Snow, 2002).

According to Grade & Jiang (2009), “reading is a strategic process in that a

number of the skills and processes are needed on the part of the reader to anticipate text

information, repair comprehension breakdowns, and match comprehension output to

reader goals”

Given the complexity of reading and its many purposes and properties, it can

reasonably be concluded that the cognitive processes operating when one reads must also

be complex. Led by this very complex processing, researchers have come to investigate

reading in term of its component skills providing a clear picture of the reading process

and of how these components skills interact and collaborate to build comprehension.
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Reading research has demonstrated that readers do not simply "perceive" that

meaning that is IN a text. In fact, expert readers co-construct meaning WITH a text. The

research base shows that reading is a “transaction” in which the reader brings purposes

and life experiences to bear to converse with the text. This meeting of the reader and the

text results in the meaning that is comprehension. Comprehension always attends to what

is coded or written in the text, but it also depends upon the reader’s background

experiences, purposes, feelings, and needs of the moment. That’s why we can read the

same book or story twice and it will have very different meaning for us. We, as readers,

are an equal and active partner with the text in the meaning-making process of

comprehension (Wilhelm, 2014).

The key variables of reading comprehension include the reader as an active

information processor, the activity of reading, and the text, all of which intersect to affect

how well comprehension occurs (Hulan, Layne & McIntyre, 2011) and, therefore,

teaching English as a foreign language can be considered a delicate job in that teachers

need to understand the nature of reading and teaching methodology on the one hand, and

the nature of learners and the context in which teaching of reading takes place, on the

other hand.

An important source of understanding about the nature of the knowledge that

informs comprehension is schema theory. Schema theory is concerned with how

knowledge is represented and organized in long-term memory (as sets of information, or

schemes) and then brought to mind as new information comes in. The theory suggests
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that individuals relate all new information to what they already know or have

experienced. In the context of reading, scheme theory emphasizes the critical role of the

reader’s prior knowledge in comprehension. Readers draw on a vast range of information

and use it strategically through interplay of these comprehension strategies. For example,

a key source of information for adults in their knowledge of text structure. Readers

approaching a text will have some prior knowledge of text structure (the ways in which

texts are organized at sentence, paragraph and whole-text level in order to convey

information or ideas in particular ways). They will gained this knowledge from their

experiences of seeing, reading and listening to written texts. As they approach the new

text, they will use this structure knowledge to help them identify and understand the

structures used in the text. This is turn will help them to form hypotheses about the

content and how it might organized. The text structure will also assist them as they use

the strategies of identifying the main ideas and summarizing the content of the text

(NZTecAdmin, 2012).

In a study of Kazemian (2015) on Factors Responsible for Poor Reading

Comprehension at the Secondary Level, he found that there are many key factors which

affect reading comprehension. These key factors include: poor mastery over vocabulary,

habit of cramming instead of learning and understanding; mission is to pass the

examination not to develop skill, weak sentence structure and tenses, not using the tricks

to infer the meaning from the context, no habit of reading the newspapers, articles, novels

and other books, and a lack of interest from both sides: from teachers and students in
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developing the skill. Students are not taught different types of reading skill like loud

reading, intensive reading, extensive reading and silent reading for the better

comprehension of the text. Reading strategies like skimming, scanning, previewing,

predicting, anticipation and reading in chunks are unknown to students. Reading skills

also improve other linguistic skills. If reading skill is good, student can write and utter

well-structured and meaningful sentence. It provides them some amount of vocabulary,

written model, and the knowledge of different cultures and societies to make them write

and speak in a sophisticated way.

Torgensen (2006) added that proficient comprehension of text is influenced by

accurate and fluent word reading skill and motivation to understand and interest in task

and materials. The National Reading Panel identified three predominant elements to

support the development of reading comprehension skill: vocabulary instruction, active

reading, and teacher preparation to deliver strategy instruction.

Moreover, the environment can play an important role in developing a child’s

reading habits. Understanding the causes of why kids differ in reading skills, and the

roles of genetics and environment, could help us understand how to teach them better

(Petrill, 2010).

Furthermore, parents continue to wield considerable influence on children’s

development as children progress through school (Bachman, Drzl, & Nokali, 2011).

