Reader's perception of importance: What ASP readers think is important and why

Abstract

The authors conducted a study with Psychology I Academic Support Programme (ASP) students and tutors which explored readers' perception of importance in reading a Psychology I text. They explored a) what readers think is important and b) what strategies readers use to determine importance. From the analysis of the data four categories of readers emerged according to the strategies which they were using to process the text for important sentences. There was no significant difference between the performance on the selection task or the essay by the three different categories of ASP students. However, the findings are consistent with other research on differences between good and poor readers and support some of the general theories about learning problems of students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds.