Evaluation of Teaching Reading Strategies Used by Early Grade Teachers

Abstract

Importance of reading skills is admissible especially for early graders’
future learning. However, there is interdependency between students’
reading skills and their teachers’ ‘teaching reading strategies’. Hence the
focus of the current study was to evaluate ‘teaching reading’, i.e. phonemic
awareness, word recognition, reading fluency and text comprehension, to
early grades by reading teachers. For this purpose, quantitative research
with survey method was based on field observation was conducted. Selfdeveloped tool i.e. structured observation schedule was used for data
collection. The data was collected through performance checklist, hence a
manageable sample, through convenient sampling in the sense of
willingness to be observed, was selected of primary school English
teachers (n = 10). Three consecutive observations were conducted of each
participant of the study. Descriptive statistics, i.e., frequencies, percentage
and mean were used to analyze the collected data. The results of the study
show that generally the teachers focus on oral expression and meanings of
difficult words. While majority of them least use ‘teaching reading
strategies recommended for developing phonemic awareness, fluency
through repeated reading practices among students and the strategies
helpful for text comprehension