Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to compare the text and question comprehension abilities of readers with and without reading disabilities. In this direction, the study included 40 good readers (GR), 40 poor readers (PR), and 40 learning disabilities (LD) in the 2nd grade, 60 GR, 60 PR, and 53 LD in the 4th grade. The participants answered the reading comprehension questions for two narrative and two expository texts that were grade-level suitable. The average overall reading comprehension ratings obtained from both text categories were used for analyses. In addition, the responses of the participants on literal, reorganization, inference, prediction, and evaluation questions were recorded independently, and the influence of having or not having reading difficulties was evaluated. Consequently, narrative texts were simpler for each group to comprehend than expository texts, and the presence of a learning disability had a substantial impact on the comprehension of the text genres. In addition, when the performances of the participants in the question types were analyzed, it was determined that the “literal” questions had the highest rate of correct responses, whereas the rate of correct responses to the questions that each group had to answer using in-text information and experience was extremely low. In addition, it was revealed that readers with learning disabilities achieved lower results on all question types than good and poor readers. The findings are discussed on the basis of the literature.

Keywords: