Different Roles of Knowledge and Reading Skills in Two Types of Reading Comprehension Tasks

• In Event: Embracing New Assessment Methods to Enhance Measure and Predict Learning Outcomes

Abstract

We compare how academic knowledge, topical knowledge and foundational reading skills predict performance in two types of reading comprehension (RC) tasks: a traditional single-text RC task and a scenario-based assessment (SBA) of RC task, with texts on both tasks focused on the topic of American football. While both RC tasks were similarly related to foundational reading skills, they diverged in their relation to different types of knowledge. A dilemma for RC assessment is revealed: while traditional RC task does not depend on topical knowledge (r=.23), it highly correlates to academic knowledge (r=.63) even though the reading topic is non-academic. While SBA RC task shows better separation from academic knowledge (r=.47), topical knowledge is important for SBA performance (r=.65).

Authors

• Zuowei Wang, Educational Testing Service

• Tenaha P. O'Reilly, ETS

• John P. Sabatini, The University of Memphis