EXAMINING EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES EMPLOYED BY TEACHERS TO FOSTER POSITIVE READING ATTITUDE AMONG JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN IKIRUN, OSUN STATE, NIGERIA By Ifedayo Lolade Oyebode

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EXAMINING EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES EMPLOYED BY TEACHERS TO FOSTER POSITIVE READING ATTITUDE AMONG JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN IKIRUN, OSUN STATE, NIGERIA

By Ifedayo Lolade Oyebode

ABSTRACT

Reading is a long-lasting activity which is not only needed in school but for all round development of an individual. Students’ negative attitude towards reading is contributing to their overall academic deterioration. Some researchers state that the positive attitude towards reading makes academic success increase, the others state that success in reading comprehension makes students develop positive attitude towards reading. Majority of Nigerian teachers are more concerned about completing their subject syllabus rather than paying attention to their students’ reading attitude, or helping their learners to achieve positive reading attitude. Some Nigerian teaches believe that inculcating positive reading attitude in students is not the teacher’s duty. This is a justification for not exploring effective strategies that can be used to instill and improve students’ reading attitude. Nevertheless, this study intends to find out if teachers are aware of the strategies for improving students’ reading attitude and if they actually make use of them. Thus, very few researches have been conducted on reading attitude and how to improve it, due to students’ poor reading attitude and inadequate emphasis laid on strategies of teachers for improving reading attitude. It is on the basis of this that this work aimed to examine effective strategies employed by teachers to foster positive reading attitude of junior secondary school students in Ikirun, Osun State, Nigeria. It has been observed from the result of this study that very few teachers employ strategies to improve positive reading attitude among junior secondary school students. 39% teachers make use of teachers’ strategies while 61% do not.

KEYWORDS:  Reading, reading attitude, positive, negative and ambivalent reading attitude, and teachers’ strategies.

INTRODUCTION

Reading is a receptive skill. It is the most important language skill because it is the foundation of learning. Reading goes beyond merely recognising words on a page. It is a critical thinking process that involves analysing ideas and applying them to various contexts. It is a sophisticated mental activity centered on interpreting and understanding text. Goodman (1982) describes reading as a ‘psycholinguistic guessing game’ in which a reader guesses the meaning of a text on the basis of minimal written information and maximum use of existing knowledge. Alexander and Filler (1976) opine that reading attitude is a system of feeling related to reading which cause the learners to approach or avoid a situation or a state of mind accompanied by feeling and emotions that make reading more or less probable. Reading attitude is an integral part of the development and use of life long reading skill. The ultimate success of instruction is strongly affected by readers’ attitude. (Richek et.al 1983). Students’ attitude towards reading is important for their academic life and in the future.

Students who develop a positive attitude towards reading are more likely to enjoy what they read, become a good reader, understand what they read better, and also have higher academic achievement. (Hatice and Buket 2020). Parker and Paradis (1986) assert that poor readers generally have more negative attitude than better readers. Carr and Borkowski (1989) observe that learners with positive reading attitude tend to be willing to read, enjoy reading and become proficient lifelong reader and on the contrary. they maintain that learners with negative reading attitudes have a tendency to avoid reading and may even refuse to read. However, a learner’s attitude towards reading may have a reflective influence on his or her over all academic progress. According to Ajzen (2001), ambivalent attitude reflects the co-existence of positive and negative attitude dispositions towards an object.

Teachers’ strategies refer to procedures or plans of action developed by educators to achieve specific teaching goals. These strategies can also be described as carefully designed blueprints, created in advance, to effectively accomplish educational objectives. Carr and Borkowski (1989) state some strategies that can be employed by teachers for improving reading attitude:

(a)     Model and demonstrate reading.

(b)     Spend time helping children acquire basic reading skills.

(c)      Provide varieties of high interesting reading materials; examples, literature text, magazines, newspapers, etc.

(d)     Shape students’ attitude by reading by providing systematic reinforcement such as praise, when students             engaged in reading activities.

(e)     Help children realize that positive outcomes are likely if considerable effort is made towards engaging in               reading activities.

