Reading environment and fluent reading skills

Abstract

Language skills have an important place in people’s thinking, understanding people around them and expressing themselves. Reading skills, which are among the other language skills, play a vital role for an individual in adapting them into his daily life. Reading should not be interpreted as recognizing merely the letters, the word and articulating them. In addition to understanding what is written, being able to read fluently is also one of the skills that need to be developed in reading teaching. In today’s developing conditions, thanks to the effective use of technological tools in every aspect of our lives reading is not only done on paper, but also on the screens of many different technological devices. Considering all these, reading on the screen is different from reading on paper, and the development of reading skills from the screen is currently necessary as well as the development of paper reading skills. The aim of this research is to determine the role of the reading environment on fluent reading skills. 24 students who were enrolled in the third and fourth grades of a primary school in the center of Bartin participated in the study. The demographic features of the students such as gender, class, possession of technological tools (computer, tablet, smart phone, etc.), and duration of use of technological tools were identified using a personal information form. Using a formula developed for Turkish by Atesman (1997), which permits estimating the readability level of the text based on word and sentence length, a text consisting of 189 words with an “easy” readability level was chosen in order to test the students’ fluency in reading. This text was read by the students both on paper and on the tablet computer screen, and their fluent reading skills were evaluated. In the end of the research, it is determined that the number of words students correctly read, the rates of their correct reading and prosodic reading skills differ according to the time of using a computer in reading from the screen; the number of words read correctly differs according to the time it takes to have a tablet computer in reading from paper; the classes differ in both paper reading and screen reading in favor of the 4th classes, whereas the correct reading rates differ only in paper reading. In line with the results of the research, suggestions were made to support the use of electronic media in schools and improve reading skills by supporting the use of technological tools.