CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND STUDIES

This chapter presents and summarizes the relevant foreign and

local literature and studies to the hypothesis and formulation of this study. The

reviewed literature and studies gave the researchers a wide-ranging perspective

and knowledge about the background of the problem into the relevance of the

present study.

Related Literature

This research entitled ‘’Assessment on the Reading Skills of Grade 7

Students’’ has reference to other studies and have been proven relevant if not

parallel to the current study. This chapter presents a review of related foreign

and local literature as well as foreign and local studies. The following discussions

of related literature and studies focus on teaching strategies, its instructional

design, key variable, and on vocabulary development. The data and information

gathered gave the researcher ample background for the development of an

instructional design pursued in this study.

Aware of the general feeling that the reading performances of our

students are below the expected level and that something should be done about

the situation, the researcher went through the tests developed and studies
conducted in reading here, in order to give insight of what and how much there is

still to do.

There are important sets of skills that are instrumental in the mastery of

several disciplines: writing, critical thinking, study skills, and reading are

fundamental in all academic learning and are best mastered by a systematic and

explicit reinforcement in the reading classes.

As a framework for educational measurement and evaluation, assessment

is quite difficult to define. According to Stiggins and his colleagues (1996)

assessment is a method of evaluating personality in which an individual, living in

a group meets and solves a variety of lifelike problems. From the view point of

Cronbach, as cited by Jagger (1997), three principal features of assessment are

identifiable: (1) the use of a variety of techniques; (2) reliance on observations in

structured and unstructured situations; and (3) integration of information. The

aforementioned definition and features of assessment are applicable to a

classroom situation. The term personality in the definition of assessment refers to

an individual’s characteristics which may be cognitive, affective and

psychomotor. The classroom setting is essentially social, which provides both

structured and unstructured phases. Even problem-solving is a major learning

task. Holistic appraisal of a learner, his or her environment, and his or her

accomplishments is the principal objective of educational assessment

 A typical goal of instruction is the expansion of a learner’s cognitive

structures. The instructional message maybe distorted by competing stimuli (the

sender’s or receiver’s field of experience) or poor quality transmission (the

teaching technique). A feedback substantiates the need for responses, which

allows the teacher to adapt to the level of understanding of the learner. These

communication theories have provided principles for constructing visual and

verbal messages. The instructional theories on the other hand, clarify how

human beings learn. It relates specified events comprising instruction to learning

processes and learning outcome. Students cannot learn totally by themselves.

They need the intervention of instruction.

Kameennui and Simmons (2008) added that teachers will be in a position

to make important decisions on how to teach a piece of knowledge, if he knows

the hierarchical and academically focused categories of verbal association,

concepts, rule relationship, and cognitive strategies. Knowledge of such

categories will help determine the structural requirement needed in designing an

adequate teaching sequence. A teaching sequence must communicate a

message that contains all the proper elements, for it must have five generic

anchor points which represent the minimum set of curriculum based features,

made ‘’real’’ by the instructional phase.

 The process of instruction enhances the teaching sequence. The activities

that teacher initiates before, during and after instruction means that the

instructional objective’s outcome and features of each temporal phase are

closely linked. If these are well-grounded, the teaching sequence will be

sufficient in its design, and the phases promote and reinforce the lesson’s

effectiveness.

Bloom (1970) has this to say on the process of educational assessment:

Assessment characteristically starts with an analysis of the criterion and

the environment in which an individual lives, learns, and works. It attempts to

determine the psychological pressures the environment creates, the roles

expected, and the demands and pressures – their hierarchical arrangement,

consistency as well as conflict. It then proceeds to the determination of the kinds

of evidence that are appropriate about individuals who are placed in this

environment, such as their relevant strengths and weaknesses, their needs and

personality characteristics, their skills and abilities.

Assessments are continuously being undertaken in all educational setting.

Decisions are made about content and specific objectives, nature of students

and faculty, faculty morale and satisfaction, and the extent to which student

performances meet standards.

 Cox and Many (2004) emphasize the reader’s personal response to

literature. The authors expand on the meaning of an aesthetic response to

literature. Children, who read aesthetically, repeatedly make associations with

their own life experiences and the experiences of others. This appears to be

quite simply a component of a fully live through evocation of a literary work. The

signs of the aesthetic response may include: picturing and imagining while

reading or viewing; describing a strongly felt sense of the verisimilitude of the

evocation, the reality of being there, imagining themselves in a character’s place

or in story events, questioning or hypothesizing about a story; extending a story

or creating new stories; making associations with other stories and their own life

experiences; and mentioning feelings.

Assessment of Learning in the Cognitive Domain

Learning and achievement in the cognitive domain are usually measured

in school through the use of paper-and-pencil-test (Olivia, 1988). Teachers have

to measure students’ achievement in all the levels of the cognitive domain. Thus,

they need to be cognizant with the procedures in the development of the different

types of paper-and-pencil-tests. This chapter is focused on acquainting

prospective teachers with methods and techniques of measuring learning in the

cognitive domain.
Behaviors Measured and Assessed in the Cognitive Domain

There are three domains of behavior measured and assessed in schools.

