A research on reading comprehension and morphological awareness levels of middle school students and the relationship between these concepts

Abstract

This study aims to determine the levels of reading comprehension and morphological awareness in middle school students and to examine the dimensions of these two concepts by illustrating the existence of a relationship between them. The study group of the research conducted with the relational screening model consists of 1561 students in the 5 th , 6 th , 7 th and 8 th grades from the cities located in six different regions of Turkey. Morphological awareness test and the reading comprehension tests developed separately for each grade were used in the collection of data obtained between the years of 2016-2018. According to the results, it was seen that the reading comprehension levels of the middle school students were moderate , that there was a significant difference between the grades in terms of the success in the reading comprehension in favor of the upper grades, and that the female students had better reading comprehension skills compared to the male students. According to the other results obtained from the research, it was observed that the students in the 5 th and 6 th grades were at a low level in terms of morphological awareness, that the levels of the students in the 7 th and 8 th grades were moderate , and that there was a significant difference among the grades and between the genders in terms of the success. Lastly, it was understood that there was a high-level relationship between the reading comprehension and morphological awareness. Accordingly, it was determined that the success in morphological awareness was at a higher level in the students having a high rate of success in terms of reading comprehension, and that the students having lower morphological awareness got lower scores in reading comprehension tests.