| The first purpose of this study was to examine the degree of relationship among the reading, reasoning, and vocabulary variables in this study. The second purpose of this study was to examine the prediction of the reading comprehension ability of underachieving college freshmen from their: (1) critical thinking skills; (2) cognitive thinking skills; (3) meaning vocabulary.; One hundred and sixty-five second semester underachieving freshmen at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale who scored below the fiftieth percentile either on the Iowa Silent Reading Test (1973) or the Nelson Denny Reading Test (1976) were advised to enroll in a reading course, C.I.M. 212, Systematic Analysis of Texts. These students were given three tests in the following sequence: (1) Cornell Critical Thinking Test, Level Z (1982); (2) Developing Cognitive Abilities Test (1981); (3) Iowa Silent Reading Test, Level 3 (1973). Then the raw scores that were derived from these tests were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The study was designed as a correlational predictive study.; The pattern of correlations discovered in this study did not always follow traditional reading theory. For instance, literal comprehension, i.e., reading explicit material, had a closer relationship with higher-level verbal reasoning than it did to low-level verbal reasoning. Then critical thinking skills were not related to critical reading comprehension skills. Next, semantics was not found to be related to the following variables: higher-level verbal questions, to the complete verbal DCAT, and to vocabulary. Finally, cognitive thinking skills (DCAT) and vocabulary were found to be significant (P = .0001) predictors of reading comprehension. |
