THE Effect of Top-Down Reading Strategies on the Comprehension Achievement of Junior Secondary School Students in Kaduna State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of top-down reading strategies on the comprehension
achievement of junior secondary school students in Kaduna State, Nigeria. The research was
motivated by persistent poor performance in reading comprehension among Nigerian students,
particularly in answering inferential and evaluative questions. The study was guided by Schema
Theory and Goodman’s Psycholinguistic Guessing Game Theory, .The study adopted a quasiexperimental, non-equivalent control group design. A total of 80 Junior Secondary School II
students participated, with 40 assigned to the experimental group and 40 to the control group.
The experimental group was taught using top-down strategies such as schema activation,
prediction, contextual guessing, and inference-making, while the control group received
conventional teacher-centered instruction. Data were collected using the Reading
Comprehension Achievement Test (RCAT) and analyzed with descriptive statistics and t-test.
Findings revealed that students exposed to top-down strategies performed significantly better (M
= 51.93, SD = 12.89) than those taught conventionally (M = 13.63, SD = 5.77), with t(39) = -
16.646, p < 0.05. The results confirm that top-down reading strategies enhance both literal and
inferential comprehension by engaging learners’ prior knowledge and promoting active meaning
construction. The study concludes that reliance on traditional bottom-up methods limits
comprehension outcomes. It recommends that English teachers integrate top-down strategies
into reading lessons, while curriculum developers and policymakers provide training and
resources to support learner-centered approaches