Reading Comprehension of Prose and Poem Texts

Abstract

This study has been designed to find out the reading comprehension ability of the ninth graders of Tehrathum district, especially of Nepali and non-Nepali mother tongue students. It shows the comprehension ability among the students of 5 different government aided schools. It also compares the reading comprehension ability between seen and unseen texts, poetic and prose texts and Nepali and non-Nepali mother tongue students. Such type of comparativestudy has not been conducted in Tehrathum district, regarding reading comprehension ability. To conduct the research, the researcher took the sample population studying in grade nine by stratified random sampling procedure of Tehrathum district. Twenty students were selected from each school for the data collection and among 20 students, 10 were ethnic and remaining 10 werenon-ethnic group students. Only written materials were provided to the students to collect data. After collecting the answer sheets, they were checked and markwasassigned. The finding of this study shows that the students of grade nine of Tehrathum district can comprehend seen and prose texts better than unseen and poetic texts. On the basis of this research the ethnic group students have better reading comprehension ability than non-ethnic group students. This study consists of four chapters. The first chapter consists of general background and short description of reading comprehension ability. It also includes the review of the related literature, objective of the study, and significance of the study. The second chapter deals with the methodology adopted for the study. Under methodology, the sources of data collection,sampling procedure, tools for data collection, process of data collection and limitation of the study are included.The third chapter consists of analysis and interpretation of data obtained from the students’ answer sheets by using simple statistical tools. It consists of two parts. The first part deals with analysis and interpretation of poetic and prose texts, and seen and unseen texts by whole students. The second part deals with analysis and interpretation of poetic and prose texts, and seen and unseen texts by ethnic and non-ethnic students. The fourth chapter deals with the recommendations made on the basis of findings of the study. The reference section and some appendices are presented there after.