L1 and L2 reading comprehension in Dutch higher education students with and without dyslexia: effects of test type and linguistic skills

Reading is one of the most important skills in higher education. Various students show problems with reading, which can lead to problems with text decoding, reading comprehension, or both. In this study, we investigate the L1 (Dutch) and L2 (English) reading comprehension performance of students with and without dyslexia. Participants were presented with two short texts, and their reading comprehension was tested via two different test types: (1) a free recall test (i.e. summary writing) and (2) a true/false test, composed of literal and inferential questions. In addition, the students were timed during text reading and tested on L1 and L2 language proficiency and print exposure, to study if and how these skills relate to their reading comprehension performance. In L1, both student groups performed equally well on literal true/false questions, but students with dyslexia performed poorer on inferential questions and summary writing. In L2, students with dyslexia performed worse on both types of true/false questions and the summary writing. Language proficiency was shown to play the most prominent role in reading comprehension skills of higher education students.