The Two Versions of a Letter of Request
A student must read two short texts for a reading-comprehension task. Text A is a formal liham ng kahilingan to a school principal requesting a venue for a fundraising concert; it uses kung maaari po, sumasamo, and long embedded clauses. Text B is a group-chat message from the same student to classmates saying the principal 'might' allow the venue 'if we ask nicely.' The student answers that both texts say the principal has agreed. When asked to find the word showing the request is not yet approved, she points to maaari in Text A but cannot explain why Text B's baka matters. She reads at a reasonable speed and knows most vocabulary.
1. Diagnose the comprehension failure. Is this a vocabulary problem, a syntax problem, or a pragmatic-inference problem?
Read the worked answer
It is primarily pragmatic inference, not vocabulary. She recognises maaari and baka as words but does not map modality markers onto certainty levels. Text A's kung maaari po and sumasamo signal a polite, unapproved request; Text B's baka signals possibility, and 'if we ask nicely' is conditional. Both texts encode non-approval.
The error is treating a request as a report of outcome. This is a common L2 reading trap: learners decode propositions but miss speech-act force. Evidence: she located the modal word but could not explain its function, which points to inference, not decoding.
Next assessment: give three one-line sentences with baka, siguro, and tiyak and ask her to rank certainty. If she can rank them, the gap is text-level inference; if not, it is lexical-semantic.
2. Design a follow-up task that forces her to compare the two texts' stance without relying on recall of either.
Read the worked answer
Use a stance grid she fills while both texts remain visible, so the task tests comparison, not memory:
| Question | Text A | Text B |
|---|---|---|
| Has the venue been granted? | ||
| Which word shows certainty? | ||
| Who is being asked? | ||
| What tone (formal/casual)? |
Then ask her to write one sentence: 'Ang dalawang teksto ay parehong ___ dahil ___.' The blank forces a stance label (e.g., hindi pa sigurado) and the dahil clause forces textual evidence.
Finally, ask a transfer question: 'If the principal replies Sige, pero kausapin muna natin ang treasurer, has the request succeeded?' This tests whether she can apply modality reasoning to new text, which is the real reading skill. Mark on evidence cited, not on opinion.