Strategies to understand and interpret argumentative texts in higher education students

Abstract

One of the problems facing higher education is the understanding and interpretation of written texts, which must be addressed in all educational scenarios, to get students to understand what they read, develop skills that not only allow them to analyze or read words, but also understand them and internalize the message they read. There is a variety of strategies that have been implemented in classrooms, in order to create reading habits; but, in many cases, they have proved fruitless, unmotivated and with low expectation on behalf of the students. In this sense, the objective of this research was to analyze the strategies implemented to understand and interpret argumentative texts among fifth semester students of the Childhood Pedagogy Program at University of Pamplona, in Cucuta. The methodology was based on positivist philosophy, with a descriptive analytical method. The research design was non-experimental, quantitative and transversal. A questionnaire validated by an expert was used for data collection; its internal consistency reported a Cronbach Alpha of 0.96. It was concluded that students use pedagogical tools to promote cognitive development, formulate hypothesis, manage text comprehension efficiently, use inferential strategies that enable students to understand high-level writings in depth to draw conclusions.