Participation in Intervention Programmes of Children with Poor Reading Skills in Hungary

Zsóka Sipos,János Steklács

doi:10.26529/cepsj.1030

Abstract

In this century, the value of information has become more significant; reflecting this change, focus has shifted to preparing pupils for the functional use of reading. Therefore, the latest international assessments of reading literacy are set up to address this kind of knowledge. Significant numbers of individuals are performing below the minimum level in these assessments in Hungary, signalling lower capacity for participation in the community. When attempting to eliminate functional illiteracy, it is crucial to analyse the present support system, and the efficiency of recognising reading problems in the early stages, in order to improve the provision of education systematically. When examining the probable causes of the struggle to comprehend texts, one of the prerequisites of understanding written language is appropriate decoding. This research focuses on investigating the access to intervention programmes of 5th-grade children with poor reading skills. The speed and accuracy of the aloud reading of 957 pupils attending mainstream classrooms were measured and compared to the data regarding the participation in rehabilitation programmes. The most relevant finding of the research was that only less than half of the children with poor reading skills receive help to improve their performance; 55% of slow readers and 60% of non-accurate readers were left without support, even though their performance is significantly worse than that of their peers. This finding indicates the need to revise the screening system and necessitates more extensive and less diagnosis-based access to intervention programmes.

Highlights

As the rationale behind the work presented in this study is the growing percentage of low-performing Hungarian pupils in international assessments of reading literacy, the concept of these surveys and the premisses of reading comprehension, especially fluent reading, needs to be examined first
Recognising the social dysfunctions of literacy and reading skills, in 1956 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defined functional illiteracy as ‘A person is functionally literate when he has acquired the knowledge and skills in reading and writing which enable him to engage effectively in all those activities in which literacy is normally assumed in his culture or group’ (Gray, 1956, as cited in Wagner, 1990, p. 6.)
The criteria of poor reading skills were set based on the performance of 957 children in reading speed, accuracy and comprehension of a text in three text variants

Summary

Introduction

As the rationale behind the work presented in this study is the growing percentage of low-performing Hungarian pupils in international assessments of reading literacy, the concept of these surveys and the premisses of reading comprehension, especially fluent reading, needs to be examined first. The definition of reading and reading comprehension started to be transformed alongside the technological and industrial development in the second half of the 20th century. This change came from two directions: a theoretical direction appears due to the increasing interest of various scientific fields in reading, while the practical direction is a consequence of the attempts of international organisations to solve global social problems. Recognising the social dysfunctions of literacy and reading skills, in 1956 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defined functional illiteracy as ‘A person is functionally literate when he has acquired the knowledge and skills in reading and writing which enable him to engage effectively in all those activities in which literacy is normally assumed in his culture or group’ (Gray, 1956, as cited in Wagner, 1990, p. 6.)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion