CHAPTER V SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
2. Student's Performance in the Three Language Modalities
2.1. Reading. Students have generally low performance in all the test areas in the learning modality of reading with an average correct rating of 24.91 percent and a verbal equivalent of poor. In fact, it was only in three out of the 16 modality items that the percent correct scores were above 50 percent and these pertains to phonetic analysis, title selection and topic sentence. The modality item with highest percent correct score is phonetic analysis followed
by title selection and then by topic sentence.
The performance of the students in the modality of reading is poor and not at par of what is expected of them. It is clear that their skill has not matured as they were performing better only on early skills of reading like word recognition specifically phonetic analysis and outlining and summarizing particularly title selection and topic sentence. Their skills have not grown and expanded to the advance skills of reading like comprehension and have not shown sustainability to warrant full understanding of the reading material.
2.2. Listening. Students generally showed a low average performance with a mean correct score of 40.41 percent. This value may appear lower than 50 percent, however, looking at the component items, it can be noted that items 3B and 3D showed higher values of 58.78 and 83.87 respectfully.
However, a zero score was obtained for item 3C and only 14.85 percent for item 3A. The apparent heterogeneity in performance in the four items indicates an inconsistent skill of the respondents. It appears that item 3C is foreign to all the respondents that they had not experienced or encountered it and failed to comprehend and process the information.
2.3. Speaking. Students generally showed an average performance with a mean correct score of 47.74 percent. This means that similar to listening, the
students were performing at an average level in the modality of speaking.
However, numerically it can be noted that the performance was lower in speaking. Furthermore, looking at the individual items, it can be observed that the score were homogeneous.
This indicates that the performance of the students in the modality items of speaking was consistent and all were below 50 percent. The low average rating of the students in this modality is not only consistent with the results obtained in reading and listening but is alarming, considering that these students are at the sophomore level. It appears that the students’ speaking skills have not matured in spite their being able to have undergone the Freshman English courses, or their exposure to the English media.
The occurrence of this low performance phenomenon in speaking that is consistent with reading and listening reflects on the inadequacy and ineffectiveness of the Basic English courses that the students have undergone in addressing their linguistic needs.
3. Differences Between the Performance of Students and each of the Profile Variables
For gender, the p-value for Listening and Speaking is below 0.05 indicating that the performance of the male and the female students are
significantly different. This means that gender is a factor that affects the listening and speaking skills of the students.
For reading however, a p-value greater than 0.05 was obtained which indicates that gender is a significant factor that influences the reading skills of these students. It is interesting to note that while co-education at the tertiary level was adapted by the Thai Nguyen University, it appears that male and female students have different abilities in terms of learning the modalities of listening and speaking but not reading. This knowledge then would lead to specialized learning modules for male and female students on listening and speaking and a non-gender specific module for reading.
On the aspect of Parent’s Education, it can be noted that only in the Tertiary vs. Elementary was a significant difference noted for speaking. This means that the parents’ education affect the speaking skills of the students and this effect is specially observed among tertiary educated parents and those below secondary or educated otherwise.
For place of origin, it can be observed that in all three modalities, the p- values were below 0.05 and are significantly different for urban and rural origin. This means that this is an important factor in the learning performance of the students in all three modalities. In the case of the type of High School, it
can be noted that all the p-values were below 0.05 indicating that performance of the students in the three modalities are significantly different for both the private and public schools. The private schools were performing better than those in public schools. This means that education in the public schools particularly on the English language has to improve to be at par with those in private schools.