Can secondary pupils train decoding skills? An empirical study on phonological reading errors

The present study has two aims: (1) to formulate a method for the phonological description of decoding difficulties in poor readers of German and (2) to investigate whether poor readers profit from an intervention programme focusing on graphemic patterns. There is consensus that automated decoding abilities are a precondition for higher-level reading processes. Therefore, I assume that the essential problem of poor readers lies in their inability to decode written text effectively. In order to determine whether secondary pupils can train their decoding skills, 33 German pupils with low reading skills in 5th and 7th grade, respectively, were examined and their reading errors were categorized. Afterwards, an intervention programme was implemented for one part of the participating pupils. Subsequently, both groups took part in a post-test. The intervention groups improved significantly in all parameters including reading time.