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Article published In:
Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 8:2 (2019) ► pp.172–205

Eighth graders’ expository text comprehension

Do motivational aspects add to cognitive skills?

ORCID logo | Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
| Radboud University
| University of Amsterdam

The present study examined whether ten motivations to read expository texts moderated the effects of cognitive skills on eighth graders’ expository text comprehension, while accounting for the main effects of cognitive skills. Furthermore, it was examined whether the effect of motivational dimensions on expository text comprehension differed between monolingual and bilingual Dutch students, and between poor and good readers. Hundred fifty-two eighth graders took tests measuring their expository text comprehension, sentence reading fluency, linguistic knowledge, metacognitive knowledge and motivations to read expository texts. None of ten motivational aspects did moderate the effect of cognitive skills on expository text comprehension. Furthermore, there were no differences between monolingual and bilingual Dutch students, or between poor and good readers, in terms of the relationship between motivational dimensions and expository text comprehension. Differences between our findings and results from other studies are interpreted in the context of measurement specificity and the school system.

Keywords: motivations to read, expository text comprehension, secondary school, cognitive skills, bilingual readers
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The importance of motivational aspects for subgroups
    • 1.2The present study
    • 1.3Motivations to read expository texts
    • 1.4Cognitive skills required for expository texts
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Instruments
      • Expository text comprehension
      • Linguistic knowledge
      • Metacognitive knowledge
      • Sentence reading fluency
      • Motivations to read
      • Background questionnaire
    • 2.3Procedure
    • 2.4Scoring and missing value treatment
    • 2.5Analyses
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Confirmatory factor analyses
    • 3.2Descriptive statistics for cognitive skills
    • 3.3Descriptive statistics for motivations to read
    • 3.4Correlations
    • 3.5Research questions: Predictive value of motivational aspects
    • 3.6Robustness check: Models with 191 students
  • 4.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 11 April 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dujal.17020.wel
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