Reading Comprehension Assessment in First-Year Students of Humanistic and Health Programs of Study Offered by Three Rectors' Council Universities

Abstract

This paper presents the results yielded by an in-situ, quantitative and semi-experimental research whose aim was the assessment of the inferential reading comprehension in first-year students enrolled in humanistic and health programs of study offered by three universities affiliated to the Rectors' Council.

To gather the data, a structured reading comprehension test (multiple choice) comprising two texts and sixteen inferential questions (lexical, causal, macrostructural, topic-specific, and author's intention) was given to 372 university students who had enrolled in 2006.

From the analysis of the results it can be concluded that the participants reveal a low reading comprehension level on this reading task.