Levels of Reading Comprehension Among Third Grade Students at an Educational Institution in Colombia

Abstract

Reading comprehension is an interactive process in which different factors intervene and an individual, organized and coherent representation of the content of the text is built. Three levels of comprehension must be developed to ensure full understanding of a text: literal, inferential, and critical. This article aims to identify the degree of development, at each of these levels, of a group of third graders studying at a public educational institution in Riohacha, Colombia, in order to develop interventions that allow for improvements in the weakest levels. To do this, a quantitative research project was developed, with a descriptive cross-sectional field design and the participation of 37 students. These were observed using an estimation scale which was then analyzed using descriptive statistics. Findings reveal that students achieved an average performance on the literal level, while their performance was low on the inferential and critical levels. These results suggest that students have reading comprehension weaknesses that need to be addressed through relevant interventions.