ABSTRACT
The study investigates the Effect of Comprehension Monitoring Strategy on Achievement and Interest of Low–Achieving Students in Reading Comprehension. Four research questions and four null hypotheses were generated to guide the study. The design of the study was a quasi-experimental non-randomized pretest-posttest control group design involving one experimental group and one control group. The sample consists of one hundred and twenty seven (127) low-achieving senior secondary school class 11(SS11) students from two schools in Uzo-Uwani LGA in Nsukka Education Zone of Enugu State. Two instruments used for the study were a researcher-constructed Test of Comprehension (TOC) in two forms – I and II and a Reading Comprehension Interest Scale (RCIS). These were validated by experts and used for data collection. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while analysis of covariance was used to test the hypotheses. Major findings of the study reveal that exposing low-achieving students in the skills associated with comprehension monitoring strategy has a facilitative effect on their reading comprehension achievement. Maleness or femaleness did not have a significant effect on the mean achievement scores of low-achieving students exposed to comprehension monitoring strategy in their reading comprehension. Instructing low-achieving students in comprehension monitoring strategy has a facilitative effect on their interest in reading comprehension. The effect of maleness or femaleness on the mean interest score of low-achieving students exposed to comprehension monitoring strategy in their reading comprehension was not significant. Based on these findings, conclusions were drawn and the educational implications discussed. Major recommendations made were: first, that teachers should take time to expose the low-achieving students to well planned learning strategy instruction by explaining and demonstrating the learning strategies that can enable students to read, understand and also solve other academic problems. Second, teachers should encourage the low-achieving students to demonstrate the techniques among their peers with the teacher supplying prompt corrective feedbacks. Third, both male and female low-achieving students should be exposed to comprehension monitoring strategy without any form of discrimination since they all benefit equally from such exposure.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
             The ability to read and comprehendis very crucial in the life of every learner. It helps to ensure a successful academic achievement. Reading has been explained as a complex cognitive process of identifying and decoding symbols. Comprehension is the understanding and interpretation of what is read. Without comprehension reading would be empty and meaningless (Cornelissen, Kringelbach, Ellis, Whitney, Holiday & Hansen, 2009).             Â
             Reading comprehension is ultimatelytargeted at helping a reader understand text. Reading comprehension is defined as the level of understanding of a text (Wikipedia, 2010). It involves the process of understanding, decoding the writer’s words and then using background knowledge to construct an approximate understanding of the writer’s message. Reading comprehension is the process of encoding and processing information by relating information to the prior stored experiences or ideas. It is an effort to understand a text being read (Block & Pressley, 2001). The need to read permeates all the school subjects in the arts, sciences and social sciences. In the context of this study, reading comprehension is the process of constructing meaning more effectively and efficiently from text and helping a reader identify and understand text. Students who have trouble learning to decode and recognize words often have difficulty with reading comprehension (Reading Study Group, 2002).       For low-achieving students therefore, reading for comprehension is not just for pleasure, but to be able to understand information for proper adjustment in the environment (Onuigbo, 2008). Students who struggle with decoding rarely have a chance to interact with more difficult text and often tend to dislike reading. As a result, these students do not have sufficient opportunities to develop the language skills and strategies necessary for becoming proficient readers and sometimes they are labeled low-achieving students (Klingner & Vaughn, 1999).        Â
   Low-achieving students are those students whose achievement are consistently below average grade level, and who may have numerous aversions associated with learning (Montague, 1998). Nye (2002) described low-achieving students as those students who consistently achieve below an expected level of performance. Low achieving students need to be helped to break the cycle of failure. Assisting these students is a requisite for improved academic performance (Moore, Bean, Birdyshaw, & Rycik, 1999). Low achievement could be influenced not only by genetic factors but could be due to carelessness of the students; peer group influence; other environmental factors such as poor teaching methods or strategies and relationship with teachers and parents (Obioma and Ohuche, 1985).                                                                                                                       Â
