A Study on the Effectiveness of Teachers' Guide of Grade Nine English in Teaching Reading Comprehension

Abstract

This study aims at finding out the effectiveness of Teachers' Guide inteaching Reading Comprehension of grade nine English textbook. Forcarrying out the research forty students of grade nine of a governmentschool in Kathmandu district were taken as the sample population. A testpaper was prepared and administered to the students. Before administeringthe test for experiment a pilot test was done for the validity and reliability ofthe test paper. A pre-test was given to them in order to test their readingcomprehension ability. On the basis of the pre-test result the students weredivided into two groups based on odd-even ranking of the individualstudent's scores of the pre-test. Both the groups were taught for about amonth keeping in different classes. Group A was named experimental group and was taught using theteachers' guide and group B, non-experimental or controlled group, wastaught without using it in a usual way. Both the groups were taught the sameteaching items, using the same medium of instruction and instructionalmaterials side by side in two different time periods. For teaching differenttypes of reading comprehension texts, such as: stories, essays, drama,newspaper articles, notices, poems, were selected from the grade nineEnglish textbook. Twenty-four lesson plans were prepared but the lessonplans were slightly different for each group. Since the lesson plans for groupA were based on the instruction in the Teachers' Guide, necessaryinstructional materials were prepared and demonstrated in the class. At the end of the experimental teaching both the groups were givenpost-test at the same time period in the classroomand the result of both thetests (i.e. pre-test and post-test) were compared to determine theeffectiveness of the Teachers' Guide in teaching reading comprehension atgrade nine. The result shows that the use of Teachers' Guide is very mucheffective andbeneficial for the teachers teaching English at this level.This thesis consists of four chapters: The first chapter deals with the general background of the study. Itincludes the importance of the English language, a brief history of ELT inNepal, the role of teaching materials in teaching English, use of teachers'guide in Nepal and a brief account of secondary level English curriculumand teachers guide, a brief account of reading skill and readingcomprehension. It also consists of the review of related literature objectivesof the study and significance of the study. The second chapter deals with the methodology adopted for the study.It includes sources of data, population of the study, sampling procedure,tools and process of data collection and limitations of the study. The third chapter deals with analysis and interpretation of the dataobtained. The data have been interpreted under two main headings:i) Text-based Analysis andii) Holistic Analysis The findings and recommendations have been presented in the lastchapter i.e. chapter four. Finally, the recommendations have also beenmade.