Peter Gavora, Petra Matúšová: Investigation into Reading Literacy of University Students

Over the past decade, fluent reading has come to be seen as a central component of primary school curriculum in Slovakia, with emphasis on accuracy and automacity in reading. Due to PIRLS and PISA international studies in reading literacy a shift was made to bring reading to real-life situation needs. However, there is little information on performance of adult population in Slovakia in reading literacy. To receive some initial data, a study was conducted with a sample of 133 university students from Educational Faculty in Bratislava. The released PISA reading literacy test items (2000) were used as a data gathering instrument expecting that university students will score at least at the 90 % level (or 90 points) on the test. However, this level was reached only by 25 % of students. About 25 % students from the sample scored less then 75 points out of 100. As concerns the reading process, the highest scores were obtained in retrieving information (86.2 p.), followed by interpretation (81.8 p.) and reflecting (78.8 p.). The findings are disappointing and indicate that the low level of text processing with university students in the sample is dominant.

PEDAGOGIKA SK 2010, Vol. 1. (No. 3: 183-196)

Key words: reading literacy, international studies, PISA, adult literacy, university students