Effects of Speed Reading Techniques on the Improvement of Students’ Reading Speed, Word Recognition and Comprehension: Ambo University Freshman Students in Focus

Abstract

The objective of the study was to explore if speed reading techniques significantly improve the students’ reading speed, word recognition and reading comprehension. The researcher was initiated to carry out the research because he, from his many year experience, could observe the prevalence of students' low reading rate, failure of figuring out unfamiliar words from context clues and inefficiency in reading comprehension. The study was conducted on freshman students at Ambo University with an expectation that the finding of the research will have a great contribution in improving the university students’ reading rate, word attack skills and comprehension. The study was dictated by the bottom-up and the to-down theories, positivist paradigm and experimental method. The study used two groups of students (one experimental and the other control group) selected using random method. The study was conducted at Ambo University on freshman students of 2021/22 or 2014 entry of Ethiopian academic year. The data was collected using pre- test and post-tests to identify the students’ present ability and to know the effects the training may have on the students’ performance respectively. The data was analysed using Mann-Whitney U and Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests, the non-parametric alternatives of independent samples t-test and paired samples t-test, respectively using SPSS version 25 because the data violated the assumptions of normal distribution. It was found out that the speed reading training had a statistically significant improvement on reading speed and comprehension of the experimental group, but didn’t significantly improve the students’ word recognition