ABSTRACT
In the Finnish comprehensive school curriculum, reading comprehension is considered the essential factor of reading skill and one of the fundamentals of learning. This chapter outlines the general process of reading comprehension into different levels. It is a synthesis of the conceptions of various researchers, and it distinguishes between the following levels of comprehension: reproducing, interpretative, evaluative and creative understanding. The investigation of certain question has been carried out at the Institute for Educational Research since the early 1970s, most extensively through the First National Survey of the Comprehensive School in 1979. The investigation used a method of measurement which considered reading comprehension to be a phenomenon which cannot be studied by means of a few tests and a small number of items. Therefore, in the national survey, the text samples were drawn from a larger set of texts in order to represent as much as possible in the types of text which students have to read in their community.
