The relationships among decoding, oral reading fluency, and reading comprehension in Sinugbuanong Binisaya, Filipino, and English of grade 3 learners

Decoding, oral reading fluency, and reading comprehension are complex, interrelated skills. Many studies have established that accurate and efficient decoding leads to more fluent oral reading, which then leads to better comprehension across languages.In the Philippines, learning these skills are lodged within the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) program. The MTB-MLE program is transitory in design, with the mother tongue (MT or L1) used for instruction in Kindergarten, with L2 (Filipino), and L3 (English) slowly introduced from Grades 1 to 3. Findings of local and international studies list the many advantages of the use of the learner’s MT in class, which includes higher participation and achievement rates, more accurate and fluent oral reading, better comprehension, and higher self-confidence and motivation among learners.This study sought to determine the relationships among decoding accuracy, decoding efficiency, oral reading fluency, and reading comprehension in Sinugbuanong Binisaya, Filipino, and English, and determine the relationships between them. Pearson r multivariate correlations and multiple linear regressions were used to analyze the data. Specifically, the effects of the independent variables (decoding accuracy, decoding efficiency, and oral reading fluency) on the dependent variables (literal comprehension and inferential comprehension) were examined.Descriptive statistics of most of the study variables have large SD values, indicating a wide discrepancy of skills. The lowest SD was in the decoding of words across languages which indicates that learner participants have similar decoding abilities. The mean percentage score showed that learners are able to read words fairly accurately across languages, supporting the patterns seen in the correlation and linear regression results. Mean oral reading fluency rates are within target, however, not all learner participants may be reading as fluently as expected based on the large SD for decoding efficiency and oral reading fluency across languages.Pearson’s r calculations yielded significant positive correlations (.22 \u3c r’s \u3c .91) across all variables except for the correlation between inferential comprehension in Filipino and English. The strongest correlations were across skills within the same language and between decoding efficiency and oral reading fluency across the three languages.Multiple linear regression results were significant, except for two models which had inferential comprehension in English as the dependent variable. The strongest relationships were also within the same language, with moderate to weak relationships noted across languages.The patterns gleaned from the results show that the most established skill across languages is decoding of words. Results also showed that some skills in Sinugbuanong Binisaya are able to predict literal and inferential comprehension in Filipino and English, and some skills in Filipino are able to predict literal comprehension in English.Hierarchical regression results showed that the different modalities used by schools because of the COVID-19 pandemic have a significant effect on reading comprehension. The modalities can also be used as a proxy indicator for socioeconomic status which had been established by local studies to be positively correlated with comprehension.Because participants are in Grade 3 and are in the last year of the MTB-MLE program, results of the assessments illustrated how much bridging and transitioning has occurred from MT to L2 and L3 in spite of the very different learning context in the current school year. The study shows how assessment is still possible in spite of the pandemic and how learner-centered instruction and assessment may be further contextualized to suit the challenges brought about by distance learning