Abstract:

This paper is based on a survey that was conducted to discover the differences between the pupils’ self-assessment and their real performance in reading comprehension. The purpose of this research is to compare the respondent’s subjective opinion with their actual results and to answer the question whether the pupils can adequately evaluate their level of reading comprehension and what kind of deficiencies they have.

The total number of the survey respondents was 300. The respondents were the fourth-grade pupils in the first stage and the seventh-grade pupils in the second stage of primary schools with Hungarian being the language of instruction in Slovakia. The sample was selected based on purposive sampling, pursuing the strategy of selecting respondents from the same age level from identical bilingual environment. The results were evaluated according to statistical analyses.

The research consisted of two parts. The pupils were given a self-filled questionnaire where we asked them about their reading habits and reading comprehension skills based on their own opinion. They were asked what they think about their literacy, how they understand the texts what they read. These answers were completely subjective. Afterwards, they underwent a reading comprehension test which consisted of three texts and questions related to them. This paper presents the results and the comparison of their personal judgments and their real result of reading comprehension. Based on the results, there is a substantive difference between the perceived and the actual reading comprehension skill level; the participants have overestimated their literacy and there are deficiencies in various reading subskills.

These results have potential implications for further researches which will assess the reading comprehension skills of Hungarian pupils in Slovakia and design reading strategies which will improve their results.

Keywords:

Reading comprehension, reading habits, Hungarian minority, fourth-grade pupils, seventh-grade pupils.