University students’ attitudes towards their language practices, literacy self-evaluation, and reading comprehension

Abstract

Functional, multiple, contextual literacy (new literacy) constitutes a dominant concept in contemporary theory, research, and education policies. While functional literacy comprises a multitude of dimensions, the greatest significance is attributed to linguistic and reading literacy. To date, research on literacy has mostly focused on students of pre-secondary school age, often neglecting other populations, including the youth and adults. This exploratory study assessed the functional literacy of university students, primarily centering on the domains of linguistic and reading literacy. The aim was to illuminate students’ perspectives on their own language practices and obtain their literacy self-evaluations. At the same time, we measured our participants’ achievements in reading literacy tasks and examined relations between the above-mentioned variables. A sample of 225 social science students attending the University of Belgrade completed an online composite questionnaire. The results showed that: a) university students’ high literacy self-evaluation did not correspond to their achievement in reading literacy tasks; b) language practice proved to be a composite variable within which reading and writing were differently related to achievement in reading literacy tasks. In this paper, we propose a model of relations between these variables and point to pedagogical interventions that could contribute to the development and improvement of functional literacy among university students in general.

Keywords

• functional literacy
• language practices
• reading comprehension
• reading literacy
• university students