Extending comprehension in critical and creat- 123docz.net

CHAPTER THREE: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

15. Extending comprehension in critical and creative ways in follow-up activities

4.1 .568 3.8 .632

Table 3.4. Participants’ beliefs and self-reported practices on reading strategies

As shown in Table 3.4., ten out of the fifteen reading strategies obtained an average score higher than 4 in the importance scale, indicating that the majority of strategies (66.7%) were considered important to instruct students by the participants. On the other hand, only eight strategies were reported by respondents to be covered in

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teaching practices with an average frequency score higher than 4. In other words, some strategies did not receive frequent instruction at class despite the fact that they were considered conducive to students‟ reading comprehension. By and large, the findings suggested that the evaluated utility of each strategy by the participants comparatively outperformed their practice frequency in the classroom; that is, slight discrepancies appeared to exist between the teachers‟ beliefs and self-reported practices on the instruction of reading strategies.

Table 3.5 shows the eight most-instructed strategies in comparison with teacher‟s rank of importance.

Strategies Mean of

frequency

Mean of importance

Rank of importance

Skimming 4.7 4.6 1

Scanning 4.5 4.6 1

Activating already-known knowledge 4.4 4.6 1

Using context to guess meaning of

unknown words 4.2 4.4 2

Questioning while reading the text 4.1 4.2 4

Taking notes or marking text 4.0 4.4 2

Summarizing 4.0 4.4 2

Previewing the text 4.0 4.3 3

Table 3.5. Most-instructed strategies in comparison with ranks of importance

As it can be seen from the table, the eight strategies reported to be often instructed (Mean ≥4) were also considered more important than the others when attaining superior ranks (1-4).

The general parallel between the importance and self-reported practice frequency of the reading strategies was supported by pair samples T-test computed for each strategy (see Appendix D). There was a positive correlation between the two sets of results among the majority of the strategies (14 out of 15), with ten strategies

presenting a significant positive correlation (p<.05). In other words, the quantitative results suggest that when a certain reading strategy was evaluated to be more useful by the teachers, it tended to be instructed more frequently in their teaching practices. These findings are consistent with Chou‟s and Abdullah et al.‟s findings that there were no significant differences between teachers‟ beliefs and their instruction of reading strategies. However, generally the frequency of a strategy being instructed in the teaching practices was not as high as their evaluated importance.

3.3. Cognitive reading strategies teachers actually instruct at classrooms

Data from the questionnaire and the classroom observations was used to answer the third research question concerning the cognitive reading strategies teachers actually instructed at classrooms.

Fifteen items on the questionnaire corresponded to the fifteen observable behaviors included on the Observation Checklist. The teacher responses to the fifteen items in Section IV of the questionnaire were analyzed for frequency. Data indicating the frequency in which teachers instruct reading strategies was analyzed by recording the number of teachers who responded to each variable. The responses for Hardly Ever, Seldom and Sometimes columns and Often and Almost Always columns were combined. The researcher then analyzed the data collected from the teacher observations for frequency. The number of times each cognitive reading strategy was observed was tallied and calculated in percentage (see Table 3.6.).

Strategy instructed

Self -report (Often/

Almost Always)

Observed Use

Extending comprehension in critical and creative ways in follow-up activities

Cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies

Teachers’ beliefs about cognitive reading strategies