Date of Award

7-2018

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts - School Psychology

Department

Human Services

First Advisor

Dr. Luis Aguerrevere

Second Advisor

Dr. Frankie Clark

Third Advisor

Dr. Daniel McCleary

Fourth Advisor

Dr. Steven Estrada

Abstract

Reading comprehension is a criterial skill that an individual must utilize to navigate in the twenty-first century. This skill is developed throughout grade school and continues into adulthood. Many successful readers use active highlighting to assist in their reading comprehension. Active Highlighting is one of the most commonly used approaches to increase reading comprehension. Technology is ever growing and slowly replacing its paper-format counterparts. Educational settings are beginning to use this tool as a more efficient way to teach and test student’s abilities. High-stake tests such as the SAT, are wanting to provide an online format for their exams. As technology continues to develop and replace paper-format text, it is critical to understand if there are any ramifications of using traditional reading comprehension strategies, such as highlighting material, in an electronic format. Thus, this study investigated if reading comprehension is improved when using the active reading comprehension strategy of highlighting. The study found that although highlighting did not impact the reading comprehension performance of all the individuals who participated, of those given the option to highlight or not, those who chose to highlight appeared to have higher reading comprehension performance. Additionally, when highlighting was optional, those that choose to highlight scored higher on the task. This may indicate that the effectiveness of reading strategies depends more on the capacity and willingness to use the strategy.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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