Benefits of repeated reading intervention for secondary school students with reading difficulties

This study investigates to what extent an intensive reading intervention of two weeks, based on repeated reading, can improve the reading fluency for students with reading difficulties in secondary school. The study also investigates how the students evaluated the intervention based on repeated reading. Nineteen students with reading difficulties in secondary school were selected and divided into two comparable groups, an intervention group and a control group. Ten students in the intervention group were given daily one to one tutorial training in decoding and fluency by reading lists with words, nonwords and texts repeatedly times. Visual as well as spoken feedback were given between every set of reading. The control group received ordinary classroom teaching. Tests before and after the intervention with all students were done. The intervention students completed a questionnaire about their evaluation of the intervention and how they estimated their reading ability after the training period. The results of the study showed that most students in the intervention group increased their test results in terms of decoding words and text reading compared to the control group. The results of the questionnaire showed that the students experienced that they had increased their reading ability and that they had become more self-confident about their reading