SYNTHESIS PAPER:

READING DIFFICULTIES, DISABILITIES, OR PROBLEMS

Why does reading is a basic part of education? Is it an essential to have a better

understanding to a certain topic? Do reading can make our lives easier? There are a lot of

benefits when we know how to read and understand it all at once. There are circumstances that

students or children nowadays do not read because of the evolving technologies which makes

our lives easier than it should be. With just one click, we can see and visualize the picture

instantly on what is being said. But to my perception, I think that reading still plays a great role in

our lives which can give us knowledge beyond we know on our own. Reading is better than

watching because it helps us to comprehend and imagine things and can reduce memory loss.

But why does children or students nowadays are having a hard time in reading and

understanding a simple phrase?

According to Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo, over 600,000 students around

the age of 15 from 79 different countries joined the reading assessment of the Program for

International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2018. Filipino students got a rating of 340 points in

the survey, which is lower than the average 487 points. Majority of Filipinos aged 15 are in

Grade 9. Filipino students ranked last among 79 countries in a global survey of reading

comprehension, a result that the Palace opted to view in a “constructive” manner. In this case,

Filipino students have poor reading comprehension and a reality that must be recognized by the

country in order to improve its educational system. I think one of the reasons why there are

students who do not have the interest in reading is because there is nobody who can guide the

students from their studies especially in reading. That is why it is important that the chance that

was given to other people must grab the opportunity and return the chance to those people who

are really in need.

 Learning to read is an essential part of basic education. Reading, after all, is an

important gateway to their disciplines. It has been said that reading is the primary avenue to

knowledge (Stern and Gould, 1995). Reading is the most significant step through the lives of

people to know how to engage the knowledge and information around the world. It is important

to know information and what is happening around to become aware and be informed at the

same time. It can give us a better understanding and new discoveries of learning. In Edward

William Dolch’s 1951 book, “Psychology and Teaching of Reading”, was defined as “imagining,

thinking, and feeling about ideas and thoughts made from past experiences that are suggested

by perception of printed words” (p.9). Reading, as asserted by the author, is an activity that

requires the different capabilities of the mind, as the reader processes words and their

meanings. Reading is a tool to improve our general knowledge and can give us the opportunity

to expand our connections with other people and their cultures as readers can share

experiences and feelings toward others.

Data were obtained by means of observation and document examination. In the

study related to determining reading status, it was established that the student had

made errors such as repetition, syllabication, omission, addition and failure to notice

punctuation marks. (Hayati Akyol, Yasemin Boyaci-Altinay. 2019. Reading Difficulty

and its Remediation. Volume 8 Issue 4 (October 2019), Pages: 1269-1286 ). There are

students who do not have improvements when it comes to reading because of lack of

guidance. Some articles said that it is because of students who does not have

interests in reading and they are prone to errors such as repetition, failure to notice

punctuations and more.

Reading difficulties, disabilities, and or problems may have a huge impact to the society

that we live in right now, and I think there are many solutions that can be done if we will help

hand in hand, focus on what are the top problems that our community is having and expect
positive chances and solutions like it is not too late to recover from the snags because we hold

the lives of our future that lies on our present hands.

Reading is essential to success in our society. The ability to read is highly valued and

important for social and economic advancement. Most children learn to read fairly well. In fact, a

small number learn it on their own, with no formal instruction, before school entry (Anbar, 1986;

Backman, 2983; Jackson, 1991; Jackson et al.; 1988). Although the gap in reading performance

between educational haves and have-nots has shrunk over the last 50 years, it is still

unacceptably large, and in recent years it has not shrunk further (National Academy of

Education, 1996). The rich-get-richer and poor-get-poorer economic effects compound the

difficulties facing educational policy makers, and they must be addressed if we are to confront

the full scope of inadequate literacy attainment (see Bronfenbrenner et al., 1996).

Clear and worrisome problems have to do specifically with children’s success in learning

to read our ability to teach reading to them. There are many reasons for these educational

problems−none of which is simple. The many children who succeed in reading are in

classrooms that display a wide range of possible approaches to instruction. In making

recommendations about instruction, one of the challenges facing the committee is the difficult-

to-deal-with fact that many children will learn to read in almost any classroom, with almost any

instructional emphasis. Nonetheless, some children, in particular children from poor, minority, or

non-English-speaking families and children who have innate predispositions for reading

difficulties, need the support of high-quality preschool and school environments and of excellent

primary instruction to be sure of reading success. We attempt to identify the characteristics of

the preschool and school environments that will be effective for such children.

Although children have been taught to read for many centuries, only this century−and

until recently only in some countries−has there been widespread expectation that literacy skills
should be universal. Under current conditions, in many ‘literate’ societies, 40 to 60 percent of

the population have achieved literacy; today in the United States, they expect 100 percent of the

population to be literate. Furthermore, the definition of full-fledged literacy has shifted over the

last century with increased distribution of technology, with the development of communication

across distances, and with the proliferation of large-scale economic enterprises (Kaestle, 1991;

Miller, 1988; Weber, 1993). Academic success, as defined by high school graduation, can be

predicted with reasonable accuracy by knowing someone’s reading skill at the end of grade 3.

A person who is not at least a modestly skilled reader by the end of third grade is quite

unlikely to graduate from high school. Only a generation ago, this did not matter so much,

because the long-term economic effects of not becoming a good reader and not graduating from

high school were less severe. Perhaps not surprisingly, when teachers are asked about the

most important goal for education, over half of elementary school teachers chose “building basic

literacy skills” (National Center for Education Statistics Schools and Staffing Survey, 1990-1991,

quoted in National Center for Education Statistics, 1995:31).

Reading problems are found among every group and in every primary classroom,

although some children with certain demographic characteristics are at greater risk of reading

difficulties than others. Precisely how and why this happens has not been fully understood. In

some cases, the sources of these reading difficulties are relatively clear, such as biological

deficits that make the processing of sound-symbol relationships difficult; in other cases, the

source is experiential like poor reading instruction.

The neuroscience research on reading has expanded understanding the reading

process (Shaywitz, 1996). For example, researchers have now been able to establish a

tentative architecture for the component processes of reading (Shaywitz et el., 1998; Shaywitz,

1996). All reading difficulties, whatever their primary etiology, must express themselves through
alterations of the brain systems responsible for word identification and comprehension. Even in

disadvantaged or other high-risk population, many children do learn to read, some easily and

others with great difficulty. This suggests that, in all populations, reading ability occurs along a

continuum, and biological factors are influenced by, and interact with, a reader’s experiences.

The findings of an anomalous brain system say little about the possibility for change, for

remediation, or for response to treatment. It is well known that, particularly in children, neural

systems are plastic and responsive to changed input.

Reading difficulties may prevent if there would be some people who are willing to teach

children to read. We always have to remember that how a person learned how to read is the

same as the other. It is important to understand be aware of what our society have and have not

and we can get the chance to change it before it is too late.