Chapter 1

Background of the Study

Introduction

Reading is essential for a child’s success. Sometimes, the barriers faced

by children with difficulty in reading restrain their desire to read and,

without proper guidance, they never overcome them. Reading literacy is

defined as “understanding, using, and reflecting on written texts in order

to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential, and to

participate in society” (Therrien, 2004). There are various factors that

cause the increasing number of non-readers, particularly in public

schools and one of them is the inappropriateness of the materials or

techniques used by teachers.

In the Department of Education (DepEd) in the Philippines, particularly

in Samar National School (SNS), Catbalogan City, 250 of the enrollees in

the school year 2018-2019 for Grade Seven were identified as non-

readers. As observed after the diagnostic reading test upon enrolling,

these students could not recognize letters and sounds of each word. They

were, then, obliged to attend the school’s remedial classes or the

Remedial Reading Instruction program of Samar National School (SNS).

They focused on improving the students’ reading skills that were not

thoroughly given attention before entering the secondary level. However,

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the instructional materials they were using were traditional, like the

use of flashcards, charts, textbooks, worksheets, etc.

The term remedial refers to correcting or improving deficient skills in a

specific subject (Sudhakar, 2018). Thus, remedial reading is a change in

instruction that helps remedy a weakness in the area of reading. It is an

instruction in reading which aims at increasing speed and

comprehension by correcting poor reading habits. Teachers may

experience a need for a special reading program as a result of meeting

with failure in instructing certain students by conventional methods.

Administrators may feel a need for a remedial reading program after

studying comprehensive plans to improve classroom instruction in

reading.

The researchers conducted this study among the non-readers of Samar

National School under the reading remediation class to test if there

would be a significant difference as to how these students will learn how

to read with the intervention of the adopted mobile-based interactive

media in the instruction.

Interactive media is a method of communication in which the program's

outputs depend on the user's inputs, and the user's inputs, in turn,

affect the program's outputs. Interactivity is defined as the degree to

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which two or more communication parties (human or computer) act on

each other in an interrelated manner (Koolstra & Bos, 2009). A

structured, multisensory approach helps children to acquire knowledge

by using their senses simultaneously – hear it, see it, and write it. This

strategy seeks to actively stimulate all senses to trigger the interest for

learning (Vickery, Reynolds, & Cochran, 1987). One alternative way to

teach reading is by using android-based interactive media. It can help

the learning system while playing in the classroom, in the family, and in

society which must be under the control and supervision of an adult

(Bhaskar, 2013). The use of multimedia technologies is prepared as good

as possible and can influence the reading process from teaching-learning

(Neuman, 2010).

Hence, this study determined if there is a significant effect in using

Mobile-based Interactive Media in Remedial Reading Instruction among

grade seven non-reader students in SNS. Specifically, the study sought

to answer the following questions:

1. What is the pre-test scores of the

student-respondents in terms of:

1.1 word recognition; and

1.2 comprehension?
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2. What is the post-test scores of the

student-respondents in terms of:

2.1 word recognition; and

2.2 comprehension?

3. Is there a significant difference in

Remedial Instruction between

students with interactive media

and those who do not have in:

3.1 word recognition; and

3.2 comprehension?

1.1 Null Hypothesis

There is no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test

scores of students for word recognition and comprehension before and

after using the mobile-based interactive media, respectively, in their

Remedial Reading classes.

 Chapter 2

Review of Related Literature

This study was anchored on the herein theories and was guided by the

succeeding related studies and literature.

In Bloomfield’s Theory of Reading, it purports that for a child to learn

how to read, he/she must be acquainted with the letters at the very

start, before the reading begins.” Children would be “ready” to read when

they had developed certain prerequisite skills such as familiarizing the

alphabet letters first. Then, they would be evaluated by readiness testing

(Gesell, 1925).

Multi-Sensory Approach (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) asserts that “the

more senses involved, the better the learning”. This theory states that the

brain achieves learning more easily when several senses are stimulated

in parallel. Think about the five (5) senses: sight, sound, touch, taste,

and smell. Each of these senses accesses information in a unique way,

and the brain coordinates the input from all the senses to learn. With

more senses engaged in a lesson, the learner is more likely to remember

the information. “Learning to read and write is a complex, multifaceted

process that requires a wide variety of instructional approaches”

(Neuman et al., 2000).

The literature provides a rich contextual foundation upon which to study

the use of interactive media among Grade-7 nonreaders.

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A variety of reading programs targeted specific decoding skills sets and

directed instruction of vocabulary. The National Reading Panel (2000)

identified three (3) key elements of effective reading instruction:

alphabetic (phonemic awareness and phonics), fluency, and

comprehension (vocabulary, text comprehension, and comprehension

strategies). Phonological awareness, or an understanding of the sounds

of language, can be quantified through tasks such as rhyming, blending

sounds, and word-sound games that assess the ability to manipulate

phonemes and syllables (Noble et al., 2005). The use of technology is

such that interactive media are offered for their great potential.

