Abstract
Science performance is highly affected by students’ reading comprehension. Recently, there has been a growing attention to the role of linguistic features for science performance, but findings are ambivalent, especially when looking into item word count. The aim of this study was to investigate the interaction of students’ reading comprehension and item word count of given science measures on performance, controlling for students’ cognitive abilities, gender, family language, and school track. The sample consisted of N = 2051 German students in grades 10 and 11. Students completed (scientific) literacy measures. We then applied a multilevel logistic regression to investigate the hypothesized interaction effect of reading comprehension and word count on students’ science performance. The results showed a significant interaction of students’ reading comprehension and word count on science performance, controlling for several covariates. Particularly students with high reading comprehension benefit from science items with increasing word count. Our findings empirically support previous research, showing that reading comprehension is crucial for science performance and enhances the interaction between reading comprehension and linguistic features of written text in science subjects. Finally, theoretical and practical implications and limitations of this study are discussed.
Highlights
Science performance is highly affected by students’ reading comprehension
We aimed to investigate the relation between students’ reading comprehension and their science performance depending on the word count per item
We assumed that an interaction between students’ reading comprehension and item word count on science performance could be found: Especially students with high reading comprehension may benefit from increased item word count due to their competence to extract the substance of written text (Gibson and Levin 1975)
Summary
Science performance is highly affected by students’ reading comprehension. Recently, there has been a growing attention to the role of linguistic features for science performance, but findings are ambivalent, especially when looking into item word count. The aim of this study was to investigate the interaction of students’ reading comprehension and item word count of given science measures on performance, controlling for students’ cognitive abilities, gender, family language, and school track. Our findings empirically support previous research, showing that reading comprehension is crucial for science performance and enhances the interaction between reading comprehension and linguistic features of written text in science subjects. We aimed to investigate the relation between students’ reading comprehension and their science performance depending on the word count per item. We assumed that an interaction between students’ reading comprehension and item word count on science performance could be found: Especially students with high reading comprehension may benefit from increased item word count due to their competence to extract the substance of written text (Gibson and Levin 1975). Reading comprehension is considered a cognitively demanding skill associated with the reading process in general, which occurs before, during, and after a written piece is read (Gernsbacher et al 1990; Hannon and Daneman 2001; Salem 2016; Walker 1987)
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