THE EFFECTS OF READING WATTPAD IN RELATION TO THE

ENGLISH ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AMONG JUNIOR HIGHSCHOOL

STUDENTS AT KAPAYAPAAN INTEGRATED SCHOOL

A Statistical Investigation

In partial fulfillment of the Requirements in Probability and Statistics

RESEARCHERS:

Apolega, Mhark Steven

Catangay, Rika G.

Estipular, Jesica May V.

Estrella, John Kyle S.

Noprada, Ma. Loraine

March 2019
Introduction

Wattpad is one of the world largest community for sharing and discovering stories. It
is a new form of entertainment connecting to the readers and authors through storytelling,
and best of all, it is free. Wattpad has a thousands of new stories added by anonymous
authors everyday. Wattpad is the only place where it offers a social mobile reading experience
and interaction between readers and authors.

Reading is very fundamental. Books have great importance for humans. In our
everyday life, reading is very important and we cannot ignore it. As what Dr. Seuss said “The
more you read, the more things you know. The more that you learn, the more places you will
go.” Truly, the habit of reading can make people able to get pleasure. If the people cannot
appreciate the importance of reading, they were not able to get the wealth of knowledge.
Because of the advancement of technology, an app was created which presents a new style
of reading books through mobile phones or desktop computers. Wattpad was created and
developed between the partnership of Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen. It is a community of writers
and authors who were able to post articles, stories, poems and fan fictions through the
Wattpad app. Because of the release of this app, people can publish their works like how
famous writers and authors did with their own stories.

As Wattpad became popular world-wide, people read because of the benefits they get
from technology. Because it was easy for them to browse stories that they wanted to be read.
Some of them were unaware of the exclusive contents of Wattpad because they are still out
of curiosity. They were easily out of focus especially in studies, because of the addiction they
might adapted. They will have the interest of using technology than browsing books in some
libraries. There are more circumstances that may encounter of the people who are using this
Wattpad app. However, some people believed that they can get knowledge out of it and can
enhance their vocabulary. They can relax and have time with themselves in reading books.
Wattpad is very popular among teenagers that it become influential. The fact that the authors
of these books are more mature than most of the readers. Because of which the young readers
may become ignorant of things that are not supposed to be in their age. They might become
addicted in reading that they can’t concentrate on their school works.

This study aims to help the students to encourage themselves to have good reading
habits and get to know the advantages and disadvantages of reading Wattpad.
Review of Related Literature and Studies

Local Studies

Wattpad is the largest community for readers and authors, and to the disappointment
of traditional publishing entirely free. To those who are readers, reading is a past time same
as what the authors writing stories. This platform lets readers and writers contribute their
interest in different stories. With this technology, teenagers are sneaking the mobile phones
especially in schools just to read and write their favorable stories (Timoner, 2013).

According to Alamo and Jaguit (2015), Wattpad is a social platform that connects
people through words. It is also a place to discover and sharing stories. It is a community of
spans borders, interests and languages. With Wattpad, everyone can read or write with any
devices or gadgets. Most of the viewers are teens commonly students that this online
entertainment is getting stronger and wider.

Foreign Studies

Teenagers especially students, are the most commonly readers and writers in Wattpad.
The people are reading and writing less, but making sure reading and writing can adapt the
current culture. With attention, spans becoming shorter and growing desire to follow stories
as they unfold, Wattpad is ideally making long form content bitesize is more digestible in
today’s culture (Lau et.al, 2015).

Based on Michael (2016), Wattpad is a system that allows virtually anyone to publish
almost every genre of work for free. Although Wattpad does not paid its authors like
publishing house does, there were still vast range of benefits in Wattpad for new writers.
There was no trouble if the authors were not getting paid because of Wattpad can offer
opportunities and benefits.

Wattpad doesn’t exactly met the criteria of usual literature. It was accessed on mobile
phones; its community has almost global dimensions; it operates according to the
characteristics of social media. It represents the concepts of transmedia, intermediality and
convergence, which other authors proposed. It developed a multichannel network through
Wattpad studios and represents most potential towards the traditional publishing industry,
cinema and television, respectively. However, all of these lies behind the human desire to tell
and read stories (Renata et.al, 2017).
Statement of the Problem

1) What is the demographic profile of the respondents in terms of age and gender?
2) What is the effect of reading wattpad among the respondents?
3) What is the level of academic performance in English among the respondents?
4) Is there a significant relationship between the effects of reading wattpad and the
academic performance in English among the respondents?

Hypothesis

There is no significant relationship between the effects of reading wattpad and the
academic performance in English among the respondents.

Scope and Limitations

The scope of this study was the Junior Highschool Students of Kapayapaan Integrated
School in school year 2018-2019 by determining the effects of reading Wattpad in relation to
their English academic performance. This study was conducted from December 2018 until
March 2019. The methodology of the study used a descriptive correlation research design in
which administering questionnaires is primary source of data gathering.
Due to resources and time limit constraints, limitations are conditions beyond the
control of the researchers and may place restriction on the conclusion of the study. The
behavior of the respondents were strictly not included on this study. The respondents are
limited to the junior high school students to represent the entire population that will be
assessed on the said area. The researchers prepared a survey questionnaire to determine the
perception of reading Wattpad in relation to the academic performance in English of junior
high school students of Kapayapaan Integrated School.

Population and Sample

Junior Highschool Students Population Sample
Grade 7 557 30
Grade 8 474 30
Grade 9 479 30
Grade 10 523 30
Total: 2,033 120
Sampling Design
The researchers were able to get 120 respondents out of 2,033 junior highschool
students with 0.05 margin of error in Kapayapaan Integrated School. The researchers used
stratified random sampling technique to identify the population and sample size of the
study to determine the effects of reading wattpad in relation to the English academic
performance among junior highschool students at Kapayapaan Integrated School.

Statistical Treatment Data

The formula used as statistical treatment of data gathered:

To determine the sample size of the study the Slovin’s formula is used to have

total respondents for the questionnaires.

𝐍
It is computed as 𝐧 = (𝟏+𝐍𝐞𝟐 )

Where:
n -no. of samples
N - total population
e - error margin / margin of error
To determine the impact of reading wattpad in relation to the English academic

performance among junior highschool students at Kapayapaan Integrated School.