The most commonly assessed, however, is the cognitive domain. The cognitive

domain deals with the recall or recognition of the knowledge and the

development of intellectual abilities and skills (Bloom, et al, 1956). It is further

subdivided into six hierarchical levels, namely: knowledge, comprehension,

application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

1. Knowledge Level: Behaviors related to recognizing and remembering

facts, concepts, and other important data on any topic or subject.

2. Comprehension Level: behaviors associated with the clarification and

articulation of the main idea of what students are learning.

3. Application Level: behaviors that have something to do with problem-

solving and expression, which require students to apply what they

have learned to other situations or cases in their lives

4. Analysis Level: behaviors that require students to think critically, such

as looking for motives, assumptions, cause-effect relationship,

differences and similarities, hypotheses, and conclusions.

5. Synthesis Level: behavior the call for creative thinking, such as

combining elements in new ways, planning original experiments,

creating original solutions to a problem and building models.

 6. Evaluation Level: behavior that necessitate judging the value or worth

of a person, object, or idea or giving opinion on an issue.

Preparing for Assessment of Cognitive Learning

Prior to the construction of paper-and-pencil test to be used in the

measurement of cognitive learning, teachers have to answer to the following

questions (Airisian, 1994): what should be tested; what emphasis to give to the

various objectives taught; whether go administer a paper and pencil test or

observe each student directly; how long the test should take; and how best to

prepare student for testing.

What Should Be Tested. Identification of the information, skills, and

behaviors to b tested is the first important decision that a teacher has to take.

Knowledge of what shall be tested will enable the teacher to develop an

appropriate test for the purpose. The basic rule to remember, however, is that

testing emphasis should parallel teaching emphasis.

How To Gather Information About What To Test. A teacher has to

decide whether he should give a paper and pencil test or simply gather

information through observation. Should he decide to use a paper-and-pencil

test, then he has to determine what test items to construct. On the other hand, if

he decides to use observation of students’ performance of the targeted skill, then

he has to develop appropriate devices to use in recording his observations.

Decisions on how to gather information about what to test depends on the

objective or the nature or behavior to be tested.

How Long The Test Should Be. The answer to the aforementioned

questions depends on the following factors: age and attention span of the

students; and type of questions to be used.

How Best To Prepare Students For Testing. To prepare students for

teaching, Airisian (1994) recommends the following measures: (1) providing

learners with good instruction; (2) reviewing students before testing; (3)

familiarizing students with question formats; (4) scheduling the test; and (5)

providing students information about the test.

Assessing Cognitive Learning

Teachers use two types of test in assessing student learning in the

cognitive domain: objective test and essay test (Reyes, 2000). An objective test

is a kind of test wherein there is only one answer to each item. On the other

hand, an essay test is one wherein the test taker has the freedom to respond to a

question based on how he feels it should be answered.

Strategies of Reading

Today reading specialists suggest other strategies a student can use

based on a survey of the text: webbing, data charting, and feature matrix

charting. Here is a brief description of these strategies.

Webbing or semantic mapping. Readers preview a selection to identify the

topic. They record the topic in the center of the web and then draw lines radiating

from the web recording at the ends of the lines the subtopics indicated by

subheadings. While studying the text in depth, readers record ideas, plotting

them outward from the subtopics. This approach to webbing draws attention to

the structure communicated by the headings. The web serves as graphic

organizer that visually displays and highlights the structure of the selection.

Data Charting. Data synthesis charts referred to as tools for organizing

information. These charts can also be used to teach informational text structure.

Children create a chart based on the major headings. To be useful in highlighting

the structure of the text under consideration, the structure of the chart should be

parallel that of the text.

Feature Matrix Charting. Another way to organize for reading is the matrix

chart. Before reading, teacher and students cooperatively brainstorm and list the

main categories of data to be investigated through reading. In some cases, the

subheadings of a selection to be read supply those categories. These categories

become the labels on the columns of a feature matrix chart. Using the resulting

matrix before reading, students make predictions about each group. As they

read, students correct their original predictions. In this case, as with data charts

and webs, the feature matrix charts become a note-taking guide during reading

and a guide for sharing after reading.

SQ3R is a technique or method that helps you understand what you read.

It gives you a useful of steps that can improve your comprehension. It is helpful

in clarifying the structure of an expository piece. SQ3R is a five-step strategy for

studying a passage, but SQ3R pulls together five different steps into a whole

system. You can use the system for your reading, especially in textbooks,

newspapers, and magazines.

What is SQ3R? The letters stand for the following activities: Survey,

Question, Read, Recite, Review.

