Reading comprehension is one of the most complex skills that children have to learn in school. To teach reading comprehension in a correct way, it is important to know what the skill consists of...Show moreReading comprehension is one of the most complex skills that children have to learn in school. To teach reading comprehension in a correct way, it is important to know what the skill consists of and what other factors, such as topic interest, have an important role. Reading comprehension is explained as creating a mental coherent representation of the text by using active and passive reading processes. Pre-knowledge, topic interest and the readers’ motivation and gender influence the comprehension processes. In this study we examine the role of the readers topic interest in reading comprehension and whether the readers’ gender, reading motivation and pre-knowledge have an influence on this role. This study has a within-subject design and is performed on students in the fifth and eight grade of primary school. These students filled in a survey where they had to select three interesting and three non-interesting texts from a list. Then, they had to read those six selected texts and were asked to answer six questions about each texts. After this, the researchers graded the answers. The students could receive 1 point per right answer. This resulted in a mean score of zero to six points and was divided in a mean score for the interesting and the non-interesting texts. We found that students had a significant higher score on the texts they selected as interesting than non-interesting. This effect was the same for boys and girls and also the same for children that do or don’t read a lot for fun in their free time. It was also found that children selected texts mostly as interesting when they had more pre- knowledge about that text topic. So it could be said that topic interest and pre-knowledge are important factors that need to be taken in account when teaching reading comprehension.Show less
