Abstract
The purpose of this study was to establish reading fluency norms for first grade students at the end of the school year in Romanian language using PEAFC (Proba de evaluare şi antrenare a fluenţei în citire/ The Assessment and Training of Reading Fluency Instrument, Bodea Haţegan & Talaş, 2014). A representative sample of 1977 first grade students (with ages between 7 and 8 years old) was assessed, girls (Ng=954) and boys (Nb=1023), from different counties from Romania (Nc=11), attending rural (Nr= 385) and urban (Nu=1592) elementary schools. Oral reading fluency norms were established on the linguistic structure of the words (monosyllabic, disyllabic, three syllable words and text words). The results of this study offer a new perspective on the reading fluency levels at the end of the first grade and will help the teachers and the specialists to identify students at risk for dyslexia and to start effective early intervention programs to improve reading fluency.
Highlights
Reading is a very complex academic skill that the students achieve throughout the first grades; this skill influences the academic progress of the students over the years
The following paragraphs present some reading norms developed for the English language readers, in order for these reading fluency norms to be considered in discussing the data collected for the Romanian population, as we considered that transcultural studies and research are very relevant in the speech and language field and they can reveal several transcultural invariants related with speaking, reading and writing skills
This research is valuable as it is based on the PEAFC, an assessment and intervention tool completely adapted to the Romanian language speakers
Summary
Reading is a very complex academic skill that the students achieve throughout the first grades; this skill influences the academic progress of the students over the years. Since 2012, the Romanian school system has changed a lot, children start school when they are 6 years old in a preschool class, and they start first grade when they are 7 years old With this major change, the curricula and the teaching literacy strategies have changed and there are no research works at the national level to offer specific information about reading skills. 85) define the same concept as: “A reader whose performance exceeds expectation with respect to age and ability; while an independent reader; any person who reads smoothly, without hesitation and with comprehension.” The latter definition for reading fluency includes the following components: accuracy, speed, prosody and comprehension. This article traces the development of concepts, procedures, and findings associated with fluency and discusses their implications for instructional design and practice It invites further controlled research and experimental analyses of phenomena that may be significant in the future evolution of educa-tional technology and in the analysis of complex behavior. Other researchers (Adams 1990 learning and reading -- The nature of learning -- On the goals of print instruction: What do we want students to learn -- Learning how to read -- On teaching phonics first -- Phonological prerequisites: Becoming aware of spoken words, syllables and phonemes -- Learning about print -- To reading from writing.”, “author” : [ { “dropping-particle” : “”, “family” : “Adams”, “given” : “Marilyn Jager”, “non-dropping-particle” : “”, “parse-names” : false, “suffix” : “” } ], “edition” : “1st”, “id” : “ITEM-1”, “issued” : { “date-parts” : [ [ “1990” ] ] }, “number-of-pages” : “485”, “publisher” : “MIT Press”, “title” : “Beginning to read : thinking and learning about print”, “type” : “book” }, “uris” : [ “http://www.mendeley.com/documents/?uuid=ea6655b6-27773962-a80b-3740a6e25c49” ] } ], “mendeley” : { “formattedCitation” : “(Marilyn Jager Adams 1990; Adams 1994)as Adams immersed herself in the topic, more of a \”What we know about basic processes and instructional practices in word and letter identification and early reading.\”
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