Victoria C.

Fargas Speech 197

2013-31008 Prof. Regina Gochuico

Education is one of the most important things in my life. I always prioritize my studies

along with my family and friends. I find it important to get good grades and learn as much as I

can along the way. Learning has always been fun for me especially if the subject is handled in an

interesting way and is taught by a good teacher but I must admit that there are times that I feel

like I did not learn much in a particular subject and sometimes I think that it is because of the

teachers teaching style. The field of education is a wide area for research and one of the things I

want to find out about is how certain factors affect a students academic performance. Grades

have always been important to me and I believe that it is one way to measure a students

understanding of a subject matter which is why I want to know how to improve a students

grades.

I studied high school in a Catholic school in Cavite. High school is a crucial point for me

because this is when my subjects became harder and I realized which subjects I was good at and

the ones I needed to work harder on. I was able to pinpoint some of my strengths and

weaknesses. I loved some of my subjects like my classes in English, Music and Practical Arts

and this manifested in my grades. Basically, high school was the point in my life when I learned

more about myself and my abilities.

Among my high school teachers I remember my teacher in Filipino when I was third

year. I found the story Noli Me Tangere very fascinating and the teacher knew the subject matter

thoroughly but there were things about her teaching methods that I questioned. One of the things

I did not fully agree with was our seating arrangement in class. We were usually seated
alphabetically but in her class, we were seated according to our grades in Filipino. Those with

the lowest grades were seated in front and those with the highest grades were seated at the back.

My teacher said that she does this so that the students with low grades would learn more because

they are in front but there were a few things that I found problematic about this arrangement. I

liked Noli Me Tangere so I got good grades and was always seated at the last chair in the corner

and this was difficult for me because my eyes were not that good and I was a bit short in stature

so I could not see the things she writes on the board in class anymore. I had to double my efforts

and make use of the internet and other sources to learn more about the topics in class because I

could not understand what she was teaching in class at times because I could not hear her and see

her properly.

Another thing about this seating arrangement was that I found it a bit embarrassing for

the students whose grades were not so stellar because the seating arrangement exposes the grades

that they get which are supposed to be confidential. Since the other students know the people

who constantly get low grades, they are being labeled dumb or bobo which is not good for

their emotional health and some of them stopped trying to do better in the subject already. I also

noticed that the students in the front row never change which leads me to this question, what is

the effect of the seating arrangement on the academic performance of students? I think that this is

worth exploring because based on a sharing session in our class, other people shared that they

were also arranged according to their grades but the other way around with those who have

higher grades in front and those with lower grades in the back. It would be intriguing to find the

effect of seating arrangement on the grades of the student and probably contrast the different

seating arrangements.
 Another topic that would be interesting to look at is class size. What is the ideal class size

that would be conducive for learning and what is the effect of class size on the academic

performance of students? I thought of this question because I have experienced large classes with

more than a hundred students and I have also experienced classes with only around fifteen

students. I noticed that I learn more and get higher grades in the smaller classes than the big

ones. I attribute this to the lack of student-teacher interaction in large classes because it is hard to

conduct recitations and know the students one by one. The interaction is linear in classes with a

lot of students because there is not much participation from the students. I became curious about

what the ideal class size would be and the effect on the academic performance of students.

Lastly, I want to find out about the effect of the level of self-perceived communication

competence of students on their academic performance in Comm 3 classes. This one is a bit

specific because of my experience. Back in first year, when I took my Comm 3 class, I had much

lower confidence and I thought that I was not good in communicating with others. In Comm 3, I

was required to do different kinds of speeches like speech to persuade, impromptu speech, etc

and I found it a bit difficult for me. I also learned the different models of communication and I

tried to communicate with my other classmates. After the class, I became more confident about

my communication skills and got a good grade as well. Aside from this experience, I chose the

variable self-perceived communication competence because this is one of the variables I am

currently trying to measure in my thesis. This leads me to the question, what is the effect of the

level of self-perceived communication competence of students on their academic performance?

These are three of the things I want to study and find out more about in the field of

education and my experiences that made me want to learn more about it.