Eesti keele riiklike tasemetööde tekstimõistmisülesannete analüüs
Analysis of the comprehension tasks of national standardized tests of Estonian language

Summary/Abstract: Text comprehension is a complex process where low- and high-level skills are likely to interact. In this article the comprehension tasks of national standardised tests of Estonian language for Grade 6 in 2013–2015 are analysed to detect levels of text comprehension in standardised tests. We found that the comprehension tasks in standardised tests are mostly focused on factual knowledge. Furthermore, 76% of questions in the national standardised test in 2014 and 57.1% in 2015 consisted of tasks which measured children’s ability to recall the details from the read or heard text. In 2013, such tasks comprised 42.9% of the national standardised test. We found only one task (in 2013) which demanded the highest skills – implementing pre-knowledge into the evaluation process. Thus, the tasks used in standardised test are not wide-ranging enough to determine students’ skills at different levels of text comprehension. As long as national standardised tests consist mostly of tasks that require readers’ memory, teachers also concentrate mainly on supporting students’ lower-level text comprehension skills. Therefore, there may not be enough attention devoted to developing the students’ high-level skills. As text comprehension at higher level is one of the most important competences students must acquire for successful academic and lifelong growth, teachers should concentrate more on supporting these skills.

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