Examination of reading skills of students who are poor readers in different text genres

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the reading skills of fourth graders who were poor readers in different text genres (story and informative text). Fiftysix fourth grade students who were poor readers participated in this study. Reading rates, reading accuracies, reading errors and reading prosody characteristics of the students were examined in the study. The results of the study showed that reading rates of the students were higher in informative text. In addition, reading accuracies of the students were not differentiated according to text genre. The students made more errors of mispronunciation, word insertion, and repetition of word part, self correction, letter insertion-omission, syllable insertion-omission, letter reversing and conversion of the word final in informative text. The big proportions of mispronunciations of the students were reading the word as a visually similar word in both the story (78%) and the informative text (79%). While the students obtained higher expression and volume scores in the informative text, they read the story with a more suitable pace.

Keywords: Reading Disability, Reading Fluency, Story, Informational Text