INTERVENTION MEASURES TO ENHANCE FRESHMAN STUDENTS ’ MACRO-SKILLS
D. How does the use of tobacco affect one’ health?
3. Significant Relationships Between Pairs of Macro-Skills in English
To determine whether significant relationships exist in the students’
performance among the macro-skills in English language, the mean percent scores of the students in the four macro-skills of the English language namely:reading, writing, listening and speaking were compared.
It can be observed that in general, the p-values were below 0.05, indicating that the mean percent scores being compared were significantly different. This indicates that in majority of the macro-skills, significant differences exist and are therefore not related to each other. Only in one instance where a p-value can be seen as above 0.05, that is, between the means of the macro-skill reading and listening. In these two mean combinations, the p-value was 0.734796, which is not significantly different.
This indicates that the two macro-skills are related to each other and are predictive of each other.
4. Difficulties Students Have in the Macro-Skills of the English Language The difficulties that students have in the macro-skills of the English language were determined based on the mean percent scores they obtained for each test item in the four macro-skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking.
The mean percent scores of less than 50 percent were considered difficult.
Furthermore, the mean percent scores were ranked from lowest to highest and those with Rank 1 were considered most difficult.
It can be observed that out of the seventeen skill items for reading, six have mean percent score of less than 50 percent. These skill items can be considered as difficult items for the students. This indicates that the students have difficulties in reading and it is mainly in their comprehension skills followed by word recognition skills and lastly their utilization skills.
For writing, it can be noted that there are three items out of 10 that had mean percent score of less than 50 percent and can be considered as difficult.
Two of these items belong to sharpening writing skills, while one item belongs to the sentence correction skill. This indicates that the students have difficulties in their writing skills mainly in the aspect of sharpening their writing skills followed by sentence correction skills.
In listening, one out of five items had a mean percent score of less than 50 percent. This item is Comprehension 2, which is of similar type to item Comprehension 1. The low score obtained for item 30 could be due to the unfamiliarity of the students about the concept, hence their failure in giving the correct answer.
As regard to speaking, no item has a mean percent score of below 50 percent. Instead there is an item that has a rank of 1, and it has the lowest mean percent score among the three items. When compared with the other difficult items in the other macro-skills, it may be considered as moderately difficult. It indicates that among the three items in speaking, the most difficult item for the students is that which pertains to pronunciation.
It can be noted that there are more difficult items in the macro-skill of reading which comprised of six items out of 17, followed by writing composed of three items out of 10, and lastly by both listening which consists of one item out of five and speaking which covers one item out of three. While this seemingly is the pattern, if the percentage of the difficult items will be calculated relative to the total items, it can be observed that all ends up to a percentage of approximately 20 or 35.3 percent like reading is six out of 17 or 35.3 percent; writing is three out of10 or 30 percent; speaking is one out three or 33.3 percent; and listening is one out of five or 20 percent. Thus, it becomes
clear that around 20 or 35.3 percent of the areas in macro-skills of the English language are actually found to be difficult by the students. Reading had the highest percent of difficult items, followed by speaking, then by writing and lastly by listening.
5. Difficulties in Macro-Skills that Appear to be Relatively More Serious
While skill items can be recognized as difficult based on their mean percent score of less than 50 percent, some of these macro-skills can be considered as serious difficult items based on the very low mean percent scores, that is, they had mean percent scores of less than 25 percent. This means that only less than 25 percent of the students are able to answer these skill items correctly.
It can be observed that out of the 11 difficult items listed, seven have mean percent scores of less than 25 percent and are therefore considered to be relatively serious. These skill items were ranked from one to seven according to the degree of their lowest mean percent score. Four of these serious items belong to the macro-skill reading, followed by two items from writing and lastly by listening. The most serious of these items are those that pertain to comprehension skills in both reading and listening. The other three serious items are associated with utilization skills in reading, and sharpening writing skills.
Reading and listening comprehension as serious difficulties to address would entail several component skills and time for skills development.
Comprehension entails cumulative knowledge in vocabulary and word use.
Comprehension is the highest level of skill that the student must develop as functional understanding comes as a consequence of comprehension. Without comprehension, no understanding of the idea being conveyed will happen. The writing skills on the other hand are more on the convention, being able to properly place the words to deliver a smooth, and clear idea. Thus, writing skills entail familiarity with the grammatical rules and their correct use in various context. In fact, writing skills come next to comprehension skills, and that pattern is well confirmed and established in the findings of this study.
6. Intervention Measures that may be Proposed to Enhance the Macro- Skills of Students
The criteria considered in the design of an appropriate intervention measures to address the difficulties of the students in the macro-skills of the English language specially for this population of students include item skills where the students showed poor performance that is below 25 percent mean score; items showing the highest rank among the most difficult items in the cluster; and items show statistically significant relationships.
The criteria included the three macro-skills, namely: reading, writing,
and listening. In reading, it should include comprehension skills, particularly sequence, finding details and finding the main idea; and utilization skills particularly outlining. In writing, it should include sentence correction particularly grammatical relationship and sharpening writing skills particularly using words effectively. In listening, it should include comprehension skills.
This is based on the percent of correct answer (<25%), the ranking according to the degree of difficulty, and the p-value showing relationship of mean combinations that is p-value >0.05.
Conclusion
Based on the findings of the study, the following conclusions are drawn:
1. The learning contents of a General English Course comprised of the macro skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing designed to give students confidence to communicate effectively.
2. The level of students’ performance in the macro-skills in reading, writing listening and speaking the English language were all of average level of the given student population.
3. All but one of the six pairs of macro-skills in English language showed significant relationships with each other. Only reading and listening was found not related to each other.
4. Students encountered difficulties in comprehension for macro skills in reading and listening; sharpening writing skill for macro kill in writing;
and pronunciation for the macro skill in speaking.
5. The most serious among the difficulties in macro-skills are those that pertain to comprehension skills both in Reading and Listening.
6. The intervention measures proposed were composed of select strategies designed to improve skills where students demonstrated poor performance.
Recommendation
In the light of the findings and conclusions of the study, the following are the conclusions:
1. English teachers have to be encouraged to provide more language exercises for their students to improve their language deficiencies.
2. Utilization of the proposed intervention measures is recommended to validate their usefulness.
3. Similar studies on English language macro skills be conducted on universities to determine their students language performance.
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