First and Second Graders' attitudes and feelings of competence towards reading and writing

Abstract

The improvement of the linguistic competence in the school must contemplate the complexity of the processes that entail the activities of reading and writing. This includes considering emotional and motivational factors involved, such as attitudes and feeling of competence. However, in our country there are very few studies that have focused on these aspects, and especially at the beginning of schooling. Our objective was to identify what attitudes towards reading and writing and what level of competence students maintain at the beginning of Primary Education. Likewise, we sought to investigate if attitudes are related to feeling of competence in this stage. Participants were 725 boys and girls of 1st and 2nd grade, belonging to several urban educational centers in the north of Spain. The instrument used was an adapted questionnaire from the Finnish version of the Reading Attitude Questionnaire (Merisuo-Storm y Soininen, 2012). Descriptive data and contrasts of means were obtained per course. Results indicate that, in general terms, students hold very positive attitudes towards reading and writing and that they feel very competent to learn to read and write, although some differences are appreciated by grade. The educational implications of these results are discussed.