Aligned Local Reading Materials and the Literacy Comprehension Level of Grade 7 Students

Reading comprehension is essential for language and literature, as well as developing a student's critical thinking and memory skills, focus, and their ability to solve problems — all necessary for every kind of student or professional. The study investigated the effectiveness of Aligned Local Reading Materials and the Literacy Comprehension level of Grade 7 students. Employing pre-experimental method as research design, with pretest-posttest method as specific design application, the study outsourced thirty (30) Grade 7 students from one (1) elementary school in Quezon Province as subjects of the study. Pretest assessment was based on the Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI) baseline test while posttest data were derived from the aligned local reading materials serving as intervention material during the experimental period. Based on the results, the pretest mean scores for all measures are relatively low, ranging from 4.63 to 9.27. The posttest mean scores are all significantly higher, ranging from 8.03 to 11.47. The t- values for all measures are highly significant (p < .001), indicating that the differences between the pretest and posttest scores are unlikely to be due to chance. The degrees of freedom are 29 for each measure. Overall, these results suggest that the respondents made significant improvements in all measures after the utilization of Aligned Local Reading Materials. In summary, the results of the study indicated that the implementation of local reading materials resulted in significant improvements in all aspects of reading comprehension. Therefore, it can be concluded that the utilization of local reading materials was effective in enhancing the students' literacy comprehension level.