Reading Comprehension and Summarizing Skills of Successful and Unsuccessful Fourth Grade Readers

In this study, it was aimed to examine reading comprehension and summarizing skills of successful and unsuccessful students in reading comparatively. Their morphosyntax knowledge (Mean Length of Utterance-MLU) and vocabulary knowledge (Different Words Used-DWU) in their written summaries were also compared in the study. In addition, the relations between their reading comprehension scores, summarizing scores, MLU and DWU were examined. For this purpose, 122 successful and 122 unsuccessful readers, totally 244 fourth graders participated in the study. Findings showed that poor readers failed more than their peers in answering all the question types. However, it was determined that both student groups had the most difficulty in finding the main idea of the text and answering inferential questions requiring the use of personal knowledge and experience. It was seen that the poor readers had more difficulties than their peers in all summarizing subskills, also MLU and DWU measurements. When the effects of summarizing, MLU and DWU on total comprehension score were examined, it was found that MLU was the best predictor to comprehension.