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READING SKILLS OF 1ST GRADE PUPILS AT THE BEGINNING OF SCHOOL YEAR IN LITHUANIA
Abstract
Lithuania has been facing the problem of declining reading skills of primary school children for more than a decade. The majority of pupils will have achieved only low and satisfactory text comprehension levels by the end of the fourth grade, whereas the numbers of pupils who have achieved basic and intermediate levels in reading are considerably lower. The science and practice of the Lithuanian language teaching is searching for answers to this problem, however, there are no placement tests in Lithuania to measure the reading skills of pupils who have just started school in the 1st grade. The article analyses the data of the survey the objective of which was to determine and evaluate 1st grade childrens level of achievement in reading at the beginning of the school year. The tasks of the research were the following: to examine the share of pupils who are fluent readers and those who are learning to read; to determine the letters the learners to read can recognize and the words they can read; to determine the level of text comprehension of those who can already read. The problem of the research was the following: what is the level of reading skills of 1st grade pupils at the beginning of school year? The scope of the survey was 639 school children (aged 7). The sampling of school children was random based on the method of cluster random sampling whereby classes were selected randomly and all pupils of a certain class were taken for the sample. The survey involved pupils who study in the general education schools where the language of instruction is Lithuanian. The instruments of the survey were two different task sheets. Learners to read were asked to complete tasks of letter recognition and word association to images; whereas fluent readers were asked to complete text comprehension tasks. Each pupil in a class completed one of the two task sheets depending on whether s/he knows how to read or is learning to read. Upon determining that a child knows how to read a further interest was taken to find out who has taught him/her to read. The survey was carried out in October of 2015. The data of the research are significant for the Lithuanian curriculum policy makers as recently there have been debates about the necessity to lower the minimum entrance age to primary education, i.e. to start school at the age of 6 instead of 7.
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