Examination of factors affecting students’ reading-comprehension achievement with structural equation modeling

Abstract

It is noted in the light of several studies associated with the readingcomprehension skills that fluent word reading, connectives knowledge and fluent text reading are closely related to the comprehension skill. Hence it seems possible to create a model over these concepts and their interrelationships. Within the scope of this research two different models are proposed considering theoretical information. The study group of the research was composed of 263 secondary school students at a state school in Burdur province. Three different confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were performed to see whether factor structures were confirmed on the sample by using the maximum estimate method of the AMOS 18 software. Analysis of Covariance and Multivariate Analysis of Covariance were performed to determine whether the demographic variables grade level and gender had a significant effect on the scale scores. These analyzes were also performed in the SPSS 18 program. It has been found that as the grade level of the students increases, connective usage konowledge increases, the fluent silent word reading, the fluent silent text reading, the reading comprehension and the academic achievements increase as the grade level increases. This research concluded that reading comprehension strongly and significantly predicted academic achievement. But however, fluent silent text reading did not predict reading comprehension significantly. According to the results of the research, the model formed by the sub-dimensions of binding usage information shows better fit.