HUNDREDS of teachers of various subjects have undergone courses on the teaching of reading comprehension via projects run by the National Office for Certified Measurements of Education (NUCEM) because it still poses problems for many Slovak schoolchildren, the TASR newswire reported.
Slovak pupils performed below the OECD average in the 2013 PISA tests and are disadvantaged with respect to their OECD counterparts due to the fact that they weren't used to this sort of testing at schools, according to Ivana Sorbyová of NUCEM.
"Currently, the issue is being dealt with intensively by Slovak language and literature teachers, but we feel the need to have teachers of other subjects participate in the process by giving reading comprehension tasks to students," she said as quoted by TASR. "A person who has reading comprehension skills is able to read continuous or non-continuous texts, interpret them, form a general understanding and extract information required for his or her life, family, work, etc."
State tests designed for primary- and secondary-school pupils have demonstrated an improvement recently, however.
"When reading comprehension was tested for the first time, the teaching community protested. Now discussions among experts on specific tasks are under way, but no one casts doubt on their usefulness anymore," Sorbyová added.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Michaela Terenzani from press reports.
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information
presented in its Flash News postings.