In an attempt to improve reading culture in Nigeria, former President Goodluck Jonathan came up with “Bring Back the Book” initiative, with the purpose of instilling in Nigerian citizens good reading attitude. (Mcphilips, 2012).

Research Question

1.    Do you employ any reading strategies to improve positive reading attitude among your students?
2.    Are there varieties of interesting and educative reading materials provided for students in your classroom?
3.    Do you encourage your students to read books, magazines and other interesting materials?
4.    Do provide reinforcement such as praise and acknowledge my students when they engage in reading               activities?
5.    Do you have book reading clubs and literature circle set up for your students to interact with each other           around the texts?
6.    Do you make your students to embark on group reading project whereby each group reads books                     individually and then exchange ideas with the other group members?

The concept of Reading and Reading Attitude

Unoh (1987) opines that reading “enriches one’s perspective and broadens one’s knowledge. Reading is a common article of trade found in many places like libraries and other information centers. An-Jean & Ana (2024) describe reading attitude as an individual’s overall affective response to reading, including their feelings of enjoyment, interest, and confidence in their ability to read. This has indicators such as activity in reading, enjoyment in reading, and anxiety and difficulty in reading.

Alexander and Filler (1976) assert that reading attitude is a system of feeling related to reading which cause the learners to approach or avoid a situation or a state of mind accompanied by feeling and emotions that make reading more or less probable. Reading attitude is an integral part of the development and use of life long reading skill. The ultimate success of instruction is strongly affected by readers’ attitude. (Richek et.al 1983). There are three types of attitudinal features, they are ‘negative attitude, positive attitude, and neutral attitude which can otherwise be refer to as ambivalent attitude. Hence, the three types of reading attitude discussed in this study are Positive reading attitude, Negative reading attitude and Ambivalent reading attitude.

Negative Reading Attitude

Children who have been mistreated as a result of their lack of reading skill or achievement, develop strong emotion. If children’s educational set goals are too high and unrealistic. Such student may make no significant progress in learning to read, they may avoid or withdraw from any reading activity. As a result, negative attitude towards reading has been established. (Briggs,1987). Parker and Paradis (1986) assert that poor readers generally have more negative attitude than better readers. Learners with negative reading attitudes have a tendency to avoid reading and may even refuse to read. (Carr and Borkowski, 1989).

Positive Reading Attitude

Mckenna et al (1995) suggest that reading attitude seem to be more positive in the lower grades than in the higher grades. Lawal (1989) asserts that students with positive attitude are always active during the teaching and learning processes. He stressed that such students often come out with excellent result than their colleagues with negative or ambivalent attitude. According to him, this occur because attitude influence learning and behaviour which in turn, influence achievements. However, a learner’s attitude towards reading may have a reflective influence on his or her over all academic progress.

Ambivalent Reading Attitude

According to Ajzen (2001) ambivalent attitude reflects the co-existence of positive and negative attitude dispositions towards an object. This implies that learners with ambivalent reading attitude do not avoid reading completely, they read only when the need arises. Lawal (1989) avers that students with ambivalent attitude are always nonchalant. Such often record average accomplishment in targeted goals. However, a learner’s attitude towards reading may have a reflective influence on his or her over all academic progress. According to Ajzen (2001), ambivalent attitude reflects the co-existence of positive and negative attitude dispositions towards an object the leading factor that directly affects their reading performances.

Problems Resulting to the Degeneration of Reading Attitude in Nigeria

Okeke (2004) declares that the poor reading culture of students in secondary schools was as a result of poor public policy and institutional management practice, lack of essential resources for literacy development, failure to recognize reading as an essential critical skill for learning, a lack of commitment to ensure literacy was achieved, and a lack of reading policies in schools. Olu (2017) claims that to ascertain the development of reading habit in Nigeria, concerted efforts would be required to improve the social and reading infrastructure to promote reading across the school curriculum and develop reading extension services. Olu, (2017) posits that most adolescent learners in Nigeria face lots of distractions that compete with the zeal and urge to read. This is occasioned by the astronomical advancement in digital literacy which no doubt, has its gains and attendant drawback. the home video games, television and particularly, the Global System of Mobile (GSM) communication which can be used for diverse social networking on the internet contest with the love for reading books. According to Abayomi et.al. (2013), the lure of electronic media such as television, has a potential effect on reading performance. This is becoming an issue of growing concern among educationist.

