Investigating the Correlation Between Students’ Reading Fluency and Comprehension

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between students' reading fluency and comprehension. It is a correlational design. A purposive sampling technique was employed to select the district, school, students, and grade level. Accordingly, 100 students participated in the study. As the research was quantitative, reading comprehension tests and comprehension-based silent reading fluency tests were applied to collect data. The data was analyzed using statistical techniques like Pearson product-moment correlation and linear regression. The findings revealed that reading accuracy level and reading rate, which are the parameters of reading fluency, were strongly correlated (r =. 885, P < 0.01) with each other. However, silent reading fluency (SRF) had a moderate correlation with reading comprehension. Moreover, the reading rate had a strong positive correlation with reading accuracy (r =.885, p < 0.01, and reading comprehension (r =.410, p<0.01). In addition, the linear regression outputs confirmed that the higher the students' reading rate and accuracy level, the higher their reading comprehension (Beta = 0.42, t = 4.53, p < 0.05). It means that when reading rate and accuracy increase, so do their reading comprehension. The results suggest that reading rate and accuracy levels are valid measures of reading ability when students read silently with comprehension.