Children need parents to be their reading role models with daily practice in order to

navigate successfully through beginning literacy skills.

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In addition to equipping EFL students with sufficient linguistic knowledge of the

English language and textual background knowledge, targeted instruction in strategic

reading is also needed to enable them to become efficient at text processing so they can

flexibly operate reading strategies with greater efficiency and comprehension (Wang,

2003).

Reading Comprehension Skills

Reading skills include skills acquired through reading, such as comprehension,

fluency and independence. Overall, these skills give students the ability to turn words on

a page into a clear meaning.

Examples of comprehension skills as stated by Colorincolorado (2014) that can be

taught and applied to all reading situations include: summarizing, sequencing,

inferencing, comparing and contrasting, drawing conclusions, self-questioning, problem-

solving, relating background knowledge, distinguishing between fact and opinion, finding

the main idea, important facts, and supporting details.

These skills are particularly important for comprehending what is generally

known as information reading or expository reading.

Conventional Method

The back-to-basics traditional education method, also known as conventional

education, is still widely used in schools. The old-fashioned way of teaching was all

about recitation, for example students would sit in silence, while one student after another
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would take it in turns to recite the lesson, until each one had been called upon. The

teacher would listen to each student’s recitation, and they were expected to study and

memorize the assignments. At the end of the module a written test or oral examination

would be conducted; this process was called an Assignment Study Recitation Test

(Wright, 2017).

The way in which traditional methods were taught ensured that students were

rewarded for their efforts, used class periods efficiently and exercised clear rules to

manage students’ behavior. They were based on established customs that had been used

successfully in schools over many years. The teachers communicated the knowledge and

enforced standards of behavior.

According to Wright (2017), traditional techniques used repetition and

memorization of information to educate students, it meant that they were not developing

their critical thinking, problem solving and decision-making skills. Modern learning

encourages students to collaborate and therefore be more productive. Saying that,

traditional and modern teaching methods are both effective and useful in today’s

education. Wright (2017), explains, “As with most things, it’s all about balance. We need

to understand when a traditional method works best and when it’s right to try new and

innovative approaches.”

Study conducted by Sarzari (2014) aimed to find out the effectiveness of teaching

techniques newline employed in Teaching-Learning Process. Findings of her study

revealed that the performance of the students taught by newline demonstration method is
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better than that of the students taught newline by conventional method of teaching. The

performance of the newline students taught by microscopic method is better than that of

the newline students taught by conventional method of teaching. The newline

performance of the students taught by specimen method is better newline than that of the

students taught by conventional method of newline teaching. The performance of the

students taught by experimental newline method is better than that of the students taught

by conventional newline method of teaching. The performance of the students taught by

play newline way method is better than that of the students taught by conventional

newline method of teaching.

Hussain et al. (2010) determined the role of the direct teaching method in the

academic achievement of students in English at the secondary level. To achieve the said

objective, the Solomon Four-Design pre-test/post-test equivalent group design was

considered to be the most useful design for this study. The pre-test was used to measure

the achievement. The pre-test was used only to equate the control and experimental

groups. The experimental group was taught by the direct method, while the control group

was taught by the traditional method for a period of six weeks. Applying t-test and

analysis of variance tested to know the significance of difference between the scores of

groups at 0.05 levels. After analyzing the secured data it was concluded that the direct

teaching method was more effective as a teaching-learning technique for English

compared to the traditional teaching method. Students in the direct teaching method

outscored the students working in the traditional learning situation. Low achievers in the
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direct teaching showed significant superiority over low achievers learning English by the

traditional method. Thus, direct teaching was found to be a more effective method for

quality teaching of English to the low achievers as compared to the traditional method of

teaching. High achievers, whether they were taught English by the direct or traditional

method, retained learned material at the same rate. Low achievers who were taught

English by the direct method retained more material as compared to low achievers taught

by traditional method of teaching.

According to Valdez (2016), traditional way of teaching a teacher-centric

classroom teacher provides all the pieces of information inside the classroom. Students

must adhere to what the teacher says about the topic. Participation of the students is less

observed and practiced. Teachers being knowledge dispenser rather than facilitators some

teachers would (most often than not) do all the work for their students like giving all the

resources where one could find the answer to his or her research and/or assignment. It

student discover new learning, gain new insights and discern opportunities. Chalk and

talk methods in a typical classroom, much of the time is being spent writing on the

blackboards being copied by the students which will then be followed by the explanation

of the teacher (to what has been written). With this way of teaching, student would most

likely get bored already because of the lengthy writing that has consumed most of their

time and thereby leading to lesser allocated time for deeper understanding of the topic.

