The role of text characteristics in the reading comprehension of primary school children in Spanish

  1. Carla Míguez-Álvarez 1
  2. Miguel Cuevas-Alonso 1
  3. Ángeles Saavedra 1
  1. 1 Universidade de Vigo
    info

    Universidade de Vigo

    Vigo, España

    ROR https://ror.org/05rdf8595

Revista:
Revista iberoamericana de psicología y salud

ISSN: 2171-2069

Año de publicación: 2022

Volumen: 13

Número: 1

Páginas: 41-55

Tipo: Artículo

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Otras publicaciones en: Revista iberoamericana de psicología y salud

Resumen

During the early grades of primary school, texts are mainly narrative and focus on technical aspects such as decoding words and understanding simple syntax. However, from 4th grade onwards, texts become increasingly more difficult and expository texts become the main source of knowledge from which children will have to extract and learn new information while creating their mental model. This article examined the influences of two main text characteristics: text genre and level of representation (text base and mental model), in the reading comprehension scores of 313 Spanish primary school children aged 8 to 11 to study the relationship between these variables as well as the differences between grades. Comprehension of each text genre was assessed through a validated multiple-choice questionnaire and each variable was compared through a series of correlational methods, such as Pearson’s correlation, Spearman’s rho and ANOVAs. The results showed that all grades obtained significant higher scores on the text base than the mental model but only the expository texts exhibited better results when passing from 4th to 5th and 6th grade. This study provides findings that may contribute to the topic of literacy education during primary school.

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