Reading processes among elementary school students in Quito: an assessment using the PROLEC-R battery

Abstract

In the Ecuadorian education system, approximately two-thirds of students do not meet the minimum standards for reading skills. This study assesses these skills among 12- and 13-year-old students at a school in Quito. A quantitative methodology was employed, using a non-experimental, cross-sectional, descriptive -correlational design, with a sample of 25 seventh-grade students in General Basic Education. These students administered the Revised Reading Processes Assessment Battery (PROLEC-R), which measured four processing modules comprising nine subtests. The results showed that approximately 65% of the participants exhibited a level of reading difficulty, with syntactic processes being an area of vulnerability (68%), followed by lexical processing of pseudowords (64%) and letter identification (56–64%). The correlations between dimensions were significant (r = 0.67–0.78; p < 0.001), thus confirming the hierarchical and interdependent nature of reading-related processes. It was concluded that the identified difficulties have an effect on comprehension. Students with difficulties in the phonological route (low performance on pseudowords) would require attention to phonological awareness and grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Those with comprehension difficulties would need to work on vocabulary, prior knowledge, and comprehension strategies.