THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CRITICAL SELF-REFLECTION AND ACTUAL PERFORMANCE IN READING COMPREHENSION

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to map the differences between students’ self- reflective assessment of their reading comprehension skills and their actual reading comprehension, as well as answering the question to what extent students are able to evaluate their own text comprehension ability. The target groups studied were from two age groups, fourth and seventh grade primary school students, with similar bilingual backgrounds with Hungarian as the language of instruction in bilingual regions of eastern, central and western Slovakia. A total of 300 respondents participated in the research. They were selected based on expert sampling. The survey consisted of two parts. One part of the study included self-administered questionnaires asking students about their reading habits and self-assessment of their reading comprehension skills. These responses were based solely on subjective assessments. After completing the questionnaire, the students filled out a reading comprehension test compiled by the Linguistics Research Group of the Faculty of Central European Studies at the Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra; consisted of three different types of texts and questions adapted to the cognitive abilities of each age group. The respondents’ answers were used to assess the differences between the students’ self-assessed reading comprehension skills and the results of our reading comprehension tests. Based on the analysis of the two, it can be concluded that the participants overestimated their reading comprehension abilities and their self- assessment-based views did not match the results of the reading comprehension tests.