Lack of collaboration and group learning group presentation is less practiced. A student is

trained to be doing the homework herself or himself only. It has to be consider that there
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are topics or subject matter that need group collaboration. With such, it will give every

individuals chance of giving his or her opinion that would help the group come up with

the better outcome and result. More focus on examinations and results rather than

understanding of concepts some are accustomed to be “test-paper result-oriented.” There

are some things that could not be gauged by written examination alone.

Graphic Organizers

The idea of the advance organizer was suggested by Ausubel well before

hypermedia, distance learning initiatives, etc., became pervasive. Ausubel suggests that

advance organizers might foster meaningful learning by prompting the student regarding

pre-existing superordinate concepts that are already in the student’s cognitive structure,

and by otherwise providing a context of general concepts into which the student can

incorporate progressively differentiated details. He claims that by presenting a global

representation of knowledge to be learned, advance organized might foster “integrative

reconciliation” of the subdomains of knowledge –the ability to understand

interconnections among the basic concepts in the domain (Curran & Takata, 2003).

McKnight (2010) stated that graphic organizers are important and effective

pedagogical tools for organizing content and ideas and facilitating learners’

comprehension of newly acquired information. They are teaching and learning tools;

when they’re integrated into classroom experiences, students are better able to understand

new materials. Creating a strong visual picture, graphic organizers support students by
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enabling them to literally see connections and relationship between facts, information and

terms. It was supported by Kintsch and Rawson (2005), which stated that comprehension

skills aided by graphics organizers help a reader develop his/her reading abilities.

Therefore, incorporate graphic organizers in reading comprehension helps middle school

ELS students in developing their comprehension skills.

According to Slavin (2011), research pedagogy and psychology demonstrate that

visual learning is among the most effective methods for teaching comprehension skills to

students of all ages. Helping students organize the content helps them better comprehend

texts for information such as main supporting details, facts, opinions, comparisons and

contradictions.

Miranda’s (2002) study on the effect of graphic organizers on the reading

comprehension of an English language learner with a learning disability indicated that

graphic organizers are an effective instructional strategy for facilitating the acquisition of

English for academic purposes. Graphic organizers provide students with a visual

representation of the content in a text and this may facilitate the learning of both content

knowledge and the English language.

Adler (2013) added that graphic organizer illustrates concepts and relation

between concepts illustrated concepts and relations between concepts in a text or using

diagrams. Graphic organizers are known by different names such as maps, webs, graphs,

chart, frames or clusters. Regardless of the label, graphic organizer can help readers focus

concepts and how they are related to other concepts.

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Jiang and Grabe (2007) proposed that graphic organizers are more effective when

(a) students are involved in the construction of the graphic organizer, (b) graphic

organizer are used as a post-reading activity, and (c) graphic organizer instruction is

combined with instruction on summarization.

In the past decade, a great deal of research has been done on using Graphic

Organizer in effective arranging the content of a passage and decoding its meaning.

Ciascai (2009) investigate Graphic Organizer as instruments of representation, illustration

and modeling of information. Her investigations also examined the use of graphic

organizer in educational practice for building and systematize knowledge. This

investigation concludes that graphic organizers help learning in understanding the content

of the text by classifying and molding ideas in the text

Alvermann (2015) investigated the use of graphic organizer to compensate for

text that was less than optimal in its organization. Tenth grades read two versions of an

expository passage that different only in structure (comparison versus description). Both

experimental groups studied a graphic organizer that had been constructed to reflect the

comparison text structure. On immediate and delayed recall measure, the experiment

groups recalled significantly more than the control groups only under the descriptive text

condition. Results support assimilation encoding theory and suggest that organizers aid

recall when readers must reorganize information but do not help when reorganization is

unnecessary. All students, regardless of reading level, benefited from the use of graphic

organizer.
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Meordibjon, Prayogo & Satriyani (2016) conducted a research to improve the

students’ reading comprehension by employing graphic organizer through team-Pair-Solo

strategy. Classroom Action Research which involved 32 eight grader was employed in

the study. The steps done in employing the strategy were: (1) working in group in

comprehending the text, (2) discussing the answer, (3) working in pairs, (4) creating their

own graphic organizers, (5) swapping their work (6) giving feeding back, (7) discussing

the feedback (8) revising individually, (9) retelling the text by using their graphic

organizers. The findings of this study showed that the strategy was effective improving

students’ reading comprehension ability.