Teachers’ Strategies for Improving Positive Reading Attitude

Teachers’ strategies refer to procedures or plans of action developed by educators to achieve specific teaching goals. It can be described as a carefully designed blueprints, created in advance, to effectively accomplish educational objectives.

Jamiah & Faiza (2020) explain that teachers play a very important role in instilling positive attitude that shape students into serious readers. They maintained that there is very high possibility that students will continue to read for the rest of their lives.

Carr and Borkowski (1989) further suggested some ways by which teachers can promote positive reading attitude among junior secondary school students. They are as follows:

1. Help children realize that positive outcomes are likely if considerable effort is made towards engaging in reading activities: If children do not attribute success to their efforts, you may want to consider implementing attribution retraining techniques that consist of helping children realize that successful outcomes are due to effort rather than external factors beyond their control.
2. Listen to audio books: Invite students to listen to them; play short passages. Audio books “count” as reading. While you are not developing decoding or fluency skills, you are acquiring vocabulary, applying comprehension strategies, and enjoying stories or accruing information.
3. Make connections between reading and other issues: Help students see the wider, historical and political context of the importance of reading to enhance their appreciation.
4. Teach reading strategies. Finally, all teachers, in every content area, should be responsible for teaching reading. Text genres are different in every content area. Teachers should inquire more on how to teach reading strategies so that they can do so with students. Students will not enjoy reading if they cannot do it because no one loves doing something that is really hard. We must give them the skills to read at the same time that we cultivate an attitude.

Hawys (2023) suggests some tips to encourage positive reading attitudes.

1. Choice

Establish how your learners feel about reading. What do they read? Does an adult read to them at home? Have they ever been to the library? Challenge each student to tell you about one positive reading experience. It does not have to be a book it might be a comic, a website or a magazine article. You can develop a resource of reading materials for your students depending on their response. Children will be more enthusiastic about reading if they are interested in what they are reading.

2. A positive reading environment

Children are more likely to enjoy reading if they are settled and comfortable. Some students may benefit from sitting on a special cushion or being allowed to use a fidget toy while listening to you read, or reading themselves. You can as well create a reading corner. It can be as simple as a few large cushions and a box of books, comics and magazines. More so, decorate a corner of the classroom to match the theme of the book.

3. Performance

Acting out stories and scenarios from texts is a great way to make reading active and enjoyable. It also helps children’s reading comprehension and encourages empathy. Acting out helps develop fluency, as children learn to regulate their voices, and think about intonation and sentence stress. For example; Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Wole Soyinka’s Lion and the Jewel, and many others can be acted.     

4. Get the community involved

It will be inspiring for young learners to hear different people read. You can invite a parent to come into class to read to them, you can arrange a visit to a local library or maybe you could set up a book club.

5. Encourage your students

Read by being a reader yourself. Tell your students about books you enjoy and why. Display a picture of the book that you are reading at the moment on the classroom wall, with a short plot summary and rating. By modelling positive reading attitudes, you will encourage students to read more and become lifelong readers.

Furthermore, in line with the suggested strategies stated above, Abayomi et.al. (2013) suggests some group performance actives that can encourage reading.

1. Dramatic Activities: Drama group can be organized, this approach to outline a theme, based on a story or part of a book, which can then, through the cooperation of the children and the person in charge, can be demonstrated in a dramatic form, each child undertaking and improving role.
2. Craft Activities. The materials used can be improvised from waste materials such as newspaper, disused package, cardboard and so on. The link with books can be doubled; one of which can be the choice of themes from books, like giants, prehistorian animals, or other features and the other which can be the use of books for instruction in methods and techniques.
3. Quiz Competition: Book quiz can be organised and carried out for the fun of it. This is aimed at encouraging students to read beyond their textbooks in school, this will enable students to be able to promote books themselves and promoting books as a source of information.

