Knowledge Acquisition Practices and Reading Comprehension Skills of the Learners in Hilongos South District, Leyte Division, Philippines

The main purpose of this study was to determine the knowledge acquisition practices and reading comprehension of the learners in Hilongos South District, Leyte Division, Philippines. This study adopted the descriptive-survey and correlational method of research. This method tried to explore and describe the prevailing knowledge acquisition practices obtained in a particular place or situation; the reading level of the learners in terms of prior knowledge and vocabulary, and their reading comprehension as well as the extent of relationship among the variables was portrayed. The analysis and interpretation of the data led to the following findings: the knowledge acquisition practices of learners, teachers and parents were all very satisfactory, the learners had satisfactory prior knowledge and very satisfactory vocabulary level, the reading comprehension of the learner-respondents was very satisfactory. Furthermore, there were significant relationships between knowledge acquisition practices of learners and their prior knowledge, vocabulary and knowledge acquisition practices of teachers versus vocabulary level of the learners. There were also significant relationships between prior knowledge and vocabulary to the reading comprehension of the learners.


Introduction
Various types of knowledge are received and processed through the senses of a learners. We use five different learning modalitieshearing, vision, touch, taste, and smell. Hearing and vision are receptors of knowledge and not expressers of such knowledge. Knowledge is very important; it is what we use in everything we do every day in our life. We use it for making new connections and creating meaning. Knowledge should be integrated between the old and new facts to maintain structural equilibration (Carmel et al., 2019;Simatwa, 2010). As the learners develop a series of cognitive functions, they increasingly become more sophisticated in comprehension and solving problems (Harvey, 2000;Klingner, 2004;Royanto, 2012). And so, as they move from certain thought limitations to more structured line of thinking, they develop concept formation that is aided by knowledge acquisition (Diederen et al., 2016;Ertmer & T, 2013;Oliff et al., 2020;Peng & Gero, 2010;Taie, 2014) We make a lot of responses every day in our life. As aided by our sensory modalities, our responses to certain stimuli are made possible through prior knowledge (Al-Jarrah & binti Ismail, 2018;Khataee, 2019;Shen, 2010). At home, in school, at work, and in the community, we use a great deal of responses in order to obtain information, to clarify things or even to establish relationships of any sort. While it is true that prior knowledge is influenced by our responses and performances in various areas, we must remember that learning is an active process. In learning a new material, we need to activate our prior knowledge (Bein et al., 2019;Glogger-Frey et al., 2018). It means that in the banking cup of education, we do not just fill the cup with knowledge and information. We do not just make the cup filled with isolated bits of information. Rather, we build knowledge and try to link information to the internal networks of knowledge. As we acquire new information, we develop mental structures (called schemata) in order to make sense of the world (An, 2013). With these viewpoints, the researcher came up with the following questions: How can the teaching-learning process provide a help in developing the schemata of the learners? One answer that triggered the proposal of this study was "best practices" in the classroom while the teacher conducted a lesson was truly a great help in the knowledge acquisition of the learners. Thus, it was very essential to determine the knowledge acquisition practices of the pupils, which was the main purpose of this study.
Many traditional approaches to teaching content-area subjects do not account for what is understood about the construction of knowledge, the learning process, and critical cognitive actions that must take place for meaningful learning to occur (Craig et al., 2018). To construct knowledge (as opposed to memorizing someone else's understanding of it), learners must understand the information in relation to what they already know and to their own experiences (Karim et al., 2010;Ren & Zhao, 2020). With the exception of specific facts, knowledge of information is relative and never static. One's understanding is constantly changed as information is viewed from different context and in relation to other background knowledge or new information. Though knowledge of facts may be right or wrong, recalled or forgotten, understanding of facts (e.g., how they relate to a specific subject) is also continually changing, and thus is also relative and never static. In the classroom, the role of the teacher is to facilitate students' constructing (and reconstructing) of meanings so that their thinking becomes increasingly clear (Kuter & Özer, 2020) Taking much consideration the knowledge dimension of the pupils, the goals of the curriculum should be more