Reading Proficiency

CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM AND SETTING

Introduction

The key challenge for any society to cope with the globalization of the new millennium is to transcend the youth mentally and technically productive. This can be attained if the society embraces the aims of education to enable each Filipino to develop his full potential to be effective and efficient.

Education is a discipline that can lead and mould individuals to be able to survive the complexities of life. In this highly technological digital age of computers and gadgets, education is no longer a basic human right but it has evolved into a commodity. Everyone must have it.

In line with these complexities in education and in the entire global populace, English, as one of the areas of concern in education, plays an essential role. It is beneficial in most field of study. It permeates almost every angle of the day-to-day activities, highly technical or practical and in every enterprise, commercials, manufacturing and processing. Every field of studies depends on English regarding quantitative and qualitative analysis. It is a bridge leading to a wider, to a vast and deeper scenario of learning and it leads to answer man’s biggest puzzled world of the unknown. At this point, English becomes a commodity to alleviate the condition of man’s life. With this concern teaching and learning English must be improved, upgraded and modernized technically and strategically.

Present day conditions demand an adequate education in an individual, more so if the individual lives in a highly urban society where success and failure is conditioned by the way human uses mental faculties.

It is a known fact that one of the most common problems of learning institutions is the improvement of quality of instruction. But such improvement of the quality of instruction depends to a great extent upon the children’s ability to read and comprehend various printed materials. Unless these children know how to read and interpret...