AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON THE READING ENHANCEMENT PROGRAM AND LITERARY COMPETENCE OF THE GRADE 7 STUDENTS

Abstract

This Experimental research study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of the reading enhancement program to the Literary Competence of Grade 7 students. It used quantitative methodology in the gathering of data through the pretest and posttest conducted in both experimental and control groups. The subjects of the study were the Grade 7 students of Camanlangan National High School. They were composed of two heterogeneous sections with 40 students per group. The experimental group was exposed to the Different Learning Approaches using the Differentiated Instruction (DI) while the control group used the traditional method of instruction. It was found out that there was a significant gain in the literary competence in the areas of Contextual Knowledge, Knowledge about Reading, Literary Reading Skills, and Textual Knowledge, of the students after the intervention. Furthermore, the students eagerly responded to the application of different teaching strategies as well as the use of Differentiated Instructions. It was therefore concluded that this enhancement program is an effective method of enhancing the Literary Competence and is recommended that the school administration must encourage and support the use of this approach by exposing teachers to different fora and symposia/seminars and workshops to improve their instructional competence in reading delivery so as to provide updated techniques in improving reading skills of the students. They are encouraged to give ample time to discuss the basics of grammar, especially in the rules of subject-verb agreement, the basic sentence patterns, and the different tenses of the verb, which are crucial to developing literary competence in students. KEYWORDS: Literary Competence, Contextual Knowledge, Knowledge about Reading, Literary Reading Skills, Textual Knowledge, Differentiated Instruction, Experimental research,