Surveying. Talking through a passage before reading is an effective

strategy for teaching SQ3R and informational text structure simultaneously. The

teacher asks students to read the title first and predict what the passage is about,

study the headings to figure out the organizations, read introductory and

concluding sections, look at the pictures, and note any distinctive aspects.

Having surveyed the text, students describe what they have done to get ready to

read and what already know about the topic. Talking their way through a 27
passage in this way clarifies its structure and models how readers can use

surveying as they study on their own.

Questioning. Students devise questions to answer through reading by

rephrasing the subheadings as questions. These questions give purpose to

reading: student’s to find answers.

Reading. Students read to find answers to their before- reading questions.

Reciting. Having read a major section of text, students pause to monitor

their comprehension by reciting. In reciting students mind talk, telling themselves

answers to the questions devised during the preview survey or retelling points

from the selection. If the students find this impossible, they reread the segment

and try again to recite.

Reviewing. Finishing the selection, readers review what they have read by

talking through the main points of the entire selection, again guided by the

questions devised before reading. Reviewing is not a one-time endeavor;

students must review on several occasions to remember what they have read.

Good readers interact with texts they are reading. They have personal

expectations about what they will get from a selection, and they bring those

expectations to bear as they read by predicting and testing their predictions.

They actively create meaning by construction, or generating, relationships

between what is within the text and what they already know. This view of reading
is called ‘’interactive-constructive models”. Proponents of an interactive-

constructive (I-C) model of reading believe that the meanings a reader makes

depend on what both the reading believe that the meanings a reader makes

depend on what both the reader and the author bring to the text.

Preparing Table of Specifications (TOS)

The table of Specifications is the teacher’s blueprint in constructing a test

for a classroom use. According to Arrends (2001), TOS is valuable to teachers

for two reasons. First, it helps teachers decide on what to include and leave out

in a test. Second, it helps them determine how much weight to give for each topic

covered and objective to be tested.

There are steps to observe in preparing a table of test specifications.

1. List down the topics covered for inclusion in the test.

2. Determine the objectives to be assessed by the test.

3. Specify the number of days/hours spent for teaching a particular topic.

4. Determine the percentage allocation of test items for each of the topics

covered. The formula to be applied is as follows:

% for a topic = the number of days/ hours spent divided by the total

number of days/ hours spent teaching the topics.

Item analysis techniques are among the most valuable tools classroom teachers

use in improving the quality of their classroom test. Analyzing and using test item

data are focused on this chapter.

Purposes and Elements of Item Analysis

As pointed out by Payne (1992), item analysis is conducted for the

following purposes:

 To select the best available items for the final form of the test;

 To identify structural or content defects in the items;

 To detect learning difficulties of the class as a hole; and

 To identify the areas of weaknesses of students in need.

There are three main elements in an item analysis (Downie and Heath,

1984). These elements are as follows: examination of the difficulty level of the

items, determination of the discrimination power of each item, and examination of

the effectiveness of distractors in a multiple choice or matching items.

Using Information about Index Difficulty

The difficulty index of a test item is important because it tells a teacher

something meaningful about the comprehension of or performance on, material

or task contained in an item. A closer look at the sample item data presented
above reveals that item 2 is easy as its difficulty index is 67.5%. The same is true

with item 1, with an estimated difficulty index of 52.5%.

The foregoing points to one thing that the higher the value of the difficulty
index, the easier is the item. This is because difficulty index represents the
percentage of the total number of students answering an item correctly. Thus,
there is an inverse relationship between the magnitude of the index and what it
purports to represent. For an item to be considered a good item, its difficulty
index should be 50%. An item with 50% difficulty index is neither easy nor
difficult. If an item has difficulty index of 67.5%, this means that it is 67.5% easy
and 32.5% difficult. Information on the index difficulty of an item can help a
teacher decide whether a test item should be revised, retained, or modified.

Difficult index of a test item can be interpreted with the use of the following
table of equivalents.

Range Difficulty Level

20 & below Very Difficulty
21-40 Difficulty
41-60 Average
61-80 Easy
81 & Above Very Easy

Using Information about Index of Discrimination

The index of discrimination, as already pointed out, tells a teacher the

degree to which a test item differentiates the high achievers from the low
achievers in his/her positive or negative discriminating power (Credo, 1983;

Payne, 1992).

An item has a positive discriminating power when more students from the

upper group got the right answer than those from the lower group. Conversely,

when more students from the lower group got the correct answer on an item than

those from the upper group, the item has a negative discriminating power. There

are, however, instances when an item has a zero discriminating power. This

happens when there is an equal number of students from both the upper and the

lower groups who got the right answer to a test item. Items with negative and

zero discriminating powers have o be discarded.

From the sample data earlier presented, it can be noted that item 5 has

the highest discrimination power as its calculated index of discrimination of 0.70.

This means that item 5 can differentiate high and low achievers.

Padua and Santos (1998) recommend the use of the following table of

equivalents in interpreting obtained index of discrimination.