A Comparative Study on Reading Comprehension of Grade Eight Students of Kathmandu and Chitwan districts

Abstract

This research work attempts to compare the reading comprehension ofthe Grade Eight Studentsof Kathmandu and Chitwan districtsin a variety oftextsin terms of different variables. Altogether ten schools were selected representing private andpublicschools of Kathmandu and Chitwan districts. Ten students were selectedbyrandom sampling procedure from each of selected schools as a samplepopulation for this study. Four unseen texts were extracted from differentbooks and newspaper and both subjective and objective tests were constructedto test reading comprehension of the eighth graders. First pilot test wasconducted to find out the appropriateness of the test. The test was administeredona sample population. This study found out that thestudents studying in grade eight from theschools of Kathmandu andChitwan districts obtained 80.93 % and 80.43%respectively in total texts. This shows that there is no significant differencebetweenthe performance of the students of Kathmandu and Chitwan. In otherwords, they have same abilityto comprehendthereading texts. Theboys of Chitwan have slightly higher level comprehension skillthan the boys of Kathmandu, their scores being 83.60% and 82.13%respectively. The girls of Kathmandu have bettercomprehension skill than thegirls of Chitwan. Their scores being 79.57% and 77.20% respectively. The level of performance of the students of private schools ofKathmandu is higher than the performance of the students of private schools ofChitwan, their scores being 91.05% and 89.55% respectively. The level ofperformance of the students of publicschools of Kathmandu and Chitwan issame, their scores being 74.13% and 74.31%respectively.The students of Kathmandu and Chitwan have same comprehensionskill in poem and descriptive passage and the students of Kathmandu havegood comprehension skill in reading dialogue than the students of Chitwan. This research study consists of four chapters: Introduction,Methodology, Analysis and Interpretation and Findings andRecommendations. The first chapter contains general background, importanceof reading, what is reading comprehension, components of reading skills,testing reading comprehension, review of related literature, objectives of thestudy, significance of the study, definition of the terms. Similarly, the second chapter contains methodology, population of thestudy, tools for data collection, pilot study, the process of data collection andlimitation of the study. The third chapter deals with the analysis and interpretation of dataobtained. The marks obtained by the students have been analysed to find outtheir reading comprehension ability. Some statistical tools such as average andpercentile have been used to analyse the marks obtained by the students.Finally, the reading comprehension ability of the students of grader VIII fromprivate and public schools have been compared on the basis of the marksobtained. Finally, the fourth chapter consists of findings and recommendations ofthe study. References and appendices are presented at the end of the chapter.