DIFFICULTIES IN READING COMPREHENSION AND METACOGNITIVE

STRATEGIES FOR TECHNOLOGY LIVELIHOOD EDUCATION STUDENTS

Yolanda P. Garcia, Avril Joy R. Ramayan, Arthur P. Sepe & Adelfa C. Silor
Faculty of College of Education
Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology
ced.researchandpublication@gmail.com
Bonavie M. Castillon & Maria Thenice P. Rosel
Students of Technology and Livelihood Education
Mindanao State university-Iligan Institute of Technology
ced.researchandpublication@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
This study aimed to analyze the students difficulties in reading comprehension and their
metacognitive strategies in analyzing the lesson in technology and livelihood education in the college
of education, MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology, Iligan City Philippines. Simple random sampling
design was used to determine the Difficulties in Reading Comprehension and Metacognitive
Strategies Among TLE Students. The random survey method was used to find out and describe the
personal profile of respondents and the students knowledge, difficulties in reading, metacognitive
strategies and comprehension level during reading. There were 30 respondents who were identified
by putting their names on the bowl and were chosen by picking up. The samples were selected on the
basis of the knowledge and connection of the researchers to the respondents. It is through the
researchers personal and classmate relationships with the respondents to ensure the participation
and completion of this survey. Findings reveal that comprehension is very important to the TLE
students. Because the goal of reading is to derive meaning, without comprehension, reading is simply
following words on a page from left to right while sounding them out. Reading comprehension is
incredibly complex and multifaceted. Because of this, readers do not develop the ability to
comprehend texts quickly, easily or independently. TLE students also used their metacognitive
strategies to be aware of their thinking processes as they learn, and control their goals, dispositions,
and attention in reading comprehension.
Field of Research:

Metacognitive Strategies, Difficulties in Reading Comprehension,

Technology and Livelihood Education Students

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1. Introduction
Reading is cross-curricular. Everyone is ought to read and understand in what they are reading
about. Reading aids the learner in protecting himself, in acquiring information, in securing
enjoyment, and thereby in becoming a more contented and useful member of the society.
Reading also is being applied also in TLE subject so as comprehending on what they have read. For
instance, reading its main ingredients, measurements of the ingredients, procedures, the dos and
donts in cooking and what are the tools and equipments to use. Memorizing, analyzing and
interpreting in every word are very necessary because it is important to follow the right
measurements, what possibly ingredients to buy and how you will have a perfect output by
following its exact procedure. Without comprehension, we cannot accomplish our task if we do not
understand what we have read. Students cannot do their work without reading and comprehending.

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It is important that the learners understand what they have read. Without comprehending there will
be no imparting knowledge. Many of the students do not understand what they are reading about.
They lack understanding and expression. They could not summarize what they read. The result is an
increasing number of students who are inadequate in reading. Reading is the most important skill to
be developed in the school curriculum. The success or failure of students in their future studies will
depend very much on their mastery in reading. There are students who are fast readers and
understand very well what they read, fair readers who possess satisfactory reading ability, and poor
readers who are very slow in reading and comprehend less. Given these concerns, learners of today
must understand a wide range of concept and skills and should start with reading. The researchers
chosen TLE students for the reason that they can extend their environment from home and
community to the world as a whole. The ability to read is a goal as well as a fundamental basic tool
of education. It enables them to satisfy personal and functional needs. It is a basic skill to success in
other areas of study in order to pursuit learning, critical thinking, and enjoyment. They are in a
modern world so they need to cope with it for reading takes a big part in the past changing world.
2. Reading as a four-step process
Reading is a purposeful of identifying, and evaluating ideas in terms of the mental content or
awareness of the reader. It is a complex process that is dependent upon the individuals language
development, experiential background, cognitive ability and attitude towards reading. Reading
ability results from the application of these factors as the individual attempts to identify interpret
and evaluate ideas from written materials (Bayeta and Talingting , 2006). According to William Gray,
known as the Father of Reading, defines reading as a four-step process which starts from perception
as the ability to pronounce the word as a meaningful unit. Then, comprehension as the ability to
make the individual words evoke useful ideas as they are read in context. Followed by reaction as
judgmental action and feeling about what the author has said. And finally, integration as the ability
to assimilate the idea into ones background of experience. These four steps are completely
interdependent for meaningful use of reading as a tool in the solution of problems.

