Instructional strategies used by teachers in teaching reading comprehension to grade five and seven learners in selected schools in Windhoek, Khomas region, Namibia
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Date
2017
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Publisher
University of Namibia
Abstract
Since 2009, Grade five and seven learners in Namibia have been writing the National Standardized Achievement Tests (NSATs), where one grade writes at the end of one year and the other writes at the end of the following year (Directorate of National Examinations and Assessment, DNEA, 2013). This study was conducted based on the performance of the Grades five and seven learners at selected schools in Khomas Region. The purpose of this study was to find out which reading comprehension instructional strategies the teachers used to teach reading comprehension to Grades 5 and 7 learners in selected schools in Khomas region. The study used a mixed method research design, namely the qualitative aproach and the quantitative approach. The quantitative approach was used to see which reading comprehension instructional strategies teachers used to teach reading comprehension, to what extent they used them, as well as whether there was a relationship between the instructional strategies the teachers used to teach reading comprehension and the performance of learners in reading comprehension tests. The qualitative approach was used to get information about the teachers‟ understanding of reading comprehension instruction, what teachers do during reading comprehension lessons, what they do to help learners comprehend texts better, as well as to gain information on the concerns they had about the learners‟ level of understanding comprehension tests. The study aimed to answer these three questions; a) which reading comprehension instructional strategies do teachers use to teach reading comprehension to Grade five and seven learners in the selected schools in Khomas Region? b) To what extend do teachers use these instructional strategies to teach reading comprehension? c) What relationships exist between the reading comprehension instructional strategies used by teachers and the learners‟ performance on reading comprehension tests? The instruments used to collect the data were questionnaires completed by the teachers teaching English to Grades five and seven learners, classroom observational checklists used by the researchers during lesson observations and reading comprehension tests that were written by the learners. The quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive graphs, charts, and the SPSS progmamme. The qualitative data was analyzed using a thematic approach to analyze data collected through open- ended questions. The quantitative findings of the study revealed that at Grade five, at 0.01 and 0.05 levels of significance, the strategies did not contribute to the performance of the learners and their influence towards the performance of the learners was not significant. From that observation, as well as from the findings revealed by the qualitative data collected, the reading comprehension instructional strategies were known by the teachers but not used optimally so as to yield the desired results in reading comprehension tests.
Description
A thesis submitted to the university of Namibia in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Education (Literacy and Learning)
Keywords
reading comprehension