Building inferences in reading comprehension: A correlational study
Abstract
This piece of research aims to identify if there is any correlation between passing a reading university course (with Spanish as a first language) and an improvement in reading comprehension, compared with the reading level obtained before attending the classes. After testing our reading comprehension tool among different pilot groups, we reach the final version, which has two different texts: the first one is a technical text, which requires readers to make propositional inferences, and the second one is a humanistic text, which requires readers to make pragmatic inferences. The analysis of the results was undertaken in two phases: first, we evaluated the reading comprehension level of each text, and second, we compared both levels to know if students who had passed had a higher reading comprehension level than students who had never taken this reading course. The discussion showed that there is not any correlation between technical test performance and humanistic test performance; neither is there a correlation between passing the subject and the level of reading comprehension. Moreover, reading comprehension did not show any significant improvement. In sum, after taking the entire course, students are still unable to perform the mental operations needed to reach the representation level (propositional or pragmatical) expected to comprehend both text types.
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