This study has aimed the comparison of reading comprehension levels and learning strategies used for overcoming eventual problems among Psychology students; as well as it verified the students’ real comprehension difficulties to answer the cloze test. 178 university students (113 from the 1st year and 65 from the 4th year) participated in this study. The procedure was applied in one single session and consisted by : (a) reading of the area scientific text; (b) questions about the realized difficulties and the used strategies to overcome the problem; and (c) the Cloze testing application , using a text similar to the first one, in order to evaluate reading comprehension. A significant statistical difference has been observed about the reading comprehension level , as the 4th year students have presented a better performance, compared to the students from the 1st year. The 4th year students acknowledged a greater difficulty in understanding the first text, although the difference between the two groups was not significant. The difficulty kinds and the strategies used by the students pointed out, qualitative differences between these groups.
Reading comprehension; Academic achievement; Cloze testing
