Descriptive analysis of the performance of two English proficiency groups on inferential and literal questions

The present study investigated the relationship between English language proficiency (including reading comprehension) and inferential ability. Inferential ability was measured by the Inferential Ability Test which consisted of two types of questions. One type involved literal questions which required only a surface level understanding of texts. The other type, inferential questions, demanded a deeper level understanding of the texts. The subjects were divided into two groups (15 each of skilled and less-skilled readers) based on the English Proficiency Test (EPT). The results of the experiment showed that the subjects were better able to answer literal questions than inferential questions, and that the performance of the skilled group on the inferential questions was better than that of the less-skilled group, whereas there was no difference between the performances of the two groups on the literal questions. Further analysis showed that the correlation between the EPT and the inferential questions was higher for the skilled group than for the less-skilled group, whereas the correlation between the EPT and the literal questions was higher for the less-skilled group than for the skilled group