Het Aanpassen Van Informatieve Schoolboekteksten In Groep Vijf Van Het Basisonderwijs

This article describes research which has focused on the level of difficulty of texts and questions as an explanation for the difference in text comprehension between non-native and native pupils. The degree to which text comprehension in native and non-native pupils could be facilitated by means of controlling texts and questions was investigated. From the results the following conclusions were drawn:1) Non-native pupils scored significantly lower than native Dutch pupils in all tests that dealt with text comprehension;2) When the test questions were controlled by changing a number of factors which supposedly made understanding more difficult, the scores of both non-native and native pupils improved significantly;3) When the texts of the tests were rewitten, the non-native pupils improved in their scores and the native pupils did not;4) When both the texts and questions were controlled, the results seemed to show that the non-native pupils had caught up for a great part where they were found to have "lagged behind".