These investigations show that graphic organizer can be implemented in the

classroom as a method for students to improve reading comprehension. Using a variety of

graphic organizers, there is a development and progress of reading comprehension.

In the study conducted by Vyas (2013) with a main purpose of comparing the

effect of both traditional and multimedia supported instructions on students’ perceptions

and performance at university level. The findings indicate that video supported

instructions can make learning more interesting, and to some extent, change the situation

of having to learn into willing to learn. Well-designed software can provide students a lot

of useful information, such as word study, useful expressions, language structures,

sentence explanations, cultural background, organization of the text, and exercises.

The writing proficiency test also revealed the comparative effectiveness of power

point presentation to traditional lecture instruction as student achievement was essentially

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high when taught using the power point presentation as compared to the traditional

lecture strategy. Onscreen text has pedagogical value as it stimulates the eye and

enhances their retention power. In this respect, using the text only, even in a creative

way, has obvious limitations as compared to the use of both text and narration.

The questionnaire suggests that the majority of the learners seem to have positive

attitudes towards the use of Video Supported Instruction in MEPSIP. Learners admitted

that video supported instructions in MEPSIP helps in self-understanding and it does not

hinder interaction with the instructor. The findings of classroom observation show that

video is so close to language reality-containing visual as well as audible cues. It also

suggests that power point supported instructions help in paying individual attention to the

students and clarifications of doubts are also simple. The audio and visual aids in power

point supported instruction delivers content with greater legibility than blackboard and

attractive fonts or different typestyles in power point supported instruction get students’

attention to important points. It has been observed that power point “enlivens the

classroom environment” and makes course work exciting and interesting to students

(Vyas, 2013).

Aranda and Zamora’s (2016) study on differentiated instruction based on different

learning styles of each student can facilitate individual learning. The participants were

purposively chosen for the control and experimental group, respectively. The learning

styles of the students were identified using the Grasha-Riechmann Student Learning Style

Scale which served as the basis for designing differentiated activities in the Filipino
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subject. The experimental group received differentiated instruction for two months while

the control group received traditional teaching instruction. The results revealed that the

academic performance of the students in the experimental group is higher compared to

the control group. This study concludes that differentiated instruction based on different

learning styles was effective in teaching the Filipino subject to grade ten students.

Study of Sison (2006) in Biology with CAI group and without CAI group

revealed that there is no significant difference in the pre-test scores of students in Biology

between the group with CAI and the group without CAI is accepted. There is no

significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the two groups of

students in Biology is rejected. There is no significant difference in the post-test scores of

students between the group with CAI and the group without CAI is rejected. Her study

reveals that the actual involvement of second year students in the use of CAI as a

supplement to traditional instruction can really produce higher achievement as compared

to the use of purely traditional instruction alone.

Synthesis

According to Wilhelm (2014), we can read same book at the same time but its

meaning maybe different for each of us. This is because the readers decode the meaning

of a text using their life experiences, purpose, feeling and needs in the moment.
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Teachers should therefore use needed reading strategies to support the

development of reading comprehension skills. Some of these reading comprehension

skills are summarizing, sequencing, inferring, comparing and contrasting, drawing

conclusion, self-questioning, problem-solving, relating background knowledge,

distinguishing fact and opinion finding the main idea, important fact and supporting

details.

One of the strategies is the use of graphic organizer which was first suggested by

Ausubel. He suggested that advance organizer might foster meaningful learning by

prompting the students regarding pre-existing super ordinate concepts that are already in

students’ cognitive structure and by otherwise providing a context of general concepts

into which the student can incorporate progressively differentiated detail (Curran &

Takata, 2003). This was proven true by a great deal of research which resulted to the

effectiveness of the use of graphic organizer in teaching reading comprehension skills.