Reading to learn and reading to integrate: new tasks for reading comprehension tests?

Abstract

To address the concern that most traditional reading comprehension tests only measure basic comprehension, this study designed measures to assess more complex reading tasks: Reading to Learn and Reading to Integrate. The new measures were taken by 251 participants: 105 undergraduate native speakers of English, 106 undergraduate nonnative speakers, and 40 graduate nonnative speakers. The research subproblems included determination of the influence of overall basic reading comprehension level, native language background, medium of presentation, level of education, and computer familiarity on Reading to Learn and Reading to Integrate measures; and the relationships among measures of Basic Comprehension, Reading to Learn, and Reading to Integrate. Results revealed that native language background and level of education had a significant effect on performance on both experimental measures, while other independent variables did not. While all reading measures showed some correlation, Reading to Learn and Reading to Integrate had lower correlations with Basic Comprehension, suggesting a possible distinction between Basic Comprehension and the new measures.