Millennials’ Reading Predicaments: How Are They Treated?

Abstract

The deteriorating performance of Filipino students in the national and international English proficiency tests for the last decades has become a major challenge to Philippine education. One major cause attributed to this problem was the students’ poor reading comprehension that even at tertiary level they cannot read effectively and understand fully the reading materials assigned to them. Millennials being depicted as interested in games and social networking apps more than reading, as entirely digitally focused call much attention to educators and policy makers to explore on such issues and upgrade reading as the groundwork for all study skills and avenue for good study habits.

A total of 699 freshman students who belonged to general education courses were randomly taken as sample. A qualitative-quantitative research design was utilized in the study that involved reading comprehension test, survey questionnaire on the reading problems and difficulties met by students and teachers and crosschecking interviews with school administrators and program heads regarding the other factors in reading comprehension.

The great majority of the respondents’ reading comprehension was found at the instructional level in literal taxonomy while the others’ were categorically described at frustration level in interpretive and applied taxonomies. They were considered limited users according to the IELTS Band Score. Drawn upon interviews with college reading teachers and a combination of individual and focused-group discussion, this study shed light on the significant influence of reading instruction, classroom-based interventions and students’ participation in reading instruction.