A large part of low achievement among students in schools could result from behaviour pattern that learners develop through consistent failure. It is not surprising, therefore, that some students especially those who have experienced a continuing history of failure, lack confidence in their ability to succeed. Low-achieving students often fail because they set lower academic goals, lack persistence, engage in maladaptive academic behaviours and do not invest their best effort. If well guided and assisted they will do better (Deborah & Benedict, 2008). Low-achieving students, therefore, need assistance in regaining self-confidence in their academic abilities and in developing strategies for coping with failure and persisting with problem solving effort when they experience difficulties. Katims (1997) reports that low-achieving students usually manifest inability to read, understand, and answer questions correctly. In that case, Katims further explained that students who have wrong understanding usually provide wrong answers. Khayyer (1986) pointed out that many students come into the classroom without the requisite knowledge, skills, and dispositions to read the materials placed before them competently. Many of their teachers also lack appropriate knowledge and skills, and are not resilient enough to motivate and encourage these students in order to break the cycle of failure. In this study, low-achieving students are those students who have consistently failed below average grade level of 50%. They can neither read properly nor demonstrate satisfactory understanding of texts appropriate for their grade level.
Reports of students’ massive failure from West African Examinations Council (WAEC), National Examinations Council (NECO) external examiners is a pointer to the fact that there is possibly a vast number of low- achieving students in Nigerian secondary schools. This has been a source of worry to parents, teachers, and curriculum experts, as well as local, state and federal governments. The dwindling fortunes of the nation’s education sector as reflected by the increasing low achievers in Nigerian schools in most external examinations set by WAEC started as far back as 1977 when there was a report on a case of examination mass failure (Ayo, 2010).
Reports by WAEC and NECO Chief Examiners (2007) revealed low achieving students in many subjects such as: English language, Mathematics, Literature in English, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Agricultural Science, and Fine and Applied Arts. In November 2007 GCE examinations, only 11.6% of the 423,518 candidates got the requisite credit grades in five subjects including English Language and Mathematics. The West African Examinations Council results of 2007 revealed that only 356,981 candidates representing 25.99% of the 1,373,000 entries got the requisite basic qualification grades of five credits and above, including English language and Mathematics (WAEC Chief Examiner’s report, 2007).                                                                          In 2008, the analyses done by the examination bodies revealed that most schools had poor results. In its analysis of the performance of 1,184,907 candidates who wrote the examinations, NECO recorded just 126,500 candidates with five Alphas or credit scores in subjects including English Language and Mathematics – the acceptable basic requirement for admission into tertiary institutions. NECO Registrar also announced 32,423 cases of examination malpractice with Enugu, Akwa Ibom, and Rivers states as the leading culprits. A breakdown of NECO result of year 2008 showed that only 14.45% passed from Enugu State (NECO Chief Examiner’s report, 2008).
In 2009, the Registrar of NECO reported that there was mass failure. The details of the result showed that only 10.68% of the candidates passed with credit in English and Mathematics while only 24.47% passed with at least five credits and above. The Presidency ordered an investigation into the mass failure of students in the year 2009 School Certificate Examinations (Erasmus, 2010). Ali (2009) revealed that the Minister of State for Education, expressed sadness in the recent mass poor achievement of students in the public examinations conducted by National Examination Council (NECO), West African Examination Council (WAEC), and pledged to work hard to reverse the trend (WAEC Chief Examiner’s Report, 2009) (WAEC Chief Examiner’s Report, 2010). The phenomenon of mass failure has been a recurring national problem over the past decade. This has affected many students, parents, schools and the society at large. The issue of academic achievement of students at all levels of education in Nigeria especially at secondary school level is very crucial and has been addressed from different dimensions by researchers. Asikhia (2010) for instance, pointed out that the large number of low-achieving students in schools can be attributed to students’ low retention, parental factors, association with wrong peers, poor achievement motivation, lack of teacher’s use of verbal reinforcement strategy and the likes. Asikhia (2010) further stressed that the attitude of some teachers to their job is reflected in their poor attendance to lessons, lateness to school, poor method of teaching and unsavory comments about students’ performance which could be detrimental to students’academic achievement.
