An Analysis of English Reading Skills of Class Five Students at Government Primary Schools in District Kech

Abstract

Language is human speech, either spoken or written and is the most common system of communication. The purpose of the study was to identify the ability of English reading skill of class five students at Government primary schools in District Kech. It also intended to identify the common errors committed by the students and the English teachers’ thinking about teaching their students’ reading skills. To achieve these purposes 125 students and 20 teachers were chosen from 5 Government primary schools at District Kech. A test containing a single subject paragraph was taken from the English course of Balochistan Textbook Board Quetta and a questionnaire was developed to find out the teachers’ thinking about teaching reading skills. While reading comprehension a key score list containing reading errors was applied to check students reading ability. The test score of student and item-wise score, as well as responses to the questionnaire, were analyzed using statistical devices like percentage and frequency. The students’ average score of marks is 8.95%. In the reading test, only 1 student got the full marks, 1 student made a single error and 1 student made two errors. The situation of independent reading is satisfactory, but the overall amount of errors indicates the students’ inefficiency of reading skills in English. Not known word errors occupied the highest position which is 73.88%. In this circumstance, the teachers are putting their effort into improving students’ reading skills, but they have barriers in most of the cases. Though the teachers are trying to develop their students’ reading skills but they are developing very slowly.