EVOLUTION OF READING SPEED ALONG THE FIRST CYCLE OF FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION

Abstract

Reading speed is an important skill to be evaluated, given its correlation with fluency and reading comprehension. The later, main objective of reading, is fundamental to learning and good school development. The objective of this work is to follow the evolution and development of the speed of oral reading throughout the first cycle of elementary school, through longitudinal study and comparisons between the reading level of a given year with the subsequent year. The sample consisted of 40 children in typical development, assessed from the 2nd to the 6th grade of elementary school, and the reading speed was calculated by the number of words read per minute. The results showed high significance, confirming the hypothesis that this speed increases with the advance of schooling. The greatest increase occurred between the 2nd and 3rd years of elementary school, suggesting that the students, despite reading primarily through the phonological route, start the reading process through the lexical route in this phase, which is improved throughout schooling; however, the increments in reading speed are increasingly smaller, as the child progresses to the following years, which may be related to the stabilization of vocabulary and the pattern of development of executive functions related to language processing. The high statistical significance revealed shows that reading speed can be a good indicator of difficulties in this area, serving as a parameter for identifying children at risk for specific reading learning disorder (Dyslexia).