emphasis on students' constructing knowledge, more depth, less superficial coverage, more emphasis on archetype concepts, patterns, and strategies, more emphasis on developing relational understanding and knowledge connections to real-world contexts, more student elaboration, and more emphasis on developing effective habits of the mind, higher order thinking and information processing skills, and learning strategies. Particularly, the "Rainbow Sticky-Note Semantic Mapping" procedure incorporates a number of subtle techniques that serve to facilitate student construction of knowledge. Semantic mapping (also called semantic webbing) can be a powerful technique for students with mild cognitive disabilities (Cassiano et al., 2020;Liu et al., 2020). This routine facilitates activation of background knowledge, anticipation of upcoming learning, student self-evaluation of existing knowledge about the topic, meaningful structuring of both existing and new knowledge, and understanding of interconnections and relationships among various important concepts and facts. The procedure can be used before, during, and at the end of the lesson.
The above-mentioned ideas about knowledge dimension imply that first, instruction should facilitate deep understanding of core ideas and meaningful learning; and second, instruction should strive to change the child in fundamental ways. Moreover, to develop mastery, students must acquire component skills, practice integrating them, and know when to apply what they have learned. Students must develop not only the component skills and knowledge necessary to perform complex tasks, they must also practice combining and integrating them to develop greater fluency and automaticity. Finally, students must learn when and how to apply the skills and knowledge they learn. As teachers, it is important that we develop conscious awareness of these elements of mastery so as to help our students learn more effectively. The reading program in the elementary schools of Hilongos South District emphasizes word recognition, comprehension and acquisition of vocabulary. Unfortunately, reading proficiency is still a perennial problem among teachers especially nowadays that learners are highly surrounded by high technologies which are risk factors that weaken learners' motivation to read at home and in school. The researcher herself observed in her own reading assessment using the Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI) that only 55% of the learners belonged to independent level and the rest belonged to frustration level.
A good climate at home and at school can foster positive influence of the knowledge acquisition of the pupils. In fact, studies have shown that more stimulating class atmosphere has good implications for our students (Casinillo et al., 2020;Saariaho et al., 2019;Saputra, 2017). A negative climate may impede learning and performance, but a positive climate can energize students' learning (Lombardi et al., 2019;Maxwell et al., 2017). In this connection, the researcher believed that parents and teachers could greatly influence the knowledge acquisition of the pupils. This idea motivated the researcher to investigate on the practices that influenced the knowledge acquisition of the pupils in Hilongos South District. This is also an attempt to determine the reading ability and reading comprehension so that reading performance of the pupils would be improved. Hence, in general, the main purpose of this study was to determine the knowledge acquisition practices and reading comprehension of learners in Hilongos South District. Specifically, it sought answers to the following objectives: (1) to determine the practices of knowledge acquisition is being done by the learners; (2) to determine the reading ability level of the learners in terms of the following: (a) prior knowledge and (b) vocabulary; (3) to determine the level of the reading comprehension of the learners; (4) to determine the significant relationship between knowledge acquisition support and knowledge acquisition practices; and (5) to determine the significant relationship between knowledge acquisition practices and reading comprehension.
This study can be helpful to the School Administrators/Principals since one may plan for the program that may promote and sustain best practices inside and outside the classroom that may best influence the knowledge acquisition of the learners, thus, achieve academic excellence. For the teachers, one may formulate program of activities in the classroom that foster best practices in the pupils' acquisition of knowledge; so, the pupils can maintain higher level of performance in their academic subjects. For the students, one may make the best practices in acquiring knowledge as their habits to further enhance their cognitive skills. For the parents of students, one may give them insights regarding this role in helping their children develop better reading ability and consequently improve their reading comprehension. Lastly, for the future researchers, one may help future researchers who wish to pursue related topics in any means. The findings may be used as a source for enrichment of their research in reading.

Methodology
This study adopted the descriptive-survey and correlational method of research. The design of this research is based on the current study of (Casinillo et al., 2020). This method tried to explore and describe the prevailing knowledge acquisition practices obtaining in a particular place or situation as well as the reading level of the pupils in terms of prior knowledge and vocabulary and their reading comprehension. Through the descriptive approach, the extent of relationship among the variables was well portrayed. For inferential statistics, a correlational method was used to explain the degree of relationship between variables. This study was conducted in thirteen (13)  The respondents of this study were the Grade 6 pupils from thirteen (13) mono grade schools in the district. Ten pupil respondents were identified from each school together with their teachers and respective parents. The respondents were selected at random using the fish bowl technique. Pupils' names were written individually on small pieces of paper, which were then rolled, placed inside a box and mixed thoroughly with the rest. The first 10 names that were drawn from the box made up the respondents. Automatically, the parents of these pupils became the parent-respondents. The number of respondents can be seen in Table 1.

Research Instruments
The survey questionnaires were used in order to gather pertinent data needed in this study. There were three sets of questionnaires used for the three groups of respondents; pupils, teachers and parents. For the parents, a list of actions they supported their children were enumerated for them to check based on the degree of their involvement. This was translated to vernacular for easy understanding. For the reading level and reading comprehension, the Prior Knowledge Test for Grade VI, Vocabulary Test and Reading Comprehension Test were utilized. The test used to measure the level of the pupils' prior knowledge contained fifteen (15) items, patterned from the chapter test from the English Textbook IV by (Benita Miranda, n.d.). Another test used to determine their level on vocabulary contained fifteen (15) items. This was patterned from English Textbook V authored by (Relente, 2008). The test contained ten (10) items which were identified to measure the level of reading comprehension of the pupils.
Before the conduct of the instrument of this study, the researcher asked permission from the school's division superintendent, district supervisors and principals of schools covered. When approval was granted, she went to the schools and distributed the instruments to the pupil-respondents and their teacher-advisers. She personally administered and immediately collected the questionnaires. She also requested the assistance of the teachers in giving the questionnaires to the parents of the pupil-respondents. Upon retrieval, the given questionnaires were checked if the items were properly and appropriately answered.
After the needed data had been gathered, it was then subjected to appropriate statistical tools. To determine the level of knowledge acquisition practices, prior knowledge, vocabulary and reading comprehension, weighted mean was used.
To test the relationship of prior knowledge and vocabulary of the pupils to their reading comprehension, Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (Pearson ) was used. To ensure an accurate result, the calculation was employed by Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS).

Results and Discussions
This section presents the analyses and interprets the data gathered from survey responses. This is presented according to the objectives of the study, specifically, the knowledge acquisition of the learners, teachers and parents, the reading level in terms of prior knowledge and vocabulary and the reading comprehension of the pupils. Moreover, significant relationships among the variables were also tested. The research results can be seen in Table  2. The Knowledge Acquisition Practices of Pupils Based on Table 2, the weighted mean of knowledge acquisition of the learners is 3.57 interpreted as "very satisfactory". This implies that most of the pupils had very satisfactory knowledge acquisition. In other words, the pupil-respondents most of the time had the following conditions and practices reflected in the table as a way of acquiring knowledge. According to (Husen et al., 2017;Marlina et al., 2020), what organizations and individuals need is competence, which requires the abilities and skills to acquire and apply knowledge to accomplish tasks and solve problems. Traditionally, education has been characterized by the acquisition of knowledge in various subject areas with the objective of covering a block of information separated by themes and topics.
Specifically, the following conditions of knowledge acquisition were rated by the pupils as "very satisfactory", in decreasing order: work independently on reading assignments, read to learn new information, read more on interesting topics discussed by the teacher, spend enough time answering on homework involving reading, enjoy reading books about people in different countries, fondly read silently on their own, care to read books even how hard it is, read along silently while a learner is asked to read aloud, share with family and friends about the books read, catch up the reading lessons missed, enjoy reading for a long period of time, and make reading as a favorite pastime or habit.
On the other hand, only two items got only a "satisfactory" rating and these were "borrow books from the classroom library or reading corner to take home' and 'visit the library often as well". These results showed that when learners rated the different conditions of acquiring knowledge, the least two conditions refer to visiting a library. The library is filled with adventure and wonder for kids and adults of all ages. In fact, going to the library is a rewarding pastime that many already enjoy. However, according to (Fahmi & Hands, 2016;Idiomas et al., 2018), one common reason that learners do not go to the library is that the reading space or "vibe" is not right. Most learners complain that library is too quiet. They prefer a place where they can talk and share ideas of what they have been reading. Unfortunately, some schools do not have libraries. If ever there is, only few books and other reading materials are available.

