Investigation of reading comprehension processes of primary school 4th grade students

Abstract

Reading comprehension is a complex process that requires using many skills together. To increase the quality of this process, many strategies, methods, and techniques are applied, and the operability of the applications is the subject of research. When the studies are investigated, it is seen that the effects of strategies, methods, and techniques on students' reading comprehension skills have been examined many times. However, it is not possible to deal with the reading comprehension process only with strategy effectiveness. When the studies conducted at the international and national levels are examined, it is seen that the studies in which primary school students describe their own mental processes in the reading comprehension process are limited. Therefore, this research, it is aimed to examine which strategies, methods and techniques are used by primary school 4th grade students to understand a text they read. The study was carried out with 25 primary school students studying in two public primary schools in Ardahan city center in the 2020-2021 academic year. The case study model, one of the qualitative research designs, was used in the study. A data collection tool, a semi-structured interview form consisting of open-ended questions was used to determine the methods and techniques used by primary school 4th grade students in the reading comprehension process. While preparing the interview form, first, the relevant literature was reviewed and items were created in order to reveal the activities performed by the students before, during and after reading. The semi-structured interview form consisting of 5 open-ended questions was finalized by consulting the expert opinion for the items created. The data obtained in the study were analyzed by the content analysis method. Acording to the results of the research, it was seen that primary school students most frequently used the methods of examining text images, visualizing what they read, summarizing the text, finding the message the author wanted to convey, and mapping the story in the process of reading comprehension.