At the most basic level reading is the recognition of words. From simple recognition of the individual
letters and how these letters form a particular word to what each word means not just on an
individual level, but as part of a text. In English, as in many other languages, different combinations
of the same letters can be used to form different words with completely different meanings. So, the
letters t c a, can make cat (an animal that goes miaow), and act (which has a number of meanings
from do something to behave in certain ways, to perform in a play or film). Recognition of the actual
word is not enough on its own to constitute reading. Understanding what we are reading is key and
is certainly the main point of teaching reading in a class. Reading proficiency is the royal road to
knowledge; it is essential to the success in all academic subjects. In modern life, learning depends
largely upon ones ability to interpret the printed page accurately and fully. The introduction to the
report of Carnegie conference of Reading Experts include this statement: reading is the most
important subject to be learned by children; a child will learn a little else in todays world if he does
not first learn to read properly (Alao and Jacob, 2008 ). Success in reading, ad Holmes pointed out,
may result from a deep seated value system, the presence of which facilitates the functional
organization of those sub skills. interested in. Student writing assignments can be tailored to their
ability and lower achievements. The teacher overall concept of reading strongly influence his
method of diagnosing reading difficulty and of teaching reading. If he thinks of reading primarily as a
visual task, he will be concerned with the concretion of visual defects and the provision of legible
reading materials. If reading to him is word recognition, he will drill on the basic word recognition
skills. If he thinks reading is a merely reproducing what the author says, he will direct the students
attention to the literal meaning of the passage and check his comprehension. If he views reading as
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a thinking process, he will be concerned with the readers interpretations and generalizations, in
drawing inferences and conclusions. If he thinks of reading as a contributing to personal
development and social welfare, he will provide his students with reading materials that will help
them develop sounds values that will have some application to their lives and to the modern world
(Alao and Jacob, 2008).
3. Metacognitive Strategies
Metacognitive strategies are desirable to all learners. Students with good metacognitive skills are
flexible in their approaches to learning. They possess a number of strategies to best cope with the
information they need to interact with, and can assess which ones to use at the most appropriate
times. Reading comprehension also is important. Without comprehension, reading is simply
following words on a page from left to right while sounding them out. The words on the page have
no meaning. And while people read for many different reasons, the chief goal is to derive some
understanding of what the writer is trying to convey and make use of that information whether for
fact gathering, learning a new skill, or for pleasure. Thats why reading comprehension skills are so
important. Without them, the reader cannot gather any information and use it to efficiently function
and enjoy the richness of life. Some of the TLE students are lack of awareness when it comes to their
metacognitive strategies in reading and this will lead also in the difficulties of their reading
comprehension. Since reading is a cross curricular activity, it is needed to all fields of education, and
that includes TLE subjects. With this, the researchers want to know the metacognitive strategies of
TLE students during reading and it aims also to know the difficulties in reading comprehension
encountered by the students in their lessons since TLE subjects needs comprehension in doing their
working skills and because reading is required to learn in most of the subjects. And also the
researchers want to prove that TLE subject in reading comprehension is no exception because
reading is being applied in our daily lives.
4. Reading Comprehension
Traditionally, there has been a tendency among educators to view the primary grades as the time to
hone-word recognition skills, with comprehension developed in the later grades. Increasingly, this
view is rejected, with many demonstrations that interventions aimed at improving comprehension
that is, interventions beyond word-recognition instruction do, in fact, make an impact during the
primary years. The authors in the Block and Pressley, edited book, in particular, recognize that the
starting point for the development of many comprehension skills is teacher modeling of those skills.
Hence, there is much commentary in the book about modeling, monitoring, and so on. Also, the
authors were impressed that when researchers have asked primary-level- students to use
comprehension strategies and monitoring. the children have benefited greatly from it[1]. There is
definitely interest in expanding comprehension instruction in the early elementary grades, with the
expectation that such instruction will affect 5 to 8 year olds dramatically in the short term and
perhaps lead to development of better comprehension skills over the long term. Reading is a
metacognitive activity of sampling, predicting, testing, and conforming; taking corrective action
when failures in comprehension are found. Comprehension means combining the readers
background experience or prior knowledge with the new text information within the new text
information within the context of the reading situation (Illustico and Macion, 2008). Reading
comprehension is viewed, on one hand, as a complex intellectual process involving many skills and
possible sub skills leading to a debate as to which sub skills are most essential to global
comprehension. On the other hand, there are some experts who have argued that reading
comprehension is primarily a matter of vocabulary knowledge and reasoning, rather than a long
series of component sub skills. Reading is a multifaceted process [4]. For students to adequately
comprehend text, they will need an awareness of print, which can be obtained through multiple
channels to facilitate word recognition. Lack of phonological sensitivity did impede reading, but
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other factors came into play as students progressed through the different levels of reading
comprehension. These factors are evident because fluent readers . In addition to decoding skills,
students need vocabulary knowledge and metacognitive skills so they can monitor their
understanding and reflect on what has been read.
5. Theoretical Framework

