Word reading and text reading in children: effects of grade and type of school, and dissociations in performance

Abstract

Word reading and text comprehension (retelling and questionnaire) are evaluated and compared in a sample of students (n=110), attending the fourth, fifth and sixth grades, in public and private schools. It is also investigated dissociations between the skills to recognize words and understand texts. A main effect of grade was found in relation to word reading and comprehension questionnaire. Type of school had a main effect on word reading and on retellings. There was no interaction effect between the two independent variables. We identified a group of poor compreendedores (high performance in word reading and low performance in reading comprehension), corresponding to 17% of the total sample.