Knowledge Acquisition Support of Teachers
The next group of respondents were the teachers. With an overall mean of 4.14, the teachers had "very satisfactory" knowledge acquisition skills. This means that most of the time the teachers applied the conditions and practices for pupils to acquire knowledge as presented in the table.It can also be seen from the table that there were conditions that the teachers rated themselves as outstanding. This means that the teachers always read aloud to the class, helped learners understand new vocabulary in texts they were reading, required the learners to take a written quiz or test about what they have read, taught reading as a whole-class activity, asked learners to read aloud to the whole class, listened attentively to learners read aloud, conducted oral questioning of learners to what they have read, made the classroom convenient for learning reading, made the learners answer reading comprehension questions in a workbook or on a worksheet about what they have read, and explained or supported the understanding of the learners of what they have read. These items have mean ranging from 4.25 -4.75.
Based from these results, the teachers believed that reading aloud could be used to encourage learners to construct meanings, connect ideas and experiences across texts. Reading aloud to learners gave the pupils an opportunity to hear the teacher model fluency and expression in reading. Research has shown that teachers who read aloud motivate learners to read (Al-Jarrah & binti Ismail, 2018). Moreover, asking them to read aloud to the whole class provides quick and easy assessment of learner's comprehension. It is also very important to conduct follow-up questions to measure how far the learners have understood what they have read. All other items were rated by the teachers as "very satisfactory". This means that they, most of the time, implemented these conditions. The only item that was rated as "satisfactory" was asking learners to do a project about what they have read (e.g., a play or art project). This implies that they often asked the learners to do a project after reading a story or passage.

Knowledge Acquisition Support of Parents.
The families of the learners, especially their parents, had "outstanding" rating on four (4) items. This means that they always recognized the child's achievement, no matter how simple it may be especially on reading, provided their child time where the child can work, read, and do his/her home assignments, encouraged their child to participate Extensive Reading Project in the school, and emphasized that reading was better than any other activities. The results show that parents believed that giving encouragement and supporting their children to participate in reading activities as well as providing them time to read would help improve their children's reading level. In contrast, five (5) items were rated only as "satisfactory". This implies that the families or parents oftentimes had books, magazines, encyclopedias, fiction and non-fiction books that were important reading materials at home, made fun by reading fiction books, bought current books, magazines and journals for the child to read at home, helped their child build up his personal library by gifts of book from time to time, and had mini library where family members spent their leisure time in reading (Nafisah, 2014;Said, 2014). These imply that most families or parents, nowadays, rarely buy printed materials such as books, journals and magazines.
This incident might be due to the advent of technology where it seems a lot more interesting to watch television or browse the web than read printed materials. The overall weighted mean for the knowledge acquisition practices of parents is 3.84 interpreted as "very satisfactory". This means that majority of the conditions cited are implemented by the parents most of the time. These conditions are helpful for their children to acquire knowledge through reading at home. In the study of (Merga, 2017) about the importance of parents reading with children even after children can read, she found out that nearly three-fifths of her respondents reported that they were not being read to at home. She suggested that parents should not stop reading with their children just because they have learned to read independently. Reading with children can influence children's future attitudes towards reading as well as building their confidence and competence as readers. The last 5 items under parents' support have something to do with the presence of library and books. Majority of the parents do not have library at home much more buying and providing books, magazines, journals and encyclopedia. Based from the interview with some parents, they did not have enough budget for additional reading materials. They were contented with the books provided by the Department of Education.

