Fifth graders’ comprehension of expository texts: Performance differences between poor and adequate readers

Abstract

The present study investigated and compared the expository text reading comprehension performances of adequate and poor readers by using a multicomponent model. The participants were 80 native Turkish-speaking 5th grade students. A number of literacy measures were used to collect data which were analyzed by various quantitative techniques including independent samples t-test, simultaneous regression analysis, and path analysis. The results of the independent samples t-test showed that poor readers had significantly lower performance than adequate readers in terms of their reading (a) collection of description, (b) compare contrast, and (c) problem-solution texts. In addition, path analysis results presented different patterns for each reading groups. For adequate readers, science reading fluency and depth of vocabulary knowledge contributed most to science reading comprehension. For poor readers, morphological awareness significantly accounted for their science reading comprehension performance in Turkish. The findings revealed that (a) text reading fluency is an important variable for considering the skilled performance of adequate readers, (b) the poorer comprehension performance of struggling readers were also predicted by their automatic reading skills in science texts, and (c) there is the need for further research investigating the science reading comprehension performance of readers in an approach based on multi-component model in Turkish reading.