1.-6. Sınıf Öğrencilerinin Okuduğunu Anlama Başarılarının İncelenmesi
An Investigation of Reading Comprehension Achievements of Students in Grades 1 to 6

Summary/Abstract: Reading is one of the critical skills founded in early childhood education and further developed throughout elementary school. The ultimate goal of reading skills is to facilitate understanding and comprehension (Fisher et al., 2011; Akyol, 2017, p. 1; Baştuğ, 2021; Yiğit & Durukan, 2023). Reading comprehension is a complex skill that has been studied for years and continues to evolve and be researched. For a reader to comprehend, they must possess cognitive capacities (attention, memory, critical and analytical thinking, inference making, visualization), motivation (purpose of reading, interest in the content, self-efficacy as a reader), and various types of knowledge (vocabulary, domain and subject knowledge, grammar, comprehension strategies) (Snow, 2002). After students acquire these foundational skills, reading comprehension activities continue intensively in higher grades. The complex and layered structure of comprehension processes has also influenced the assessment methods employed in readability evaluation. While various methods are utilized to measure comprehension, it is believed that asking questions related to the text content is the most effective approach. In Turkey, despite a significant increase in research on reading comprehension, there are limitations regarding standards and assessment tools for evaluating comprehension. In national studies on reading comprehension, most research has developed separate tests to measure this ability (Kanmaz, 2012; Mete, 2016; Kılıç, 2019; Yiğit, 2021). This situation has led to a lack of diversity and standards in reading comprehension assessments. Therefore, this research aims to investigate the reading comprehension achievements of students in grades 1 to 6. To this end, reading comprehension tests were developed based on narrative and informative texts for each grade level. This study, which examines the reading comprehension skills of students from first to sixth grades, was conducted using a survey model. In the test development, questions focusing on surface-level and deep-level understanding were utilized. The questions were structured according to Barrett's taxonomy and presented in multiple-choice and open-ended formats. The developed tests were administered to a total of 755 students (347 girls and 408 boys) from various socioeconomic regions of Istanbul. Reliability and validity results of the test were calculated. In the second phase, the reading comprehension achievements of students from grades 1 to 6 were examined in a different student group. Accordingly, the comprehension levels were found to be 65.40 for first graders, 61.71 for second graders, 72.08 for third graders, 72.08 for fourth graders, 59.42 for fifth graders, and 53.47 for sixth graders. These results indicate that the increase in reading comprehension levels is not consistent as students progress through the grades. In conclusion, it has been revealed that the overall level of reading comprehension does not show a consistent increase or decrease across grade levels. The highest average was observed at the fourth-grade level, while the lowest average was found at the sixth grade level. When examining comprehension levels based on narrative and informative texts, it was concluded that informative texts had higher average comprehension scores at the first-grade level, narrative texts at the second-grade level, informative texts at the third grade level, narrative texts at the fourth-grade level, informative texts at the fifth-grade level, and informative texts again at the sixth-grade level. The literature supports the finding that the informative genre, containing more extensive information than the narrative genre, tends to be more challenging for elementary school students. The higher averages found in the informative genre may be attributed to students' familiarity with the information and vocabulary present in informative texts. A review of the surface-level understanding and text-based deep understanding averages derived from the given responses indicated that, in almost all grade levels, the average scores for surface understanding were higher. In summary, this test can effectively assess the reading comprehension skills of students from grades 1 to 6 and serve as an evaluation tool. Considering these criteria, different texts and questions can be generated to develop and support students' comprehension skills through targeted interventions.

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