Resumen

TELLES, Alberto  y  BRUZUAL, Raquel. Diagnosis of the process of reading comprehension in the second level of basic education. Paradígma [online]. 2005, vol.26, n.2, pp.77-98. ISSN 1011-2251.

The poor performance in the various areas that make up the curriculum in the second level of the "Barrio Nuevo" Basic School of the Municipality "Mercedes Diaz" in Valera, Trujillo State, motivated this investigation. The central objective of the study was to evaluate the process of reading comprehension among students attending the second level in the school. The theoretical approach employed was the linguistic communication (Bruzual, 2002). The investigation was descriptive non-experimental and the study population included randomly selected students in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Analysis of the results showed that the students were unable to identify the principal ideas and the anaphores, built the text titles, identify inferences, adequately use synonyms and antonyms, built predictions and develop conclusions according to the text and context. As a consequence, the students presented a low level of reading comprehension not understanding the meaning of the texts, due to the limited handling of the linguistic components and cognitives operations that do not allow for an adequate coherent and effective use of reading.

Palabras clave : reading comprehension, linguistic-communicative approach; second level of Basic Education; linguistics and cognitives operations.