Two intact classes of Preparatory pupils, one designated as Experimental group and the other the Control group, were subjects of the study. The main objective was to ascertain whether the use of the First language Component-Bridging Program teaching methodology would significantly improve the reading performance of the pupils on the following skills: identifying colors, naming familiar objects, identifying similar and different objects, arranging pictures in order, completing the missing part of a picture, identifying vowels and consonants, reading syllables and basic sight words.

To address this objective, the researcher used a quasi-experiment employing the nonequivalent posttest-only control group design. The experimental was exposed to the FLC-BP teaching methodology, and the control group was not exposed at all. The researcher handled both the experimental and control group.

There were 13 original lesson plans and enriching activities constructed by the researcher for classroom presentation. The pretest and posttest were administered to both Experimental and Control classes. The proposed achievement test underwent a rigid validation process and the test item was analyzed.

The data were subjected to statistical analyses to test the null hypotheses.The following are the significant findings of the study:

1. The pupil respondents were composed of 23 in the experimental group who were treated with the First Language Component-Bridging Program (FLC-BP) teaching methodology and 20 in the control group were taught in English only which was prescribed by the Dep-Ed.

2. The mean scores of the control and experimental groups in the pretest were 24.45 and 26.17, respectively, both described as within the "average" performance level. The mean scores of the control and experimental groups in the posttest were 34.71 and 41.74 described as "above average" and "high," respectively.

3. The reading performance of the control and experimental groups in the pretest had no significant difference with a computed t-value of 0.94.

4. The reading performance of the control group in the pretest and posttest showed significant difference with a computed t-value of 13.76.

5. The reading performance of the experimental group in the pretest and posttest showed significant difference with a computed t-value of 16.09.

6. The reading performance of the control and experimental groups in the posttest showed significant difference with a computed t-value of 11.69. The FLC-BP was an effective method of improving reading performance of preschool pupils.

All these findings point to the conclusion that the First Language Component-Bridging Program teaching methodology has shown evidence of its efficacy in the improvement of the Experimental pupils' achievement in their reading skills in identifying colors, naming familiar objects, identifying similar and different objects, arranging pictures in order, completing a picture, identifying vowels and consonants, reading syllable and basic sight words over the control group where the researcher used and all the English approaches were used as prescribed by the Dep-Ed.

Thesis (Master of Education - Language, Reading and Numeracy)

Includes appendices and bibliographical references.