Effects of Extensive Reading Programme on Primary School Pupils’ Achievement in Reading Comprehension in Mangu LGA, Plateau State

This study sets out with the objectives to investigate the effects of extensive reading programme (ERP) on primary school pupils’ achievement in reading comprehension in Mangu LGA, Plateau State. Two sets of primary four pupils from different schools were used as experimental and control groups respectively. The population consisted of 215 pupils from two Public Primary Schools, Quasi-experimental research design was adopted to conduct the research using the non-equivalent control groups on the basis of using intact group. All conditions were similar in each group on reading comprehension with emphasis on vocabulary development, grammatical structure and the three comprehension approaches. Two instruments were use: the Standard story book and class Achievement Test (CAT) which was administered to the pupils’ before and after the treatment. Data collected were analyzed using the mean scores, standard deviation and t-test for independent sample. The results indicated that the experimental group performed significantly mean difference over the control group in their post-test in the area of vocabulary development, grammatical structure and the three comprehension approaches. It was therefore recommended that extensive reading should be considered an inevitable programme in the Public Primary Schools to improve their reading culture habit. Supplementary reading materials should be made available aside from the prescribed texts in all Public Primary Schools. Extensive reading programme was also recommended to be made compulsory on the school time table in order to ameliorate the reading challenges pupils have in Plateau state.