Reading Ability Level of the Learners
The second variable that this study investigated was the reading level of the learners in terms of prior knowledge and vocabulary. Reading ability level of the learners can be seen in Table 3. The learners were asked to answer a prior knowledge test and vocabulary test. In terms of prior knowledge, the learner-respondents got a mean score of 8.93 interpreted as "satisfactory". This is out of fifteen (15) questions in the prior knowledge test. This means that the learners satisfactorily remembered or applied the experiences they had including information they learned elsewhere in finding the meaning of the words. This implies further that the learners need to use their prior knowledge more often so that he/she will remember what has been learned. (Lesaux & Harris, 2017) asserts that activating prior knowledge is the most important aspect of the reading experience. Learners relate the written word to their previous experiences to make reading more personal, helping them to both understand and remember what they have read. In terms of their vocabulary, the learners were asked to get the meaning of the word through its context clues as presented in the given passage. Out of the 15 items in the test, the overall mean for the learner's scores in vocabulary was 9.45 which belongs to "very satisfactory" rating. In other words, the vocabulary level of the Grade 6 learners was already very satisfactory. However, they still needed to enrich their vocabulary or practice getting meaning of the words from context clues to improve their present vocabulary level to excellent level. According to Calixihan, (2007), it pays to have a rich vocabulary. It makes you a sharp reader and a smart speaker. You grasp the exact meaning of what you read or hear without having to consult a dictionary. It enables you to say and write what you mean in a colorful, interesting way. It is with this idea that the pupils must sharpen their vocabulary skills because this is one of the tools they will use to succeed.

Reading Comprehension of the Learners
The scores were computed from reading comprehension test wherein the learners were given a story and needed to answer 10 questions that followed it. The data are presented by school. The Elementary School 8 got the highest mean score for reading comprehension with a mean value of 7.80. The reading comprehension test had 10 items. This implies that majority of the learners in this school got a high score in the test. On the other hand, the lowest in rank were the Elementary School 6 and Elementary School 11 in which both schools got a mean of 4.20 which was lower than 50% of the items.
The overall mean of 5.80 for the reading comprehension test belonged to the range of "very satisfactory". This implies that the reading comprehension level of the learners was very satisfactory. With the result, the teachers were still encouraged to assess and plan intervention programs to cater the needs and weaknesses of the learners in terms of comprehending a passage in order for them to get an excellent reading comprehension (I. Assiri & Siddiqui, 2020;Idiomas et al., 2018).

Relationship between Knowledge Acquisition Support and Knowledge Acquisition Practices
The first research hypothesis that this study investigated was if there was significant relationship between knowledge acquisition practices of learners and knowledge acquisition support of teachers and parents. The relationship between knowledge acquisition support of teachers and parents can be seen in Table 4.  Table 4 shown the relationship between knowledge acquisition support of teachers and parents. From that table, it can be seen that the Pearson r values when knowledge acquisition practices of learners are correlated with knowledge acquisition support of teachers and parents are 0.143 and 0.229. The two-correlation coefficient are considered as weak relationship based on Table 4. With p-values of 0.277 and 0.079 indicated that the values were not significant at 5% level. This means that there was no significant relationship between the knowledge acquisition practices of pupils and the knowledge acquisition support of both teachers and parents. However, at 10% level, the support of parents is significant to the knowledge acquisition practices of the learners. This suggest that parents are more influential to the learners compared to teachers. The results further imply that the knowledge acquisition support provided by the teachers in order to be proficient in reading had no significant correlation to the knowledge acquisition practices of the learners such as active participation in class activities, reading books, solving problems, comprehending what is read and others. This result is not consistent to the findings of (Casinillo et al., 2020) that deals with effective teaching strategies.

