Improving Students’ attitude to Reading Comprehension: Implication for Choice of Teaching Strategies

This study determined the effects of Schema Activation (SA) and Think-Group-Share (TGS) instructional strategies on students’ attitude to reading comprehension in Owo, Ondo State, Nigeria. The study adopted the pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental design. Purposive sampling technique was used to select six co-educational senior secondary schools in Owo town. An intact class of Senior Secondary II students was selected from each school and was randomly assigned to SA (58), TGS (110) and control (99) groups. Treatment lasted twelve weeks. The instruments used were Reading Comprehension Achievement Test (r=.73), andQuestionnaire on Students’ Attitude to Reading Comprehension. Data were analysed using Analysis of covariance and Scheffe post-hoc test at 0.05 level of significance. Treatment had significant main effect on students’ attitude toEnglish reading comprehension (F . Students in the Think-Group-Share had the highest posttest attitude mean score (71.80) followed by Schema Activation (71.52) and control (68.96) groups. Think-group-share and Schema activation instructional strategies improved students’ attitude to English reading comprehension in Owo, Ondo State, Nigeria, while think-group-share is more effective. Teachers should adopt these strategies in enhancing students’ attitude to English reading comprehension.