Language Learning Characteristics of Grade 10 Students with Word Recognition Challenges

ABSTRACT

The Department of Education “strongly encouraged” all elementary and secondary public schools to intensify their advocacy particularly for reading (Sadongdong and Colina, 2019). This study identified errors relative to word recognition in the case of female and male Grade 10 students of the Pangasinan School of Arts and Trades (PSAT), a public secondary school located in Lingayen, Pangasinan, Philippines. The students’ errors in word recognition were classified and analyzed as they occurred in sentence and paragraph contexts, and the variables potentially associated to the commission of such errors. The study utilized a descriptive and correlational research design. The research population was determined by requesting a sex-disaggregated profile of the poor and struggling readers indicated in the recent Report on Reading of Grade 10 students. There are similarities and differences in the English words subject to word recognition failure in terms of word length, phonemic structure, and parts of speech. There is a higher rate of word recognition failure when English words are read in phrasal or sentential contexts than if the words are read in isolation. Learners who manifest isolated word recognition failure also manifest contextualized word recognition failure in parallel rates. Learners experience challenge in both isolated and contextualized word recognition regardless of their type as struggling or poor readers, sex, language preference, motivation to learn English vocabulary, and motivation to speak English. This study offers an inventory of English words susceptible to word recognition failure as bases for reading instruction and the preparation of reading tests.

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