Perspective Chapter: Reading Comprehension – A Matter of Skill or Knowledge of the World?

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to understand how insights in psycholinguistics could help in the creation of reading comprehension exercises for various language proficiency tests. The author of this chapter has created and adapted reading comprehension questions for students in engineering, therefore the psycholinguistic theory insights will be applied to her experience and to the domain of engineering when it comes to the topic of the text. The psycholinguistic perspective could offer insights regarding how the reading process takes place. For example, how does the interaction between language and thought occur? In order to prepare reading comprehension questions, we should know which types of questions can be helpful in order to improve the students’ skills. There are many courses and sites claiming that they can help us read a whole book in only one day or in the shortest time possible. Psycholinguistics could highlight useful skimming techniques.