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Comprehension of philosophical texts in c.o.u. Students. an empirical study

Written by Víctor Santiuste Bermejo, Emilio García García, Carlos L. Ayala Flores and Carmen Barriguete Merchán

By means of the present work-study we aimed at exploring the way a group of pre-university students employ reading comprehension strategies in order to approach a philosophical text, and the way these strategies influence upon its comprehension. The study group was conformed by 604 pupils, all of which belonged to C.O.U. level (Curso de Orientación Universitaria) in private and public centres in Madrid. The pupils read for twenty minutes a philosophical text about which they answered a series of written questions. Next, they completed a questionnaire about the strategies they made use of for the comprehension of the text. We infer from the data analysis that the pupils have a variety of strategies in order to face the reading of the text, out of which they choose those they consider more relevant for their current task. Results confirm three chief ideas: a) C.O.U. students belonging to science options achieve highest punctuation than those studying arts in the questions related to the text, specially in those refering to the interrelation discoveries and the emission of judgements; b) there is no difference in the number of strategies used in learning between the various C.O.U. option students; there is nevertheless, a distinction in the use of specific combinations of these strategies; c) the use of strategies influences on the reading comprehension. Víctor Santiuste Bermejo, Emilio García García, Carlos L. Ayala Flores and Carmen Barriguete Merchán Key Words: Reading Comprehension, Philosophical Texts, Learning Strategies, Teaching of Philosophy. Buy