Chapter I

Introduction

This chapter presents the background of the study, statement of the problem, hypothesis,

significance of the study and scope and limitation.

Background of the Study

Reading is one of four important language skills that should be mastered by

students. It is one of the ways for getting knowledge that cannot separated from every

learning process and it does only happen in educational field but also in our daily life. For

getting knowledge and information, people read books, magazines, newspapers,

advertisements and etc. It is a skill utilized in every academic subject area, it is a logical

domain to examine for a correlational relationship with the academic performance. It

provided background knowledge and comprehension skills necessary for students’

achievement in various subjects.

Reading comprehension is the crucial link to effective reading which is essential for

a rich academic, professionals and personal life. Reading fluency is a very important part of

reading comprehension as readers who spend their time decoding words, tend to lose the

understanding of what is being read.

Reading comprehension skill is a fundamental skill to obtain further academic

learning success. To get further knowledge, students are required to have a critical and

analytical competence in comprehending academic texts, in searching more academic

information through various types of reading materials such as textbooks, journals, reports
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 or electronic messages. However, not all the students are good at comprehending the text

being read. Most of them understand the informational of the text but struggling to

comprehend what the underlying meaning and purpose beyond the text are.

Some researchers (Duffy, Pearson) state that having students generate their own

questions accelerate text comprehension. While (Pinnel,2000) asserts that questioning

information in the reading strategies in which the readers can monitor their thinking

process during interaction with the text to enhance comprehension.

Statement of the Problem

This study aimed to determine the relationship of reading comprehension and

academic performance of grade 9 students of Bula National High School.

Specifically, it sought to answer the following questions:

1. What are reading comprehension level of grade 9 students of Bula National High

School?

2. How do the reading comprehension affects the academic performance of grade 9

students?

3. Is there a significant relationship between reading comprehension of grade 9 students to

their academic performance?

Hypothesis

There is no significant relationship between reading comprehension of grade 9

students to their academic performance.

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 Significance of the Study

Teacher. The result from this study will give them information they needed when

planning for the teaching strategy or method to be more effective it the classroom.

Students. This study will help them evaluate their academic performance.

Future Researchers. This study can be used as reference of their study. Provides

additional evidence to support the findings that a relationship between reading comprehension and

academic performance of the students.

Scope and Limitation of Study

This study aimed to determine the significant relationship between reading comprehension

and academic performance of grade 9 students of Bula National High School.

This study utilized the grade 9 teachers of the said school. A survey questionnaire provided

by the researchers was used to gather the data.

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 Chapter II

Conceptual Framework

This chapter presents the conceptual framework of the study.

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 Chapter III

Review of Related Literature

Reading comprehension is the ability to learn and process information from written

sources. Its primary step is decoding, which is the act of assigning sounds and meaning to letters

and words. But as simple as defining reading comprehension may be, it is notoriously difficult to

teach. Reading comprehension is the ability to process text, understand its meaning, and to

integrate with what the reader already knows. If word recognition is difficult, students use too

much of their processing capacity to read individual words, which interferes with their ability to

comprehend what is read. Simply put, reading comprehension is the act of understanding what you

are reading. While the definition can be simple to teach, learn or practice. Reading comprehension

is an intentional, active, interactive process that occurs before during and after a person reads a

particular piece of writing.

Reading comprehension is one of the pillars pf the act of reading. When a person reads a

text, he engages in a complex array of cognitive processes. He is simultaneously using his

awareness and understanding of phonemes, phonics and ability to comprehend or construct

meaning from the text. This last component of the act of reading is reading comprehension. It

cannot occur independent of the other two elements of the process. At the same time, it is the most

difficult and most important of the three. There are two elements that make up the process of

reading comprehension: vocabulary knowledge and text comprehension. In order to understand a

text, the reader must be able to comprehend the vocabulary used in the piece of writing. If the

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individual word doesn’t make the sense then the overall story will not either. Students can draw on

their prior knowledge of vocabulary, but they also need to continually be taught new words. The

best vocabulary instruction occurs at the point of need.

Academic performance or academic achievement is the extent to which a student,

teacher or institution has attained their short- or long-term educational goals. Completion of

educational benchmarks such as secondary school diplomas and bachelor’s degrees represents

academic achievement.

Academic achievement is commonly measured through examinations or continuous

assessments but there is no general agreement on how it is best evaluated or which aspects are

most important -procedural knowledge such as skills or declarative knowledge such as facts.

Furthermore, there are inconclusive results over which individual factors successfully predict

academic performance, elements such as test anxiety, environment, motivation, and emotion

required consideration when developing models of school achievement. Now, schools are

receiving money based on its students’ academic achievements. A school with more academic

achievements would receive more money than a school with less achievement.

In investigating the relationship between reading comprehension and academic

performance MacGregor and Price (1999), noted that vocabulary, number and symbol sense, as

well as the ability to read and comprehend, word problems are important factors affecting

achievement in mathematics. The ability of symbol processing is the basis for both language

proficiency and mathematics achievement. MacGregor and Price (1999) noted that poor language

skills do correlate with poor math skill suggesting that both require a basic level of competency in

symbol processing i.e. deriving meaning from symbols.

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 In investigating the relationship between science performance and reading comprehension

Sochor (1958) noted that reading comprehension was related to comprehension of science texts.

He emphasized the fact that is important in science reading for students to be able to remember

symbols, formulas, specific vocabulary terms and procedure for conducting experiments if they are

to be efficient as well as proficient in the application of science.

According to the studies conducted by researchers mentioned above there is a correlation

between school subjects performance with reading ability and reading comprehension.

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 Chapter IV

Methodology

This chapter presents the details of the study that shows reading comprehension and

academic performance of the students as to where and when the study was conducted and what

statistical tool was used in this study. Its also presents the data gathering procedure and data

analysis.

Data Gathering Procedure

After the approval to conduct the research, the research survey questionnaire was given to

the Grade 9 teachers of Bula National High School. The respondents were given time to answer the

survey questions. After that, the researchers gathered the data.

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