Interactive media programs considered a supplement to quality

instruction. To promote transfer, the concepts in these programs should

be reinforced during instruction, for example, adopting the terms of the

program uses and revisiting sample words. Programs that focus centrally

on print and language concepts and programs that include progress

monitoring features are best. According to the agency of policy regarding

media and communications in the United States or the policy statement

of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Council on

Communications and Media (2011) describes the interactive media with

high quality that can provide benefits for children in improving social

skills, language, and reading readiness in school. A study found that

these basic interactive books that simply read a story aloud and

highlighted words and phrases as they were spoken were beneficial for
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children who had different styles for learning, and interactive media

helped children with visual skills.

Interactive media make students involved in learning. In reading,

students' involvement greatly affects their learning best. Many studies

and investigations to the use of technology, including multimedia

environments, emphasized student’s interest, motivation, and

engagement (Reinking & Bradley, 2011). These elements are vital for

those students who are reluctant or struggling readers. The ability to

customize viewing and interaction contributes to student engagement

and motivation, but they lament the lack of choice in most technology-

based reading research studies. In a study conducted by Strangman and

Dalton (2005), they stressed out that interactive media is vital to

students’ changing feelings about reading itself.

From the study of Wise, Ring, and Olson (2004), a decade-long

investigation of computer-based remediation of phonemic awareness

have been examined in Colorado schools. Their respondents were

elementary students. They have developed and tested the two (2)

programs to facilitate and supplement reading instruction as they

served. These were the Accurate Reading in Context (ARC). Here,

students spent 22 hours reading stories with speech recognition and

Phonological Analysis (PA), which had an explicit instruction of speech

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articulation and animated storybooks and other word-level analyses.

These facilitated supplemental interventions required a trained teacher

to facilitate and monitor young students’ interaction with the

computerbased program and deliver small-group instruction supportive

of transfer. The study included matched control groups. Students who

participated in the program demonstrated significant gains in phonemic

awareness, decoding, and word reading which were maintained at a 1-

and 2-year follow-up (Wise et al., 2000). These programs had similar

results, suggesting that increased facilitated time spent in reading–not

the specific type of training–was key. They suggested that additional time

and transfer activities would increase performance and retention of

gains.

On the other hand, Lewandowski, Begeny, and Rogers (2006) found that

66 third-grade students’ word recognition, reading speed, and accuracy

scores improved similarly the following practice with a very simple (no

graphics or animation) computerbased reading program and work with a

live tutor. Students’ scores in a no-help condition did not improve. This

study reinforced an earlier study in which Lewandowski and Montali

(1996) showed that struggling elementary readers could perform and

average achieving peers on word recognition and accuracy tests when

there was an audio plus visual input with computer-based practice.

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In Ertem (2010) study, the comparison and analysis of student

comprehension using all three (3) media effects of digital texts on student

comprehension were shown. Data showed that there was a great increase

in reading compression when students were engaged in digital texts and

were incorporated with animations. Digital texts without animations

were resulted being the second-highest scores in comprehension, while

the traditional texts had the lowest scores within reading compression.

Therefore, the data collected found that electronic storybooks can

improve and support the reading comprehension of struggling readers.

Digital texts incorporate features such as animations and reading

options result in improved reading comprehension skills for struggling

readers.

Further, according to Ertem (2010), through the analysis of student

retellings, animations within digital texts resulted in understanding the

underlying theme of the text, plot, and solutions within the story better

than traditional text illustrations. Students using electronic texts showed

signs of higher-level thinking and reached a more advanced level of

comprehension. However, according to him, no date would clearly

support the effects of having digital texts or traditional text to increase

the motivation of the students to read.

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Linebarger, Kosanic, Greenwood, and Doku (2004) studied the impact of

the program on 164 kindergarten and first-grade students. These

students were at risk, at moderate risk, or not at risk for reading failure.

Over the course of the investigation, all children’s print concepts and

reading skills were developed. The children who had already mastered

some print concepts – the moderately at-risk group – demonstrated the

most growth. Results were successful. Authors reasoned that the content

matched these students’ emerging understanding of literacy concepts

but may have been too high or too low for the other student groups.

A study in the Philippines entitled, “Effectiveness of Remedial Reading

Classes Using Special Methods to Non-readers in Filipino of Grade One

Pupils of General Maximo Hizon Elementary School,” brought a very

significant result to students that it helped increase the readers’ reading

skill among Grade One pupils. Grade One teachers observed from those

several methods, and the Hegge-Kirk-Kirk Method prevailed as the most

dominant than their own modified style. Their study strongly supported

the importance of phonics to reading success.

The above-mentioned studies have the same problems in Samar National

School, the problem raised in this study. However, there was a big gap in

this study compared to those students who were identified as non-

readers because, in this study, the respondents were not in kindergarten

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or elementary, but were already first year high school and normal

students who did not have any disabilities nor in late development

problem.

Many parents and educators held negative attitudes toward interactive

devices for learning purposes compared to the perceived benefits of ‘real-

world’ learning opportunities (Wooldridge, 2016). In the reviews of

Radesky et al. (2015), limited researches on the impact of interactive

media used on children were found and they suggested that interactive

media could be useful for teaching concrete knowledge. However, they

posited that if skills such as self-regulation and empathy are perhaps

best learned through interactions with peers and caregivers in

naturalistic environments, in contrast to that, interactive media are very

helpful as medium of instruction for they create the possibility of display

and response dialogue.