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Exploring the Effects of Differentiated Instruction on the Comprehension Skills of Students in the English at the Secondary Level

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Abstract

This paper aims at finding out the impacts of differentiation on the comprehension skills of students and their learning achievement. The study focused on students with multiple abilities, and different intelligence; who need extra attention, time and curriculum foundation during the course of study time. Differentiated instruction is modifying teaching methodology according to the needs, interests or mental level of the learners so that the ultimate academic goal is achieved. This technique, though slow, yet it been proven to be effective in boosting the classroom learning environment. The mode of the study was quasi-experimental with a pre-test and post-test conducted on 24 students of class IX in English subjects assigned to the experimental & control group. A pre-test on the reading comprehension and solving exercises was taken as a diagnostic assessment. The result produced that 24% (6) students could succeed in reading only the ninth-class English subject. Hence, the differentiated instruction approach was adopted by changing the teaching method i.e. minimizing the reading material according to the needs, intelligence and mental approach of the students, and allowing the learners to read a part of the passage, and solve easy questions related to the passage in groups. Later on, as per planning, a post-test was conducted where the results showed that 68% given students achieved remarkable progress in English reading & writing. This study provided encouraging insights into using differentiated instructions in improving language comprehension skills as compared to traditional teaching methods.

Keywords

Differentiated instruction, mixed-ability, classroom, comprehension skills

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