[Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen 39] 1991
► pp. 31–45
This article describes research which has focused on the level of difficulty of texts and questions as an explanation for the difference in text comprehension between non-native and native pupils. The degree to which text comprehension in native and non-native pupils could be facilitated by means of controlling texts and questions was investigated. From the results the following conclusions were drawn: 1) Non-native pupils scored significantly lower than native Dutch pupils in all tests that dealt with text comprehension; 2) When the test questions were controlled by changing a number of factors which supposedly made understanding more difficult, the scores of both non-native and native pupils improved significantly; 3) When the texts of the tests were rewitten, the non-native pupils improved in their scores and the native pupils did not; 4) When both the texts and questions were controlled, the results seemed to show that the non-native pupils had caught up for a great part where they were found to have "lagged behind".
Article language: Dutch