Läsförståelse och stadieövergång - en jämförande textanalys av Nationellt prov i svenska för åk 6 och DLS screening för åk 7 och 8

Sammanfattning: AbstractExpected knowledge contributions: My study can contribute to a broader approach to reading comprehension tests and a proactive approach to reading comprehension strategies for a transition stage between year groups.Background: At the beginning of the fall semester in 2016 there was DLS reading comprehension screening of all students in year 7. This was to detect students who possibly were in need of special education. The result showed that approximately half of the students were below the normal expected level for their age, ie between stanine 1-3. This was considered remarkable since almost all the students had passed the goals for reading comprehension in the national tests conducted during the Spring Term in Grade 6. The question arose as to what this difference in reading competence was due to. In the theory, reading ability of the students should not fall dramatically during the summer holidays. It is likely that other and more demands are placed on reading ability as a student changes educational stage and meets other types of text.Purpose and Issues: The purpose of the study is to compare the subsample of the national test for grade 6, which deals with reading comprehension with the DLS test that examines students' reading comprehension in grade 7. What are the similarities and differences regarding texts´ readability, the type of question and the type of reading comprehension process required to answer the questions? Is it possible to distinguish an increased demand on reading skills, and how can we prepare our students for the reading comprehension required during a stage transition? Based on this, my research questions are:' What similarities /differences are there in the texts´ readability?' What similarities /differences are there in the kind of questions in the texts?' What kind of reading process is needed to answer the questions?Theory: The texts have been analyzed using theories of readability, question types, and reading comprehension processes. Reading comprehension is discussed in a sociocultural, cognitive and special educational perspective.Method: I have made a qualitative text analysis in which I examined the subsample of the national tests in year 6 reading comprehension and compared this with the screening of reading comprehension, DLS, which is in grade 7. I have compared the texts´ legibility calculated from lix, the type of questions and reading comprehension processes required by the reader in order to answer the questions. The text analysis is done according to Hellspong and Ledin's (1997) text analysis model where the linguistic design is analyzed.Results: The results show that there is a difference in the readability of the texts. The texts in the national exam have on average a lower degree of difficulty than the texts in DLS reading comprehension test. However, the national test consists of both narrative texts and factual texts. The narrative texts have a significantly lower lix value than the factual texts. The factual texts in the national test have a lix value equivalent to the factual texts in DLS reading comprehension test. Factual texts thus generally appear to be of a higher difficulty than narrative texts as they contain more concepts. One conclusion I can draw is that this could be a possible reason for the big difference between the results of the national test and DLS reading comprehension test. There is also a big difference in the type of questions to the texts. The majority of questions to the national exam are open-ended questions of inference. The result is the opposite of the DLS reading comprehension test, where the majority of questions are text-controlled multiple choice questions with four options. Another conclusion I can draw is that the two reading comprehension tests measure different parts of the students' reading comprehension. The DLS reading comprehension test focuses on surface reading comprehension while the national exam focuses on both superficial and deep reading comprehension. As for reading comprehension processes, there are also major differences in the test. The tests impose different demands on reading comprehension processes. I conclude that the questions for the factual texts belong to the text-based understanding of the process more than to the interpretive and evaluative process.Implications: No single reading comprehension test is in itself a reliable instrument for assessing students' reading comprehension. A combination of methods is needed in which the pedagogue gains a greater understanding of the student's thought processes and the reading strategies that the student uses. One way to prepare students for the transition from middle school to high school can be to work with factual texts and reading comprehension strategies.