Are university students' component reading skills related to their text comprehension and academic achievement?

Among developing and poor readers, text comprehension is strongly related to word decoding accuracy and reading fluency. However, among relatively skilled adult readers, these aspects of reading skill are largely independent of one another. The reading of 193 second- and third-year students enrolled in an educational psychology course at a public research university was described well by three orthogonal principal components: Word Decoding Accuracy, Reading Speed, and Text Comprehension Accuracy. Furthermore, component reading skills were not associated with individual differences in the extent to which students in this sample had succeeded in postsecondary education. Decoding Accuracy was most related to spelling accuracy and phonemic awareness. Only Text Comprehension Accuracy was associated even minimally with grade-point average. A subgroup of 15 students who reported various reading problems did not have a low mean grade-point average. (c) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.