Profile: Age Gender

Reading Difficulties
Difficulty in Understanding
Lack of Focus
Laziness in Reading
No aids in Reading
Reading as Boring
Problem in Vocabulary
Metacognitive Strategies
Taking Key Ideas
Overviewing Book
Visualizing what they read
Interpreting Book
Importance of Predicting a Reading
Focus in Reading

SCORE
IN
READING
COMPREHENSION
TEST
IN
TLE
LESSON

Figure 1: Theoretical Framework of the Study

6. Methodology
6.1 Sample and data collection method
The researchers randomly selected the students from the Mindanao State of University-Iligan
Institute of Technology at the College of Education who are 4th yr BSE TLE students. This study was
conducted at the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology the College of Education
during the first semester of the Academic Year 2013-2014. The said school is located particularly at
Tibanga, Iligan City. This study was based on simple random sampling. There were 30 respondents
who were identified by putting their names on the bowl and were chosen by picking up. The samples
were selected on the basis of the knowledge and connection of the researchers to the respondents.
It is through the researchers personal and classmate relationships with the respondents to ensure
the participation and completion of this survey. The respondents who were selected were informed
through text and approached and were given survey questionnaires.

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6.2 Instrumentation
A questionnaire was the main instrument used to gather specific informations for this study. The
questions were formulated based on the research questions and hypothesis of this study. The
question of the survey has designed to test the two hypotheses of this thesis. The behavior rating
scale were used to measure the respondents multi-dimension constructs for the measurements.
The questions were organized into three sections. Before the respondents begin to answer the
survey, they were provided with a TLE reading lesson. In Section A, it consists of 5 questions which
determined the comprehension level. Section B included 20 questions which determined the
respondents metacognitive strategies during reading. Section C included 20 questions which
determined the respondents comprehension difficulties.
After the adviser validated the questionnaire, the researchers sent a letter to the students asking
permission to conduct a survey at the Department of Home Technology Education. The class list of
fourth year BSE TLE students who were officially enrolled in the year 2013 2014 was taken from
the college registrar, Mr. Jun Micabalo. There were 72 fourth year students and only 30 were taken
to serve as the respondents. They were given the questionnaire and were brief about how to fill it
up. After answering the questionnaire, it was collected personally by the researchers.
7. Finding & Discussion
Findings/Analysis
Table 1: Difficulties in Reading Comprehension Encountered by the Respondents
Reading Difficulties
1. I have difficulty understanding difficult words that I
read.
2. I forget vocabulary words I learn.
3. I have difficulty getting the overall ideas when I read
material for my classes.
4. I have difficulty understanding the main idea when I
read.
5. I have difficulty understanding the details when I read.
6. I have difficulty understanding stories that I read.
7.I read slowly.
8.I have difficulty understanding what I read from the
computer screen.
9.I don't usually use aids to help me read.
10. I lose place frequently when I read.
11. I get tired quickly/and or get headaches when I read.
12. I lack of concentration when I read.
13. I usually get distracted from any means.
14. I usually get bored.
15. I cant read or pronounce the long, hard words.
16. I cant understand most of the hard words.
17. Sometimes I dont understand what I read.
18. I forget a lot of what I read right afterwards.

