Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
TURK PSIKOLOJI DERGISI, cilt.24, sa.65, ss.56-68, 2010 (SSCI)
Reading is one of the main ways of learning. A student's main academic process who begins to school starts with reading, difficulty in reading effects a student's academic success negatively. This research assessing reading skills consisted of two stages, firstly the reading speeds, reading comprehension, reading errors of primary school grade 1-5 students (normal group) were assessed. In the second stage of this study reading skills of children with reading disabilities (research group) were compared with children who don't have any academic problems including reading disability (research group). 909 elementary school students from different class, socioeconomic status and gender, 64 children who had a diagnosis of reading disability and 64 children who had any psychiatric diagnosis included into the study. Their reading speed and reading errors were determined with reading texts and their reading comprehension skills were determined with special prepared questions about the text. The children in the normal group were found to exhibit differing levels of reading skills depending on the grade, socioeconomic status and gender where they belonged. The children diagnosed with reading disabilities were found to score significantly lower when compared to those without any such diagnosis. These children made more reading errors; their reading speed was much slower while their comprehension was also reduced. The findings obtained from comprehensive data could be useful for assessing reading skills of the normal children and for determining the reading problems and reading problem severity of children with reading disability. Also it can be useful for more objective and reliable diagnoses of these children and it can be helpful for maintaining treatment programs specifically for their difficulty.