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Abstract
Reading comprehension is one of the basic skills of the English language that enables ESL students to comprehend textual material appropriately. This study aims to assess reading comprehension abilities of primary school students studying at private schools. A reading comprehension test, based on Barrett's and Day and Park's taxonomies of reading comprehension, was developed by focusing on literal, reorganization and inferential reading comprehension skills. ESL students of grade 5 were targeted in the study. A sample comprising of 375 students was selected from 25 primary schools from District Vehari, Pakistan. Fifteen students were randomly selected from each school. Mean scores, standard deviation and percentage were calculated in order to analyze the data. T-value was calculated to make comparison between the performance of male and female students in reading comprehension skills. The results indicate that the respondents showed better performance in literal and reorganization comprehension as compared to inferential comprehension. The calculated t-value (0.04162) reflects that there was a significant difference between the performance of male and female students. Some implications were made to enhance ESL students' reading comprehension abilities.
Keywords: ESL students, comprehension, literal, reorganization, inferential, assessment
Introduction
Linguists divide language into four skills; namely, speaking, writing, listening and reading. Two skills such as speaking and writing are known as productive skills. Contrarily, reading and listening skills are considered as receptive skills. Each skill helps ESL students in promoting their language competencies; however, reading skill, not only assists them in developing language skills, but also provides foundations for them to enhance their language abilities. The previous studies (e.g., Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002; Welcome, Chiarello, Thompson, & Sowell, 2011) concluded in their studies that reading was more important as compared to other language skills because it provides foundations for ESL students to improve their language proficiencies. Reading is known as an interaction between the text and reader in order to dig out meanings from the textual material. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (2012: 483), states that "reading is a process by which the meaning of the text is understood". ESL students apply a variety of reading strategies in order to identify main idea and locate supporting details from the text. They also identify cause and effect relationship and get the meanings...