To address the concern that most traditional reading comprehension tests only measure
basic comprehension, this study designed measures to assess more complex reading
tasks: Reading to Learn and Reading to Integrate. The new measures were taken by 251
participants: 105 undergraduate native speakers of English, 106 undergraduate
nonnative speakers, and 40 graduate nonnative speakers. The research subproblems
included determination of the influence of overall basic reading comprehension
level, native language background, medium of presentation, level of education, and
computer familiarity on Reading to Learn and Reading to Integrate measures; and the
relationships among measures of Basic Comprehension, Reading to Learn, and Reading
to Integrate. Results revealed that native language background and level of
education had a significant effect on performance on both experimental measures,
while other independent variables did not. While all reading measures showed some
correlation, Reading to Learn and Reading to Integrate had lower correlations with
Basic Comprehension, suggesting a possible distinction between Basic Comprehension
and the new measures.
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