Variance

Mean

0.81

3.50

Very Often

0.51

3.20

Often

0.68

2.97

Often

0.81

2.77

Often

0.63
0.53
1.33

2.70
2.50
2.45

Often
Often
Often

0.9

2.83

Often

0.75
0.7
1.13
0.63
0.71
0.86
0.48
0.4
0.59
0.66

2.73
2.54
2.90
2.83
3.00
3.03
2.27
2.50
2.60
2.40

Often
Often
Often
Often
Often
Often
Seldom
Often
Often
Seldom

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19. I forget a lot of what I read a few days later.

20. I do not understand new vocabulary.
TOTAL

0.73
0.75

2.60
2.27
2.73

Often
Seldom
Often

Table 1 showed that the highest mean of the TLE students answered is the difficulty in
understanding difficult words that they read which involves in their vocabulary and that is the
second highest mean they answered which is forgetting the vocabulary words that they learn. This
learning difficulty affects the TLE students ability to understand the meaning of words and passages.
People with a learning disability in reading comprehension have difficulty understanding the
important ideas in reading passages[5]. They have difficulty with basic reading skills such as word
recognition. In some cases, they may read aloud with little difficulty but do not understand or
remember what theyve read. Their phrasing and fluency are weak. They frequently avoid reading
and are frustrated with reading tasks in school. Naturally, reading comprehension problems affect
many academic areas. The lowest mean answered by the TLE students is that they cant read or
pronounce long hard words seldom. It is never a problem of the TLE students to pronounce long
hard words because most of them can do so. Students have limitations in their ability to say or
pronounce certain sounds. These are speech development issues, not reading issues. This is where
the student, for various reasons, is not saying specific sounds correctly. On the average, the
difficulties encountered by TLE students is between seldom to often based on the results using
mean standard deviation, that is, 2.73 0.73.
Table 2: Respondents Metacognitive Strategies During Reading
Standard
Deviation

Mean

Remark

1. I believe that it is easier to understand a reading passage if we

memorize some of the information in it
2. I take down the key ideas when reading

0.84

3.70

Very Often

0.89

3.80

Very Often

3. I read other references and read about the topic

1.04

3.60

Very Often

4. I see to it that I understand what I am reading about

0.71

4.33

Very Often

5. I underline or highlight key ideas so they stand out

0.68

4.38

Very Often

6. I try to picture or visualize information to help remember what

I read
7. I have a purpose in mind when I read

0.64

4.27

Very Often

0.79

4.27

Very Often

8. I decide, before reading a book, whether it is vital or

background reading
9. I go over a book before diving into chapter one.

0.71

3.67

Very Often

0.78

3.59

Very Often

10. I check the contents of page for relevance before reading a

book.
11. I look for summaries at the end of the chapter

0.93

3.80

Very Often

0.95

3.70

Very Often

12. I believe that it is important to predict what will happen after

reading a story
13. When I read, I should simply get the information from the
reading passage.

0.90

3.77

Very Often

0.68

3.87

Very Often

Metacognitive Strategies

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14. Books can have different meanings from different people.