Relationship between Knowledge Acquisition Practices and Reading Ability
Relationship between knowledge acquisition Acquisition Practices and Reading Ability Level of the Learners can be seen in Table 5.  Table 5 showed that relationship between knowledge acquisition practices and reading ability level of the learners had a correlation coefficient value of 0.356 (p-value=0.007) which indicated that the knowledge acquisition of the learners was highly significant when correlated with learners' prior knowledge. This accepts the research hypothesis that knowledge acquisition of learners was significantly related with prior knowledge of learners. Knowledge acquisition typically refers to the process of acquiring, processing, understanding, and recalling information through one of a number of methods. This is often a field of study closely tied to cognition, memory, and the way in which human beings are able to understand the world around them. Knowledge acquisition with learning strategies typically details how people experience new information, how that information is stored in the brain, and how that information can be recalled for later use (Cui, 2016).
In relation to the learners' vocabulary, a correlation coefficient of 0.48 (p-value<0.001) was highly significant when knowledge acquisition of learners was paired with their vocabulary level. This means that the research hypothesis was accepted at 0.01 level of significance which stated that knowledge acquisition of learners was highly significantly correlated with reading level in terms of vocabulary. This implies that those learners who had very satisfactory knowledge acquisition were the ones who had very satisfactory level of vocabulary. Vocabulary development focuses on helping learners learn the meaning of new words and concepts in various contexts and across all academic content areas. Teaching learners to develop vocabulary means providing them explicit instruction on important words from text and teaching student's strategies to help them learn word meaning independently. Thus, exposing learners to more varied conditions of acquiring knowledge provides them a better environment for the development of their vocabulary level.

Relationship between Reading Ability Level and Reading Comprehension
The second hypothesis stated that there was a significant relationship between reading level and reading comprehension of the learners. The data to validate this hypothesis is reflected in Table 6.  Table 6, the computed correlation coefficient when reading level in terms of the learners' prior knowledge was correlated with reading comprehension, the correlation value was 0.42 with p-value of 0.001. Since the value was significant even at 0.01 level, thus, there was sufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis. In other words, the learners' prior knowledge was highly significantly related to their reading comprehension. The same result was achieved when vocabulary level was correlated to reading comprehension. With a value of 0.34 (p-value=.008), it was also highly significant when these variables were correlated. This made the researcher reject the null hypothesis and accept the second research hypothesis that there were significant relationships when reading level in terms of prior knowledge and vocabulary were correlated with the learners' reading comprehension. This implies further that improving both prior knowledge and vocabulary would enhance the reading comprehension of the learners. (Ineson et al., 2013;Kóbor et al., 2020) agreed that engaging pupil in prior knowledge experiences becomes a form in classroom where teacher's value understanding what knowledge pupils possess. It is in fact a major factor in comprehension, which is, making sense of the pupils learning experiences. Creating an opportunity to challenge the pupils to call on their collective experiences (prior knowledge) is essential in the quest for making meaning. On the other hand, vocabulary and comprehension were positively related. According to (Abdelrahman & Bsharah, 2014;Habibi, 2017), it is a truth universally acknowledged that pupils with larger vocabularies are also much better at reading. Understanding a written passage is so much more than just reading the words; understanding, or comprehension, is directly linked to a child's vocabulary knowledge.

Conclusion
Grade 6 learners of Hilongos South District in Leyte Division had very satisfactory knowledge acquisition as well as their teachers and parents' practices. They were satisfactory in terms of their prior knowledge and very satisfactory in terms of vocabulary and reading comprehension. The knowledge acquisition practices of the learners are influenced with the learners' vocabulary level and their prior knowledge but were not correlated to the knowledge acquisition support of teachers and parents. Furthermore, there was no relationship between prior knowledge and vocabulary to their reading comprehension level.