Teaching Reading Comprehension in Portuguese Primary and Middle Schools
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Teaching Reading Comprehension in Portuguese Primary and Middle Schools Carolina Cordeiro1 · Andreia Nunes1 · São Luís Castro1 · Teresa Limpo1 Accepted: 14 November 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Reading comprehension is an important skill throughout all stages of education. However, Portuguese pupils still demonstrate difficulties in understanding what they read. In addition to cognitive and psychological factors, it is important to understand how this skill is addressed in textbooks. Here, we examined how reading comprehension is targeted in Portuguese and Science textbooks in Grades 4 and 6. Regarding Portuguese textbooks, we found a higher focus on orality than on reading comprehension in Grade 4 and a more distributed focus regarding literacy-related skills in Grade 6. In both grades, most of the questions related to reading comprehension involved retrieval of factual information using open questions. This pattern was also observed for Science textbooks. These findings seem crucial to shed light on the articulation between the educational system, subjects’ curriculum and educational actors, which is critical to effectively develop pupils’ reading comprehension skills. Keywords Mother tongue language · Primary and middle grades · Portuguese · Reading comprehension · Science
1 Teaching Reading Comprehension in Portuguese Primary and Middle Schools Reading is an important activity that allows communication, knowledge production and dissemination. To read well and understand what is read is a pre-requisite to achieve success in school and perform daily tasks, as well as to participate actively and successfully in adult life (Beerwinkle et al. 2018). According to the Simple View of Reading (Hoover et al. 1990), the activity of reading involves two components: decoding and linguistic comprehension. Both of them have an important contribution to reading comprehension, especially in primary grades. However, to decode the printed symbols and access their meanings and * Teresa Limpo [email protected] Carolina Cordeiro [email protected] 1
Faculdade de Psicologia E de Ciências da Educação, Universidade Do Porto, Rua Alfredo Allen, 4200‑392 Porto, Portugal
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interpretations is not enough to comprehend what is read. Readers also need to understand written messages in interpretative, critical and creative ways (Roe et al. 2012). Thus, reading comprehension involves figuring out stated and implied ideas, making inferences and assessing information, as well as producing new products based on what was read (Ghaith 2018). Aaron et al. (2008) suggested that the acquisition of these skills depends not only on cognitive and psychological factors, but also on ecological aspects, such as teacher knowledge, instructional practices and textbook contents. The current study examines how Portuguese textbooks address reading comprehension in the subjects of Portuguese and Science at two key points of the Portuguese educational system, namely, at the end of the first and s
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