Abstract:

The paper deals with the issue of measuring and evaluating reading comprehension in the Slovak language as a mother tongue via texts with implicit meanings. The topic directly follows the research task of the new project Comprehension at School: Implicit Meaning in Reading (CASIMIR - 2025-1-FR01-KA220-SCH-000356910) approved within the Erasmus+ project scheme for the period 2025 - 2028. The main goal of the project is to work with the concept of implicit meaning in texts and to design a suitable tool that would be helpful in improving pupils' skills in the field of text comprehension, and, at the same time, it would provide teachers with new procedures and strategies in the relatively under-researched area of working with implicit information in texts.

The research aim of this paper is to evaluate the validation process of the Slovak language reading comprehension test, to assess the quality of the test items, as well as to identify and analyse students' reactions to implicit information present in individual items. Partial research aims include determining the item psychometric characteristics such as difficulty, selectivity (discrimination), point bisserial (item-test correlation), and the functioning of the key option and distractors.

The research methodology involves the administration of two reading comprehension tests in the Slovak language. These tests are designed to evaluate reading comprehension skills at the primary and lower secondary education, with a specific emphasis on the identification of implicit meanings within texts. The same reading comprehension tests served as an experimental validation tool for the Intervention Program used to improve reading comprehension skills of learners in Slovak schools. The method of item analysis is applied using established methodological frameworks from Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory.

The measurements were carried out in two phases. The initial measurement was followed by the correction of problematic items, and the verification and validation processes were subsequently repeated. The findings demonstrated the validity of the measured items in terms of difficulty, discrimination, and distractors functioning. Based on the results of the measurements, it can be stated that learners experienced the greatest problems with solving tasks that required linking information coming from different parts of the text, then, grasping information that has not been explicitly presented in the text and finally with their interpretation.

When interpreting the findings, we focused on factors contributing to positive or negative student performance on tests involving implicit information. The conclusions show that these factors directly result from the concept of the test and test items (topic, text difficulty, item position in the test) or are related to ontogenetic and sociocultural variables related to the students themselves.

Keywords:

Implicit meaning, reading comprehension, text, measurement.