Abstract Story and reading comprehension are important parts of education and daily life and there has been concerns about the decrease in the comprehension level of Dutch children. The goal of the...Show moreAbstract Story and reading comprehension are important parts of education and daily life and there has been concerns about the decrease in the comprehension level of Dutch children. The goal of the current study was to determine the difference between video, audio and text when it comes to story comprehension. Besides the difference between the three different media, we were interested in the difference between the comprehension of strong and weak readers on these media. Because the standard of coherence could play an important part in story comprehension, we also examined if there was a difference in the standard of coherence between strong and weak readers. Children between eight and twelve years old (Grade 4-6) participated in this research. A within-subjects design was used and all children were presented with a video, an audio and a text. They answered open-ended questions to test their comprehension of the story. Their standard of coherence was tested with a self-report questionnaire. The results indicated a difference between the comprehension across different media. After watching a video, the story comprehension was better in comparison to after reading a text. No difference was found between audio and the other media. Strong readers appeared to have better comprehension than weak readers, but the pattern wasn’t different for video, audio and text. In addition, the standard of coherence didn’t differ between strong and weak readers. These findings have implications for the educational practice. Apparently both strong and weak readers seem to benefit from watching a video when it comes to their story comprehension. Teachers could therefore use videos to increase the story comprehension of their students. No difference was found between audio and text, but teachers may use audio to add some change to their lessons, in order to increase the engagement and motivation in reading education.Show less
