Semantic competence of g10 students in Rizal national science

Thesis Bachelor of Secondary Education major in English University of Rizal System-Morong. 2018

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This study aimed to determine the level of semantic competence of G10 students in Rizal National Science High School based on the different semantic aspects such as connotation, denotation, synonymy, antonymy, paraphrase, lexical and structural ambiguity, analytic, contradictory and synthetic sentences. Subsequently, this study wanted to measure their competence on how they employ their knowledge and understanding of the different semantic aspects in the complexity and sophistication of creating meaning. Furthermore, it aimed to find the contributing factors that strengthened the semantic competence. This study made use of descriptive-developmental evaluative method of research since it aimed to determine the level of semantic competence through the semantic test developed by the researchers for the purpose of description and interpretation. Semantic test was made for the determination of the needed data. The researchers-made semantic test was based on the books with G10 English Curriculum Guide as reference. To determine the performance of the participants, mean and standard deviation were used. In addition, the researchers conducted an interview among the participants in order to describe the contributing factors that affect the participants' semantic competence. The result showed that the participants obtained an overall mean of 69.14 and a standard deviation of 8.558 which was verbally interpreted as "Very Satisfactory." Meanwhile, in terms of the contributing factors, the findings showed that reading, writing, teacher's direct method, school activities and intrinsic motivation can affect the participants' semantic competence. Based on the summary of findings and conclusions drawn, it is recommended for English teachers to focus on strengthening the teaching of "connotation" beyond the literal level activities. They should also engage students in co-curricular activities. Other national high schools may use the findings of the present paper as a model to upgrade the English language performance of their students. Moreover, future researchers may validate the findings through a parallel study considering oral or writing skills. They may also conduct further studies that analyze a semantic competence using higher aspects such as idioms, entailment, presupposition, extension and intension, graded membership, thematic roles, deictics and conversational strategies.