EFFECT OF CD-ROM INSTRUCTIONAL MODE ON SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT AND INTEREST IN READING COMPREHENSION IN BENUE SOUTH EDUCATION ZONE OF BENUE STATE

The study was designed to explore the effect of CD-ROM instructional mode on students’ achievement and interest in reading comprehension. The study was guided by six research questions and six hypotheses. It used pretest posttest non equivalent control group quasi experimental design. The study group consisted of 207 SS1 students, 107 in experimental group and 100 in control group drawn from two public secondary schools in Benue South Education Zone during the third term of 2014/2015 academic session. Two reading comprehension passages were selected from The Intensive English for SS 1. The passages were copied into CD-ROM and used by the experimental group while the control group read the paper text. Data were collected using English Reading Comprehension Achievement Test (ERCAT) which were twenty in number and English Reading Comprehension Interest Inventory (ERCII) which were also twenty in number. Data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) to test the hypotheses at 0.05 levels of significance. The result showed that the reading achievement and interest of students who read from the screen using CD-ROM were significantly higher than those of the students who read the paper text. Based on the findings, the researcher has recommended among others that teachers of English should endeavour to adopt electronic learning to enhance the overall achievement and interest in reading particularly as the reading culture is gradually dying away.