The role of reading strategies in scientific text comprehension and academic achievement of university students

The aim of the study was to explore the relations between comprehension strategies engaged in different aspects of comprehension processing, and to examine the relationship of these strategies and text comprehension to academic achievement. The participants in the study were 112 undergraduate psychology students (10 male and 102 female). Text comprehension was assessed on three short scientific paragraphs on topics from cognitive psychology. A self-explanatory task was applied for assessing the use of three reading strategies: paraphrasing, bridging inferences and elaborations. Additionally, question generation and summarizing tasks were administered. Grade point average (GPA) was used as an indicator of academic achievement. Relations between reading strategies indicated grouping of the strategies that foster different aspects of comprehension processing from the text-base level to the situation model of the text. Students typically use paraphrases, regardless of their reading comprehension level; however, good comprehenders use more strategies that help readers to build global representation of the text compared to poor comprehenders. The use of elaboration strategies and the use of summarizing strategy were the best predictors of text comprehension. The effects of reading strategies on GPA were mediated by reading comprehension