READING COMPREHENSION DIFFICULTIES AND THEIR IMPACT ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AMONG GRADE 7 LEARNERS

Reading comprehension remained a critical concern among early secondary learners because difficulty in understanding texts affected both classroom learning and academic achievement. This study examined the reading comprehension difficulties, motivation, study habits, and academic performance of Grade 7 learners as a basis for a school-based reading intervention. Using a quantitative descriptive-correlational design, the study involved 61 Grade 7 learners from Basista National High School during the 2025–2026 school year. Data were gathered from Phil-IRI reading comprehension results, English academic grades, and an adopted questionnaire on motivation and study habits. Frequency counts, percentages, weighted means, and Pearson product-moment correlation were used to analyze the data. Findings showed that only 31.15% of the learners were at grade level, while 52.46% were two levels below grade level and 16.39% were three levels below grade level. Reading comprehension was positively correlated with academic performance (r = .62, p < .05). Motivation and study habits were negatively correlated with reading difficulties but positively correlated with academic performance. The findings implied that reading difficulty was both a literacy and an academic achievement concern. Thus, a school-based READ intervention was proposed to strengthen vocabulary, fluency, inferential comprehension, motivation, and self-regulated study habits among struggling readers.