The effects of the repeated reading method in developing oral reading fluency of lower-level skills to improve reading comprehension among Omani grade three students

Abstract

Cycle One Omani students still face remarkable reading difficulties either in reading a text fluently or in understanding it. Most students end the lesson having taken a long time to read the given text, which effects on their understanding to answer the comprehension questions. Therefore, this mixed method study was aimed at investigating the effects of the repeated reading (RR) method in developing oral reading fluency of lower-level skills to improve reading comprehension among grade three Omani students. The study underwent three stages. The first stage was a quantitative phase using a designed and validated online questionnaire, to which 121 teachers responded. This stage aimed to explore the opinion of grade three and four English teachers who applied the RR method in their classroom teaching in Al-Batinah North Governorate. The second stage was a qualitative phase using a semi-structured interview which sought the senior English teacher’s opinion in the target school of the difficulties that grade three students encounter in reading. The third stage was applying the repeated reading method, which was used as a mothed in teaching the reading skill. A total of 14 grade three students from the involved school in Al-Batinah South Governorate participated in this stage of the study. A designed pre-test and post-test were given to the participants to measure the differences in scores in oral reading fluency (rate and accuracy) and reading comprehension before and after applying the RR method. During the repeated reading method, nine selected texts from the grade three curriculum were used with the RR method for two months. The findings revealed that the majority of grade three and four teachers who applied RR in their classroom teaching had a positive attitude towards the method. This is because it was effective in enhancing both the students’ level of reading skill in particular, and other related English skills more generally. Moreover, the data showed that RR is an effective, new and useful method, which made the teaching environment more interesting and broke the usual routine of teaching the reading skill. The findings also highlighted that the grade three targeted students faced difficulties in their reading skill. For instance, they took time when reading and faced difficulties in answering comprehension questions. This is due to the lack of reading practice and training that, students should receive to answer comprehension questions as part of the curriculum for grades one and two. Moreover, the gap in the curriculum between grades one and two compared with grades three and four with regard to reading texts has contributed to such difficulties. Students are expected to read simple and short texts in grades one and two and long and more complicated texts in grades three and four. Therefore, this study recommends policy makers and curriculum designers move gradually in designing the curriculum to meet students’ needs and encompass their individual differences. The results also indicated the crucial and effective role of the Jolly Phonics programme in building the basic phonics skills with grades one and two, which helps students later in reading accurately. Furthermore, a paired-sample t-test was conducted to compare the findings of the pre- and post-tests. The results indicated that the scores of the post-test outperformed the scores of the post-test for the targeted students. This suggests that there was a significant increase in all the variables of oral fluency (rate and accuracy) and reading comprehension. For example, the mean of the reading rate score was 23.36 in the pre-test and increased to 40.07 in the post-test; the mean for accuracy in the pre-test was 60.79 and this rose to 76.50 in the post-test. With regard to reading comprehension, the mean score in the pre-test was 0.14, which increased sharply to 0.66 in the post-test. Based on these findings, the RR method had a substantial and beneficial impact on developing oral reading fluency (rate and accuracy) and reading comprehension. In the light of these findings, recommendations and implications for policy makers and practitioners, as well as for future studies, are presented.