Method

This research is a qualitative one and the instrument that was used for data collection is a structured interview question. It has a predetermined set of questions. (Tegan, 2022). The population for this study includes some selected teachers in four different junior secondary school in Ikirun, Osun State, Nigeria. The target population was 100 teachers drawn from the four schools through random sampling. Twenty-five teachers were randomly selected from each school. Five subject teachers of English language, basic science, mathematics and civic education were selected from each of the school. Each subject teacher had five teachers represented for the interview. The teachers were asked to answer 6 structural interview questions which requires yes/no answers. Question 1-6 test whether the teachers do make use of any strategies to improve positive reading attitude among secondary school students. The item scale for measuring the strategies was yes/no. The teachers are hereby expected to provide their response by answering yes/no.

 Findings

SCHOOLS NO ROLL	TEACHERS WHO MAKE USE OF READING AMONG STUDENTS	TEACHERS WHO DO NOT MAKE USE OF READING STUDENTS
SCHOOL 1 (25 participants)	8	17
SCHOOL 2 (25 participants)	11	14
SCHOOL 3 (25 participants	7	18
SCHOOL 4 (25 participant)	13	12
TOTAL NO OF PARTICIPANTS – 100	39	61

 The result of this study revealed that majority of the junior secondary school teachers that were examined did not make use of any strategy to foster positive reading attitude among their students. Twenty-five teachers were randomly selected from four schools. The result of teachers from school 1 shows that (8) teachers out of twenty-five employed some strategies to improve positive reading attitude among their students while (17) did not. Also, from school 2 result, it was observed that 11 teachers out of twenty-five applied teachers’ strategies to foster positive reading attitude among their students and 14 did not. Furthermore, 7 out of twenty-five teachers who were randomly selected from school 3 employed teachers’ strategies for improving their students’ positive reading attitude, but the remaining 18 participants did not. In addition, out of twenty-five teachers who were randomly selected for the interview from school 4, 13 of them employed some effective strategies to foster positive reading attitude among their students, 12 participants did not. From the above result, it is obvious that 61% of teachers who were randomly selected for this study do not employ teachers’ strategies to foster positive reading attitude among their students while only 39% did.

Recommendation

It has been observed that most Nigerian teachers, especially from this research area, do not employ any teachers’ strategies to improve students reading attitude. I will recommend that government, policy makers, and stakeholders should organise campaigns that will create awareness and educate teachers on the importance of improving positive reading attitude among junior secondary schools in Nigeria. Furthermore, curriculum developers with the assistance of the federal government should develop effective teachers’ strategies to foster positive reading attitude among junior secondary school teachers. This can be infused into the junior secondary school subject curriculum. In addition, school authority in partnership with state government, federal government, cooperate firm and interested individuals can lunch a book carnival where book lovers or individuals would be invited and students with the highest number of books read would be highly celebrated.

Conclusion

The decline in reading attitude of secondary school students is really alarming, judging from the result of this study. This study seeks to investigate whether teachers employ any strategy to improve positive reading attitude of students. Teachers are admonished to employ effective strategies to improve students reading attitude, because this will definitely contribute to academic achievement and all-round growth. Government, stakeholders, policy makers, curriculum developers and cooperate firm are also encouraged to contribute their quarter towards helping teachers to achieve the set goal of improving positive reading attitude of secondary school students. If this research is effectively utilized, it will tremendously assist teachers and school administrators in applying effective strategies for improving learners reading attitude, it will as well assist leaners in cultivating positive reading attitude, and also help future researchers and authors. Conclusively, this study will help the school administrators in providing interesting reading materials in secondary school library. The outcome of the study would task the policymaker and curriculum developers in order to design better high school curriculum that will enable students to read more.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

About the Author

Ifedayo Lolade Oyebode obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Teacher Education/English Language from the University of Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. She works for the Federal Ministry of Education, Abuja, Nigeria. She is currently working on “Enhancing Learning for Special Needs Students: The Power of Audio-Visual Curricula Over Traditional Method.”

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Ifedayo Lolade Oyebode 

Nigeria, December 2022