0.77

4.21

Very Often

15. I read slowly but carefully to be sure I understand what Im

reading
16. I try to get back on track when I lose concentration

0.79

4.00

Very Often

0.65

4.28

Very Often

17. I adjust my reading speed according to what Im reading

0.80

4.10

Very Often

18. When text becomes difficult, I pay closer attention to what

Im reading
19. I stop from time to time and think about what Im reading

0.83

4.00

Very Often

0.77

3.43

Often

20. I try to picture or visualize information to help remember

what I read
TOTAL

0.73

4.23

Very Often

0.79

3.95

Very Often

It can be gleaned in the Table 2 that on the average TLE students rated very often used their
metacognitive strategies during reading. The range of their answers based on the results using
mean standard deviation is 3.95 0.79, that is, their answers are around often to always only.
They answered with the highest mean of very often in underlining or highlighting key ideas so they
stand out during reading. Taking key ideas was very useful for the TLE students to understand well
every key points and the whole thought of the passage, that is, key ideas gives us a summarization
and simple words that contains the thought of the passage that makes the students to overview the
book simpler. Highlighting was used to help students organize what they have read by selecting
what is important. This strategy teaches students to highlight only the key words, phrases,
vocabulary, and ideas that are center in understanding the reading[6]. Also, they are very often to
picture out or visualize information in which this strategy helps a lot the readers to think and
imagine what really the meaning and thought of what they read. If they comprehend using this
strategy, it will retain in their mind much longer. But they are often used stop and think strategy, to
stop every passage and think the meaning of what they read which the lowest mean is.

Figure 3: Score of TLE Students in Reading Comprehension Test

Figure 3 showed that 43.5% of the students got the score of 2 and 3 out of 5 and only 3% got a
perfect score. None of the students scored below 2 and about 66.5% of the students passed the
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comprehension test. In the average, the TLE student got 2.37 or approximately 3 out of 5 which is a
passing a score. It signifies that TLE students have a moderate level of comprehension on that
particular reading comprehension test.
Relationship between Metacognitive Strategies and Test Score

Score

Metacognitive Thinking Strategy

Taking Key Overviewing
Ideas
Book

Visualizing
Interpretin
what we
g Book
read

Importanc
e
of Focus in
Predicting Reading
a Story

Pearson
Correlation

0.038

-0.051

0.129

-0.141

0.349

0.130

Sig.
tailed)

0.843

0.788

0.496

0.458

0.059

0.494

30

30

30

30

30

30

(2-

Table above shows that the score of students in comprehension test has no significant relationship
with their answers in any of metacognitive thinking strategy at 95% confidence level. It seems to say
that whatever the score of the students does not affect their answers in metacognitive thinking
strategies. One reason being observed is they look these strategies important in reading
comprehension regardless of their scores whether they got high or low score. It means that TLE
students seem to have the same perspective on the importance of these strategies. It was shown in
table 2 that they answered and considered these things very often. Considering the less variability of
the score, most of the scores is in 2 and 3 it gives us an idea that TLE students seem to have the
same level of comprehension and it shown in Figure 2 that their level of comprehension is moderate.
Approximately, TLE students have the same level of comprehension and the same view of the
importance of metacognitive skills strategies. But, the answers of the TLE students in metacognitive
thinking skills strategies are independent to their level of comprehension.
8. Conclusion and Future Recommendation
Comprehension is very important to the TLE students. Because the goal of reading is to derive
meaning, hence, without comprehension, reading is simply following words on a page from left to
right while sounding them out. Reading comprehension is incredibly complex and multifaceted.
Because of this, readers do not develop the ability to comprehend texts quickly, easily or
independently. TLE students also used their metacognitive strategies to be aware of their thinking
processes as they learn, and control such matters as goals, dispositions, and attention in reading
comprehension.
Acknowledgement
This paper is a collaborative research among faculty and students of the College of Education,
Mindanao State University-Iligan institute of Technology with the Dean Prof. Esmar N. Sedurifa , Vice
Chancellor for Research and Extension Dr. Jinky B. Bornales, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Dr.
Edgar W. Ignacio and the Chancellor Dr. Sukarno D. Tanggol.

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Underlining.

Logsdon,
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http://learningdisabilities.about.com/od/learningdisabilitybasics/p/rdgcomprhnsn.htm. Retrieved:
October 17, 2013

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