Characteristics of an Impact on Reading Comprehension of Elementary School Students

Authors: Judith Hanke

Abstract:

Due to the rise of students with reading difficulties, a digital reading support was developed. The digital reading support focuses on reading comprehension of elementary school students. It consists of literary texts and reading exercises with diagnostics. To analyze the use of the reading packages an intervention study took place in 2023. For the methodology, an ABA-design was selected for the intervention study to examine the reading packages. The study was expedited from April 2023 until July 2023 and collected quantitative data of individuals, groups, and classes. It consisted of a survey group (N = 58) and a control group (N = 53). The pretest was conducted before the reading support intervention. The students of the survey group received reading support on their ability level to aid the individual student’s needs. At the beginning of the study characteristics of the students were collected. The characteristics included gender, age, repetition of a class, spoken language at home, German as a second language, and special support needs such as dyslexia; right after the intervention, the posttest was examined. At least three weeks after the intervention, the follow-up testing was administered. A standardized reading comprehension test was used for the three test times. The test consists of three subtests: word comprehension, sentence comprehension, and text comprehension. The focus of this paper is to determine which characteristics have an impact on reading comprehension of elementary school students. The students’ characteristics were correlated with the three test times through a Pearson correlation. The main findings are that age, repetition of a class, spoken language at home, German as a second language have an effect on reading comprehension. Interestingly gender and special support needs did not have a significant effect on the reading comprehension of the students. The significance of the study is to determine which characteristics have an impact on reading comprehension and then to assess how reading support can be modified to support the diverse students.

Keywords: class repetition, reading comprehension, reading support, second language, spoken language at home