CHAPTER 1

THE PROBLEM AND ITS SCOPE

Rationale

As printed lessons has become one of the new modes of learning system

in the new normal. It significantly requires the students to be, at least good in

reading.

According to Mellisa Mullin (2019), “The goal of reading is to gain

information, whether it is what happens to the characters in a story, or learning

about the world. Reading fluency is the speed and accuracy of decoding words.

Reading comprehension is the ability to understand what you are reading.” It is

important to achieve a perfect balance within these two abilities. These abilities

play a vital role on student’s academic performance as this is just a basic

requirement.

More and more, children around the world are failing to read. It is

expected to get worse due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The inability of 4 out of 10

children to master reading, one of the core foundational skills, is alarming, since

it predicts their ability to gain other foundational, transferable, digital, and job-

specific skills later on in life. In fact, these numbers might be even more alarming,

since this data excludes the 59 million primary-aged children who are out of

school. UNICEF-supported household-level assessments from 26 countries

suggest that those children are 50 per cent less likely to acquire foundational

reading skills compared to their peers in school. (blogs.unicef.org)

 For the last decades, reading problems in the Philippines has been a big

issue as reading performance of the students is considered poor. In 2018, the

Philippines joined the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as part

of the Quality Basic Education reform plan and a step towards globalizing the

quality of Philippine basic education. Released on December 3, 2019, the 2018

PISA results revealed that the Philippines scored 340 in reading. Over 80% of

the students in the Philippines did not reach a minimum level of proficiency in

reading, which is one of the largest shares of low performers amongst all PISA-

participating countries and economies, according to OECD.

Here in Mactan National High School, particularly in Grade 12 General

Academic Strand, section A. As per reading assessment conducted on August 24-

25, 2022, the results shows that out of 57 respondents, 18 students are

independent readers, 39 students are instructional readers, while 0 frustrated

reader. With this data presented, it just shows that most of the students still need

to work on their reading abilities, such as; reading comprehension and reading

fluency. These abilities will surely affect their academic performance in this new

normal setup.

With these existing issues, the researchers urge to determine the effect of

reading fluency and reading comprehension on academic performance of GAS-A

students, especially in this new normal set up. This study hopes to extend

assistance to teachers and students to have a more comprehensive way on

dealing with reading issues.

 THE PROBLEM

Statement of the Problem

This study determines the Reading Fluency and Reading Comprehension on

Academic Performance of Grade 12 GAS-A Students of Mactan National High

School in the New Normal academic year 2022-2023.

Specifically, this study seeks to answer the following sub-problems:

1. What is the reading fluency level of the respondents?

2. What is the reading comprehension level of the respondents?

3. What is the academic performance of the respondents?

4. Is there any significant relationship between the reading fluency and the

reading comprehension?

5. Is there any significant relationship between the reading fluency level and

the academic performance of the respondents?

6. Is there any significant relationship between the reading comprehension

level and the academic performance of the respondents?

7. Based on the findings, what reading activity can be proposed?