The effects of reading rate, accuracy and prosody on second grade students' oral retelling

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of reading rate, accuracy and prosody on second grade students' reading comprehension measured by oral retelling. The results of the research indicate that reading prosody has a significant positive correlation with oral retelling scores only, among other components of reading fluency. Additionally, second graders with low and high oral retelling scores differed significantly only in the prosodic measurement. In the light of these findings, it is suggested that more attention should be paid to prosody in order to improve students' reading comprehension skills in the classroom environment and reading programmes must take into account the suitable use of prosody (e.g. intonation, stress placement, perception of word boundaries, pausing and rhythm) for achieving efficient reading skills.