The Structural Relationship Between Fluent Reading, Reading Comprehension and Eye Movements

Year 2025, Volume: 11 Issue: 1, 1 - 16

Muhammet Baştuğ , İsmail Özsarı , İrfan Şimşek , Hasan Kağan Keskin

Abstract

Since reading and meaning-making are basic skills that students continuously use in their academic lives, efforts are made to help students acquire these skills from an early age. However, it is frequently stated in various studies and reports that students still have reading and comprehension problems. Studies for the solution of these problems firstly depend on revealing the reasons that may be related to the problems. In this sense, different direct or indirect measurements have been made for years. However, today, with the development of technology, more detailed data has started to be produced in the field of reading as in every field. For example, tracking eye movements with high accuracy while reading is an important achievement of technology in this field. Eye movements, which are still a new field of study, and their relationship with different variables of reading have become the focus of researchers' attention. However, how eye movements occur in the reading process and how this affects reading and reading comprehension is not sufficiently known in terms of both national and international literature. In In this study, students were asked to read texts aloud using an eye-tracking device, and their reading comprehension and fluency skills were measured. The study group of the research consists of 284 third grade primary school students and the study was conducted in the survey model. The measurement results obtained from the research aimed to reveal how students’ eye movements during reading affect reading fluency and comprehension. As a result of the research, significant relationships were found between fluent reading skills, reading comprehension and eye movements. Accordingly, a positive relationship was found between fluent reading and reading comprehension. A negative relationship was found between fluent reading and eye movements. On the other hand, no significant relationship was found between eye movements and reading comprehension. In the context of other studies in the literature, the research findings were examined and analyzed.

Keywords

Eye-tracking, Reading fluency, Reading comprehension, Eye movements

Project Number

25107

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