Abstract:

In order to provide information about how prior knowledge of Internet use are linked to the strategies reported in a reading task on the internet the following research has conducted. 29 students in junior high school in Mexico City were selected based on their level of prior knowledge on how to use the internet for doing homework. Participants were asked to work in a reading task on the internet and their reading strategies were observed.

The reading task required the participant locate information about an specific topic on the internet. In order to get information about the reading strategies used by participants, a think aloud protocol was followed. The retrospective report was given by the participant immediately after completing the task, this report was supported by screen recording and semi-structured interview.

Strategies reported by participants during the internet reading task were recorded using a checklist. Participants were organized into three groups according to the number of strategies they reported. t-Kendall correlations between scores on the instrument who evaluated prior knowledge of the internet with the scores on the reported strategies checklist were obtained.

The analysis showed that participants who reported higher scores in the prior knowledge on how to use the internet, reported a larger number of strategies during the internet reading task. The correlation was observed in the subscale of prior knowledge about internet and the number of strategies to locate (τ =.496); to evaluate (τ =.759); synthesize (τ =.661); and communicate (τ =.635). This information supports the idea that prior knowledge about how to use Internet correlates significantly with the achievement on a reading task, thus participants who reported a wider range of strategies, also performed better when asked to locate specific information on the internet.

We also found that students who reported having more access to internet scored higher on reading activities, both with practices linked to social and entertainment purposes (τ =.407); and when using the Internet for school research (τ =.464).

An important aspect was the fact that we didn’t find statistically significant correlations between the perception of experience using internet and internet reading strategies reported by participants during the task. This could explain why, even though participants see themselves as expert users of the internet for different activities, including homework assignments, was not reflected in their performance in the actual reading task on the internet.

Important discussion about the way how reading strategies on the internet are being measured is relevant, also it has to be consider that the prior knowledge about the use of the internet not necessary is the same that participants recover or retrieve when they working in the reading task on the internet, thus the preliminary result of this research allow us thinking through the design of instruments in order to get more precise measures of prior knowledge before and during the reading task.

Keywords:

Internet, reading, strategies.