Abstract:

The largest minority in Slovakia is the Hungarian minority, which has an extensive network of schools with Hungarian being the language of instruction from kindergarten to university [1].

The aim of this study is to assess the level of reading comprehension skills of fourth graders in primary schools with Hungarian as the language of instruction in Slovakia and to answer research questions on which types of text are problematic for pupils and what differences are in pupils’ performance.
The research was conducted on a nationally representative sample, with a total of 345 pupils participating in the survey. The number of respondents covers 10% of pupils in the fourth grade of primary school with Hungarian as the language of instruction in Slovakia. The reading comprehension test used by our research team to assess the respondents’ level of reading comprehension included three different types of text (narrative, expository, informative) and a total of 26 age-appropriate questions.

The test included both open-ended and closed-ended questions. The results obtained show well that reading comprehension is strongly influenced by the type of text. In the fourth grade, comprehending texts of an informative nature proved to be the easiest, while comprehending narrative texts posed the greatest problem for students. This can be partly explained by the fact that the informative text was a weather report from everyday life, and prior knowledge and background knowledge greatly influences reading comprehension. The reader's experience so far creates the meaning of language, texts, and the world, and a series of researches explicitly prove that knowledge of the topic greatly influences the reading comprehension of the text [2].

References:
[1] Ildikó Vančo 2020. The Hungarian language in education in Slovakia. Mercator Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning. Leeuwarden.
[2] Blomert, Leo – Csépe Valéria 2012. Az olvasástanulás és -mérés pszichológiai alapjai [Psychological foundations of reading learning and measurement]. In: Csapó Benő és Csépe Valéria (szerk.): Tartalmi keretek az olvasás diagnosztikus értékeléséhez [Tartalmi keretek az olvasás diagnosztikus értékeléséhez]. Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest, 17 – 86.

Keywords:

Reading comprehension, Hungarian minority in Slovakia, primary school, text types.