The Study of Grade 7 Students’ English Reading Comprehension Ability, Using The Murdoch Integrated Approach Together with ASEAN Folk Tales

Abstract

The objectives of the present research study were 1) to study grade 7 students’ English reading
comprehension ability using the Merdoch Integrated Approach Together with ASEAN folk tales so that
they made a mean score of 70% of the full marks or better and at least 70% of the students passed
the 70% criterion and 2) to study the students’ satisfaction with the learning activities that were
organized for them. The target group consisted of 15 grade 7 students in Ban Nong-goong Wittayakarn
School in Muang District, Khon Kaen Province, under the Office of Khon Kaen Primary Education Area
1, during the first semester of the 2016 academic year. The study applied the One-Shot Case Study
research procedure for data collection. The instruments used for the study included 1) 10 lesson
plans based on the Merdoch Integrated Approach with ASEAN folk tales which took 20 instructional
periods to finish, 2) A 4-choice objective learning achievement test consisting of 30 questions, and
3) a 5-level rating scale type of questionnaire to elicit the students’ opinions about the learning
activities. The collected data were analyzed for arithmetic mean, standard deviation and percentage.
Results of the study show that:
1) The students made a mean score of 22.0 or 73.33 % of the full marks, and 12 students
Or 80.00 % of the group passed the 70 % criterion which is higher than the prescribed criterion;
2) The students’ expressed a “high” level of satisfaction towards the learning activities that
had been organized for them. However, when each aspect of the learning activities were examined,
the aspects that ranked the highest level of satisfaction were the measurement and evaluation, the
subject content and the learning activities, respectively.