Out-Loud and Silent Reading in Year Five of Primary School
Antonella Canti, Chiara Pesavento, Alessandro Acciai, Massimo Ciuffo
The present study focuses on reading, investigating both out-loud and silent ways of reading task execution. The analysis of these data in children attending primary school is an unexplored area of investigation in Italy. In this study, we recruited 40 children in their last year of primary school (20 with an SLD diagnosis and 20 normal readers), giving them both an out-loud and silent reading task. The results show that reading fluency increases from the out-loud to the silent mode for all subjects, although some children show a minimal increase. Furthermore, the average increase in speed of normal readers is double that of children with SLD (1.96 syll/sec for normal readers vs 0.97 syll/sec for subjects with SLD). This study obtains results in the developmental trajectory, with scores for adolescents and adults having already been published in scientific literature. It also highlights the importance of investigating both ways of reading, in order to identify the most suitable strategy for each child.
Keywords
Silent reading, Out-loud reading, Reading fluency, Dyslexia, Normal reader.
