Investigation of primary school first stage students? reading fluency skills in terms of certain variables

In this research, the relationship between reading fluency skills of the student?s at the first stage of primary schools (between the grades 2-5) and their reading comprehension and writing skills was examined. The students? reading fluency skills and comprehension skills were also compared in terms of gender, grade level, socio-economical level and type of text variables. The study was conducted using Survey model.First stage students at a Primary School in Kulu district of Konya participated in this research. Working group composed of totally 72 students, 24 students from each grade level, including second, third, fourth and fifth grades at varying gender and success rates.During the study, ?Prosodic Reading Scale?, ?Comprehension Tests? and ?6+1 Analytical Writing and Evaluation Scale? were used as data collecting devices. Besides, data related to students? reading accuracy and reading rates were rated on scales using video records. For analysis of data collected, average from descriptive statistics, one-way anova from hypothesis tests, t-test, Kruskall Wallis Test, Mann Whitney U Test, correlation, simple lineary regression and multi lineary regression analysis were used. Analysis were done via SPSS 16.0Results of the study have shown that success of students at the first stage of primary school on comprehension and writing skills were low. Students? skills on reading fluency and comprehension not varied statistically according to the gender. But students with higher socio-economical backgrounds ranked higher on these skills. Likewise, it was found out that students? skills on reading fluency (except for reading accuracy) and reading comprehension skills differentiated significantly in accordance with grade levels. As for students? reading accuracy skills, close results were found from second grade to fifth grade.Students? reading fluency skills (reading accuracy, reading rate and prosody) and reading comprehension skills were compared in terms of text type. Of these skills, it was prosody among expository and story texts which proved to be statistically significant. Prosodic averages were higher for story texts.Correlation between students? reading fluency skills (reading accuracy, reading rate and prosody), comprehension skills and writing skills was studied. Reading accuracy, reading rate and prosody were found to be remarkably interrelated. According to the correlation results, prosodic skills and reading rate were closely related. Reading fluency skills and comprehension and writing skills were also interrelated. The highest-rank relation reading fluency skill between comprehension and writing skills was prosody. According to the results of multi regression, reading accuracy and reading rate have predicted prosodic skills importantly. The latter was found to be reading rate the reading fluency skill that was best predictor prosodic skill. On the other hand, reading fluency skills were found to predict comprehension and writing skills significantly. According to multi regression results, reading fluency skill that best predictor these two dependent variables was the prosody.Keywords: reading fluency, reding accuracy, reading rate, prosody, comprehension and writing