BARRY: Building Achievement in Reading Through Repeated Summarization Techniques

Persistent deficiencies in reading comprehension among Filipino secondary learners, particularly in identifying main ideas, organizing textual information, and constructing meaning, highlight the need for explicit, strategy-based literacy interventions. Despite evidence supporting summarization as a metacognitive reading strategy, its structured and repeated use in junior high school contexts remains underexamined, especially in authentic classroom settings within developing educational environments. This study investigated the effectiveness of repeated summarization techniques in improving the reading comprehension of Grade 8 learners at Gama Integrated School. The study employed a one-group pretest–posttest experimental design involving 30 learners. Structured repeated summarization tasks were implemented over several weeks using guided practice-set exercises designed to help learners identify key ideas, organize details, and paraphrase information from texts. Outcomes were measured using a validated reading comprehension test, and data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, a dependent t-test, and thematic analysis. Reading comprehension improved markedly, with mean scores increasing from 17.47 to 43.77, reflecting a gain of 26.30 points. The difference between pretest and posttest scores was statistically significant, indicating a strong positive effect of the intervention. Qualitative findings further revealed that learners became more confident in identifying themes, connecting ideas, and expressing understanding using their own words. These results demonstrate that repeated summarization effectively addresses key comprehension gaps by promoting active meaning construction and structured text processing. The findings support the integration of repeated summarization into classroom instruction and literacy intervention programs, although generalization should be approached cautiously due to the study’s single-group design.