Abstract
In this study, we aimed at building and validating an instrument to assess reading comprehension, with the purpose of characterizing the reading profile and detecting comprehension difficulties among students from the third to the fifth grades of elementary school. Participants were 378 students, divided into three groups. Their comprehension of micro- and macrostructural literal and inferential propositions that composed two expository texts and two narrative texts were assessed by means of multiple-choice questions. The data analyzed statistically yielded Cronbach's alpha values showing internal consistency in the four texts applied to the three groups. It was possible to verify that the students had fewer errors as the school years progressed and that each type of text posed a particular difficulty to the students.
Highlights
IntroductionProblems in reading comprehension are an obstacle in the learning process, as all school tasks (in Portuguese, Geography, History, and Mathematics) require the students to read and extract important information that they need for learning
The ability to read and comprehend texts is fundamental in our daily lives, and, when associated with education, it is invested with a greater importance for being a component intrinsic to the cognitive development of students[1].Problems in reading comprehension are an obstacle in the learning process, as all school tasks require the students to read and extract important information that they need for learning
The data found in Graph 1 show that the percentage of correct answers effectively increased from Group I (GI) to Group II (GII) to Aspect n α
Summary
Problems in reading comprehension are an obstacle in the learning process, as all school tasks (in Portuguese, Geography, History, and Mathematics) require the students to read and extract important information that they need for learning. The comprehension process entails two types of processes – basic and high level. Basic processes distinguish themselves from high-level processes because the latter require better mental elaboration abilities. Some important abilities considered as basic level are work memory and lexical processes (for instance, knowledge of orthographic structures), whereas high-level abilities involve inferring (about information that is not explicit in the text or that encompasses knowledge on the topic acquired previously) and monitoring what is being understood[3]
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