THE EFFECT OF PROGRAMED TUTORING UPON THE READING COMPREHENSION OF FOURTH-GRADE STUDENTS ENROLLED IN A CHAPTER 1 READING PROGRAM

The major purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of programed tutoring upon the reading comprehension of fourth-grade students enrolled in a Chapter 1 program. Reading comprehension was measured by the Reading Comprehension Test, Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, Form 7, Level 10. The subjects of this study were 69 fourth-grade students who scored below the 39th percentile on the Reading Comprehension Test, Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, Form 8, Level 9 in the Spring of 1982. One group (N = 35) received fifteen minutes of programmed reading tutoring each day throughout the 1982-83 school year as a supplement to classroom instruction. The other group (N = 34) received classroom instruction only. The Houghton Mifflin Reading Series was used for classroom instruction and the Houghton Mifflin Tutorials were used for the programed tutoring. A t-test was conducted on the two groups\u27 pretest mean normal curve equivalents (NCE\u27s) scores. This test was followed by an analysis of covariance using the pretest scores as the covariate. Finally, mean gain NCE\u27s scores were analyzed using a t-test. The results of this study indicated that programed tutoring did not significantly improve the reading comprehension of fourth-grade students enrolled in a Chapter 1 program when mean NCE\u27s and mean gain NCE\u27s scores were analyzed. A review of the descriptive statistics presented evidence that the experimental group did narrow the initial gap between themselves and the control group. Thirty-two percent of the students in the control group showed a loss from the pretest to the posttest while only nine percent of the experimental group did so. The control group\u27s posttest scores displayed a greater variability than the group\u27s pretest scores while the experimental group\u27s scores variability remained relatively unchanged