Academic achievement has also been approached from the students’ factors; the students’ peers; their family; the school which includes school climate; and teaching strategies. This is probably because one of the most important goals of school is ensuring a successful academic achievement.
Achievement could be explained as accomplishing whatever goals one set for oneself. It is the attainment of standard of excellence. Achievement therefore, requires that the students make personal effort and get committed towards succeeding in their school work (Umeano & Adimora, 2010). Grobe & Bishop (2001) perceive academic achievement as something one does or achieves at school, college or university, in class, in a laboratory and fieldwork, excluding sports or music. Answer (2010), on the other hand defined academic achievement as excellence in all academic disciplines, in class as well as extracurricular activities. It includes excellence in behaviour, confidence, communication skills, punctuality, assertiveness, arts, culture and the like. Academic achievement is the overall academic performance of a student in the school. It could be assessed by the use of tests and examinations. In this study, academic achievement describes the student in his or her academic work. It is measured with term and annual results at the end of school session. However, the large number of low-achieving students has been a source of concern to parents, teachers, curriculum planners and the presidency. The general belief is that these low achieving students have a basic reading comprehension problem. For how can one do well in any test when one does not understand the text one is presented with? This has led to the organization of several workshops, seminars and conferences with the purpose of addressing the issue of reading comprehension in secondary schools especially among the low-achieving students. There have been some remediation efforts recommendating a number of teaching strategies that can possibly enhance low achieving students’ comprehension of their reading materials. This is quite unlike the conventional teaching method that views the teacher as being the controller of the learning environment; where power and responsibility are held by the teacher as he or she plays the role of instructor in the belief that it is the teacher that causes learning to occur; and where the focus is on teaching not learning (Robert, 2009).
Much of the recent research, however, on academic achievement centers on the right strategies or skills that can possibly make the students aware of their strengths and weaknesses and therefore apply the appropriate strategy that can result to gaining new knowledge and improved learning outcomes. For instance, Adler (2004) opined that there are some strategies that appear to have scientific basis for improving reading comprehension such as: cooperative learning, use of graphic and semantic organizers, question answering, question generation story telling and summarization. Recent studies by National Reading Panel (NRP, 2003) pointed out that a good number of strategies have been recommended for teaching in order to enhance students’ comprehension of what they read. The National Reading Panel identified some strategies such as summarizing, asking questions, answering questions, graphic organizers and cooperative learning. The above recommended reading comprehension strategies seem to be helpful for students’ comprehension but from the recent WAEC and NECO external examiners’ reports, there is still evidence of large number of low-achieving students in secondary schools. Some studies carried out seem to show the efficacy of comprehension monitoring strategy in helping students understand what they learn. Comprehension monitoring strategy is the ability of a reader to know, while reading, whether a text is making sense or not making sense. It involves the awareness that the purpose of reading is to derive meaning. It is the continual realization that a text is or is not making sense and the ability to employ “fix-up” strategies to address comprehension obstacle (Adler, 2004). Eze (1999) observed that comprehension monitoring is a strategy that requires the learner to establish learning goals for an instructional unit or activity; to assess the degree to which these goals are being met; and if necessary, to modify the strategies being used to achieve the goals. It is an executive function, essential for competent reading which directs reader’s cognitive process while striving to make sense of incoming information. Eze (1999) further described comprehension monitoring as a management strategy which involves the effective utilization of available resources for reading for comprehension. Comprehension monitoring strategy is an aspect of metacognition which refers to students’ knowledge about their own cognitive processes and their ability to control these processes by organizing, monitoring, and modifying them.
