Prediction of Reading Comprehension in Elementary School Students

Background & Objectives: Reading comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading; therefore, research has been actively conducted to identify factors that influence reading comprehension in the United States of America. Comparatively, a large number of studies examining the predictive factors for word recognition have been published. However, a limited number of studies examining the predictive factors for reading comprehension are available in Korea. The present study was conducted to explore the predictive factors for reading comprehension outcomes in elementary school students of each grade level.Methods: In the present study, the predictive factor test including phonological awareness, rapid letter naming, letter knowledge, letter- sound knowledge, short-term memory, working memory, vocabulary, sentence repetition, listening comprehension, word recognition, reading fluency and the reading comprehension dependent variable test were administered to a total of 511 first-through sixth-grade elementary school students. Then, a multiple regression analysis was performed to explore the predictive factors for reading comprehension outcomes for students in each grade level. Results: Listening comprehension was an important predictive factor for all grades except for the fourth grade, and sentence repetition was an important predictive factor for the first and second grade children when the reading comprehension question test was a dependent variable. Second, vocabulary was the important predictive factor for the second, fifth, and sixth graders when the curriculum-based reading test was a dependent variable. Discussion & Conclusion: To summarize, listening comprehension and vocabulary were the significant predictive factors for reading comprehension, although the results showed little difference according to the type of reading comprehension test. The summary of the results, limitations of this study, and directions for future studies are further discussed.