Decoding automaticity in reading process and practice. How much influence does summer vacation have on children’s reading abilities in primary school?

This research intends to investigate the impact of reading practice on children’s read-aloud abilities during the learning phase. In order to assess the importance of reading practice, the researchers have examined the possible adverse consequences arising from the substantial reduction in exercise during the summer vacation. According to the model adopted, groups of children from grade first to fifth in primary school have been given three different standardized tests (lists of words, pseudo-words and a text), in three distinct times of the year (end of school, beginning of school and two months after that). The available literature on the subject demonstrates that summer vacation can have a detrimental impact on maths computation and orthography whereas the results relating to reading abilities seem to be considerably disparate. The outcomes of this research prove that speed and accuracy parameters are affected differently by both the decrease and the increase in reading practice. All assessed classes have shown a regular increase in reading speed, and the suspension of the learning practice does not seem to have influenced the performance significantly. This improvement in reading speed apparently comes with an increase in the percentage of mistakes made after summer vacation, especially in the first classes. Therefore, the comparison of the provided results might suggest the existence of independent mechanisms lying behind the development and automaticity of the two examined factors.