The effects of gender and academic achievement on reading fluency among Year 2 Malaysian school children.

OBJECTIVE

Language disorders can affect reading skills contributing to poor academic achievements. As such, it is vital for speech language pathologists to identify the potential language-based reading problems among children. To achieve this, specific reading assessments should be developed and studied. Thus, the present study aimed to determine the effects of gender and academic achievement on oral reading fluency (ORF) and silent reading fluency (SRF) among Year 2 Malaysian children.

METHODS

In this study that employed a comparative design, fifty-nine typically developing Malaysian children (24 boys, aged from 8 years, 0 months to 8 years, 11 months) were enrolled. They were chosen from three different classrooms (consisting of high achieving, medium achieving and low achieving students, respectively) in a primary school. Their ORF and SRF skills were assessed according to the established methods.

RESULTS

As revealed by two-way ANOVA results, both ORF and SRF scores were found to be comparable between boys and girls (p > 0.05). In contrast, ORF and SRF results between the three classrooms were significantly different from each other (p < 0.05).

CONCLUSION

The present study provides the first report on oral and silent reading fluency skills among Year 2 Malaysian school children. While the gender effect was insignificant, low achieving students showed poorer reading fluency skills. The preliminary normative data for ORF and SRF provided by the present study are beneficial for future research applications.