Evaluating the Effectiveness of English-Waray Code-Switching, Paired Texts, and Multimedia as Interventions on Grade 7 Students' Reading Comprehension in a School in Burauen, Leyte

Excellent reading comprehension is foundational for academic success and understanding information across various disciplines. However, many students, particularly at the critical Grade 7 level, continue to struggle. Thus, mastering this skill in early grades is crucial. This study employed a true experimental design to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions, specifically multimedia presentations and paired-text handouts with English-Waray code-switching, on the reading comprehension level of Grade 7 students. A total of 40 purposively selected students with poor comprehension were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups (20 each). Data were collected using the English-Language Proficiency Assessment, adapted from Transparent English and validated by experts, and analyzed using a paired sample t-test. Results showed that the intervention group scored higher than the control group, but the difference was not statistically significant. It is supported by a high Pearson correlation of 0.9277 between interventions and reading comprehension, indicating that the interventions improve students’ reading comprehension. However, this may be coincidental when comparing the means of the two groups, resulting in a t-computed value of 0.069 lower than the t-critical value of 1.729, suggesting that the interventions were not highly effective. It is recommended that further research involve a larger sample size, investigate the impact of contextualizing reading texts, address environmental factors of learning, especially schools in remote or rural areas, and explore more interventions to improve students’ foundational reading comprehension.