THE USE OF CONTEXTUALIZED NARRATIVE TEXTS (CNT) IN IMPROVING STUDENTS’ UNDERSTANDING OF VERB FOCUS (POKUS NG PANDIWA) IN FILIPINO LANGUAGE

As time passes by, it seems to be a challenging task for the teachers in teaching Filipino. This is the reason why most teachers tend to participate in the various trainings and seminars to improve their skills and support their needs under the Enhanced-Basic Education Curriculum, also known as K+12 program. Empowering them with maximum skills and abilities are being prioritized to ensure the quality learning for students.

Palete (2017) reported in the study that teachers are having difficulty in teaching the Filipino subject, in making their students appreciate their roles in sustaining the essence of the Filipino language. It is of really their challenge when students experience difficulty in learning it. So, one of the interventions being done by the teachers is to prepare themselves in researches and innovations that can be used for their effective teaching. It is now evidently seen in all public schools though conducting In-service Trainings and Learning Action Cell (LAC) sessions.

As Covid19 pandemic had disrupted the teaching-learning process, DepEd issued various learning delivery modalities in line with the Basic Education Learning Continuity Plan (BE-LCP). This school year 2020-2021, modular distance learning as a modality is being implemented in most public schools. Preparation, development and production of Self-Learning Modules is being prioritized by the department for learners. But there might be a gap on the effectiveness of these SLMs in improving the learner’s skills and understanding of concepts and ideas in targeting the Most Essential Learning Competencies (MELCs) when it is not properly implemented.

As part of the curriculum reform, contextualized instructions are primarily observed in schools. When illustrating localization, the teachers are relating the content to the local information and to the community resources where the students belong. Meanwhile, contextualization is also a process of relating and applying the lesson or curriculum to a particular setting, condition to maximize learning outcomes and make the learning process meaningful to the students (St. Michael’s College of Laguna, 2017).

According to the study of Espago (2018), it is a need for the teacher to make learners close to the learning content by means of providing authentic activities which can be of their interest, culture, and practices to make their learning experiences meaningful. The learning will be more effective if materials and local resources are being utilized and applied. With these reasons, teachers are encouraged to consider in promoting contextualization and localization the following indicators: Relating, Experiencing, Applying, Cooperating, and Transferring.

Contextualized Instruction is reflected with the use of teacher’s instructional materials, strategies, approach applied for the effective teaching. But, these should not be going out of the content, objective, goal and to the curriculum, rather these bring students closer to real-life situation as preparation for being independent after schooling.

Contextualized teaching and learning approach will be very useful to instruction. In teaching reading in English, there was a significant increase of the reading comprehension performance of the students from pre-test (M=9.12) to post-test (M=12.91). Hence, contextualizing the reading tasks of the learners has positive effects on their comprehension performance (Bongancisco, 2016). This is significant to the present study wherein the the students have to improve their reading skills and comprehension in order to grasp the concepts and ideas in the proposed intervention.

Part of the lesson in teaching Filipino grammar is the verb focus (Pokus ng Pandiwa). It is the semantic relation of verb to the subject of a sentence and these are the following in Filipino: Tagaganap o Aktor, Tagatanggap o Benepaktib, Layon o Gol, Ganapan o Lokatib, Kagamitan o Instrumental, Sanhi at Bunga, at Direksyunal (Lloydi. 2011). This is one of the competencies that has to be performed by the learners for the content and performance standards set by the DepEd. A 20 item test executed to students and the result revealed that students performed poorly in a specific competency with an average mean of 6.97. This was identified as least-mastered.

This concern was considered by the researcher as basis for conducting a research and thinking of intervention. This will serve as an intervention for Filipino teachers that will supply them with learning material to be used in improving the students’ performance in a particular competency in the Filipino 10. Kontekstwalisadong Akdang Naratibo (KAN) as a learning material was crafted based on the curriculum standard of the DepEd and will undergo content and structural validation process from the SDO.

-oOoThe author is Secondary School Teacher III at SMNHS