The Relations between Reading Comprehension and Reading Fluency: Their Reciprocal Roles as an Indicator and Predictor

Year 2019, Volume: 9 Issue: 2, 67 - 81, 09.10.2019

Kasim Yıldırım , Seyit Ateş , Fatih Çetin Çetinkaya , Dudu Kaya Tosun

Abstract

In the current
research, we aimed to explore the relations between reading comprehension and
reading fluency and their connections with each other as an indicator and a
predictor. For this overall aim, a total of 100 students from the seventh-grade level
were enrolled. This research took place in the fall semester, 2015, in Turkey’s
Denizli province. The participants from all grade levels were willing and
available to take part in the present study. Informed consent letters were
obtained from all of the participants and their parents or guardians. The
participants were relatively homogenous and of middle socioeconomic (SES)
status. They ranged in age from 13 through 15 years. For the measures of fluency,
components were taken from students’ oral reading of the same texts including
narrative and expository according to grade levels. After then, the students’
reading comprehension levels were assessed. Every comprehension test for the
grade levels included a narrative text and an expository text, and 12 questions
were prepared for every text, six of which were literal and another five of
which were inferential. The path analyses were used to identify the relations
between reading fluency and reading comprehension. According to the results of the
research, some recommendations were given. 

Keywords

reading comprehension;, reading fluency, reading success

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