REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Reading is one of the four language skills, its teaching needs carefully selected
activities, methods, and procedures. Skills in reading enable learners to benefit from
educational activities and to participate fully in the social and economic activities in
which they take part (Mulatu & Regassa, 2022). Reading can also increase vocabulary,
text familiarity, self-esteem, and self-confidence, enhancing operational and cognitive
processes. Educators should also teach learners the importance of improving their
reading skills beyond simply storing and recalling information. Good readers should be
expected to play an active role by interacting with a text and using their experience,
skills, and knowledge to draw authentic meaning from the text. Reading assessment
has received greater attention recently, especially in terms of addressing gaps between
theory and practice.

It was implied that redefining reading skills for learners in a sense of being more
connected to higher cognitive skills would help them interact and construct meaning
from context. Furthermore, it has been observed that reading classes tend to focus on
storing and extracting information, and with the help of play based activities, teachers
encourage these practices by using familiar reading tasks for learners, relating the
importance of promoting their reading abilities and higher-order thinking skills. As a
result, these assessment methods assess and encourage learners to deal with reading
skills appropriately and effectively (Alshammari, 2021).

According to Wasik & Vessels (2017), play is an important activity in young

children’s lives. It is how children explore their world and build knowledge. Although free
play, which is play that is totally child directed, contributes to children’s learning, self-
regulation and motivation, adults’ participation in children’s play is critical in their
development, especially their language development. Guided by children, adults can
help scaffold children’s language, and especially their learning. The goal is to provide
adults with strategies to scaffold children’s language development during play while
allowing children to direct their own play activities. Within the field, ongoing tensions
persist in how play is described and used. These tensions compromise activities of
assessment, intervention, and curriculum development and their connections to
research and practice. Children begin with "Practice games," also described as
"Sensorimotor play" or "Manipulative play." "Symbolic play," also known as "Pretend
play," develops toward the end of the second year and continues through the preschool
period.

Play is perhaps the most task-oriented and intrinsically motivated activity a child
can attend to, and the self-worth perspective or self-determined aspect, is of course
normally included in children's play. The child is in the play, a here-and-now situation,
much like Csikszentmihalyi's definition of flow, a state that generates intrinsic
motivation. Lillemyr, O. F. (2001), flow is typical in play, aesthetic activities and
creativity. Play is first of all a phenomenon originating from an internal interest. For this
reason, play contains great educational potential. Including play in the educational
program obviously enriches the school environment and in the next turn can enhance
students' personal investment in learning, independent of cultural background. Thus
play represents a potential for increasing the quality of future education. Play in the
lower grades tends to promote creativity and experimentation in the higher grades, thus
increasing the personal involvement in learning.

Learning through play is one of the most effective ways to learn because play
used to improve content mastery, higher-order thinking skills, and social skills during the
learning process. In addition, play closely linked to the development of cognitive skills,
memory and thinking skills, and language and literacy skills (Bodrova & Leong, 2005).
Ara (2009) also points to the fact that play not only provide a wonderful atmosphere in
children’s language class, but also facilitate meaningful learning, make learning
enjoyable, avoid dull repetition, and motivates them.

First, children's social pretend play can promote development both in the
domains of cognition and language and in dimensions of social competence, such as
self-regulation and cooperation. Second, tapping play's value in the education of young
children is not purely a matter of alternating didactic/academic instruction with
unstructured free-play periods. We also need to devise educational practices that
systematically integrate the play element into the curriculum in carefully structured ways
that simultaneously engage children's enthusiasm and provide scope for their own
initiative and creativity (Nicolopoulou, et.al, 2009).