READING ATTITUDE AND ABILITIES OF GRADE 7 LEARNERS IN DIVISION OF CALAMBA: BASIS FOR PROGRAM

This study explored the reading attitude and abilities of Grade 7 learners in the Division of Calamba to establish a foundation for developing a targeted reading intervention program. The respondents were Grade 7 learners and their English teachers for the school year 2023-2024 in the abovementioned division. The descriptive correlational method was utilized in this study. Questionnaires and the Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI) were used to gather data. Frequency, percentage, simple mean, and four-point Likert scale were used for statistical treatment in terms of reading attitude and reading abilities, while Pearson product-moment correlation was used to establish the relationship between reading attitude and reading abilities. Accordingly, all components of learners' reading attitudes, such as cognitive, affective, and conative, were interpreted as Good with general assessments of 3.16, 2.67, and 2.65. There was no significant difference between the learners' and their English teachers' assessments of the Grade 7 learners' reading attitude in cognitive and affective components with the probability values of .385 and .471; however, there was a significant difference between their assessments in a conative component with the probability value of .027. Meanwhile, the learners' reading abilities level fell under instructional with 72.67%. In addition, there was a significant relationship between the reading attitude level and the reading abilities level of the learners, with probability values of .000, .036, and .000 respectively. With all of these, the Pages to Progress Reading Intervention Program was developed to further enhance the reading attitude and abilities of the learners.