The Importance of Reading in Education

involves two main skills, namely recognition and comprehension. Generally, pupils have lower performance in comprehension than in recognition. Everybody agrees that, “there is no reading without comprehension. ” Development of reading ability and increased comprehension skills need greater emphasis in learning. To achieve this goal, the teachers need to assess the pupils’ ability in reading. This is the rationale of the implementation on the use of Phil. Informal Reading Inventory (PHIL-IRI). It is a unified and standardized assessment tool supporting the DepEd thrust, “Every Child a Reader Program (ECARP).

This program aimed at making a child a reader by the end of Grade III. PHIL-IRI gives both quantitative and qualitative information about the pupils’ reading capabilities. Quantitative information shows the reading levels which include frustration, instructional and independent levels, while qualitative information reveals word recognition, patterns of errors, comprehension strengths and difficulties as well as reading behaviors and attitudes and the measurement of reading growth overtime (IRI Manual 2000). It is important that the teachers should be able to determine the reading level of his/her pupil to enable one to decide on the plans and remedies to be instituted.

The teacher may provide different exercises to those who belong to frustration and instructional and provide advance work to those in the independent level. Pupils under frustration level should be given the simplest reading materials; and generally reading it more complicated until they become an independent reader. Those who belong to Instructional level will be given more complicated reading materials, while those in the independent level should be provided with variety of reading materials and exercises that will challenge their capabilities and making them more independent.

In this, English

has become the leading medium for the transmission of information and knowledge in the conduct of business and international communication (Modern Teacher, 2002). With this, it can be noticed that Filipinos love their language advantage (superiority of usage of English compare to other Asian countries. ). This was revealed by low results in various tests conducted in English. Baysa (1999) stated in his analysis on the 1998 National Elementary Achievement Test that English is the weakest area. Poor reading has always been the complaint of many teachers particularly in the Grade IV level of Paranaque Elementary School-Central.

The failure in reading is declining to everyone. The poor readers cannot get what they should even if they read carefully and do their best. Still more importantly, the rest of the class is held back while the teacher tries hard to do something for the poor reader up to the poor group. Thus, the total loss in time and in educational values which poor readers cause in our school system is enormous. And the loss is happiness, self-confidence and security on the part of the poor reader is beyond calculation. With this concern for the enhancement of the English instruction, this study will be conducted.

Need to strengthen pupils’ English language capabilities, in particular to improve the reading comprehension of pupils in the basic education as the main concern or goal in the conduct of this research.