Evaluating Year-End Oral Reading Records of First Graders in Terms of Prosody Proficiency

Prosody is evaluated as an important factor in fluent reading, and in literature it is expressed as a significant reading skill that affects comprehension. Prosody--described as a fluent reading ability of a reader with suitable sentences and expressions--includes stress, intonation, duration (time passed on voicing a word) and pausing properties that contribute to effective reading of a text. First grade students are supposed to have fluent reading abilities at the end of the year and they are expected to develop effective prosodic reading. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine first grade students' oral reading performances in terms of prosodic competences. Study sample in this study which has been conducted using descriptive survey model consists of 49 first grade students who participated in the study voluntarily in four different classes in a primary school in the city centre of Bartin in Turkey. For the evaluation of the reading prosodies of the students, their oral reading performances of a narrative and an expository text are recorded for one minute with a video camera and these records are evaluated with reading prosody rubric. As a result of the analysis, it is observed that students' reading prosody score means are low in both narrative and expository texts. According to reading prosody scale, it appears that 59% of the students are at low level in narrative text and 41% of the students are at low level in expository text. Additionally, as a result of Mann-Whitney U test it appears that gender of the students does not make a significant difference in oral reading prosodies of the students in both narrative and expository texts.