De Rol Van Affectieve Variabelen Bij Begrijpend Lezen in Een Vreemde Taal

In the study of the use of context and reading comprehension in a foreign language by Van Esch (1987) a more explorative research question dealt with the relation between the performances of learners of Spanish in context use and reading comprehension on the one hand and affective variables as the learners' perception of their attitude, their self-confidence and their context use in reading-comprehension on the other. These variables were measured by questionnaires of the Likert-type. To improve reliability and empirical validity, factor-analyses were carried out which yielded three factors: Attitude, Self-Confidence and Context-Use. The learners with better than average results on context-use and reading comprehension (the 'good' context-users) proved to be also more than average in these three factors. After a training programme in context-use, the perceptions of an experimental group of less than average ('poor') context-users were significantly higher in two of the three factors, Attitude and Context-Use, than the perceptions of a control group of poor context-users who did not follow this training programme. The third factor, Self-Confidence yielded contradictory results. Conclusions are drawn from the results of this study, which ends with an examination of the implications for the theory and practice of the teaching of foreign language reading comprehension.