How do fluent and poor readers’ endurance differ in reading?

Abstract

It was observed in this research how endurance status of fluent readers and poor readers changed as the text became longer. 40 students of the primary school 4th-grade, 20 were fluent readers and other 20 were poor readers, participated in the research. A narrative text was utilised in the data collection process. Students’ oral readings were recorded with a voice recorder, and their cores of reading rates and reading accuracy percentages were obtained by listening to the readings. The scores were analysed with the Friedman and Nemenyi tests. At the end of the analysis, it was seen that fluent readers’ reading rates did not differ significantly from the beginning to end of the text, whereas poor readers’ reading rates differed in favour of the first parts of the text. Accordingly, the fluent readers read the text at the same rate all the way, while the poor readers’ reading rates significantly dropped from the beginning towards the end of the text. Furthermore, fluent readers’ reading accuracy percentages differed significantly from the beginning towards the end of the text in favour of the last parts, while poor readers’ reading accuracy percentages differed in favour of the first parts. As per the findings, fluent readers’ reading accuracy percentages gradually increased, whereas poor readers’ percentages gradually dropped. In other words, as the reading time and volume increased, poor readers’ reading errors were also increased. These results were discussed in the light of the literature. Keywords: Reading fluency, endurance, stamina