A Computer System of Referential Resolution to Assess Students' Reading Comprehension

The major purpose of this study is to assist college students in constructing mental representation of referential resolution in a computer system. Ninety students were asked to draw mental maps indicating the relationships between references, take reading comprehension tests, and fill out open-ended questionnaire. Results showed that the correlation between referential resolution and reading comprehension ranged from 61% to 75% in three reading tasks. The more students practiced in referential resolution, the higher average score they obtained in the reading comprehension test. Students also requested fewer feedbacks when they progressed to better comprehend the final online text. That is, they became more independent and relied less on the system’s feedback in their reading development. Although seventy-six students expressed that they learned from building connections of related words and made progressed in reading comprehension, fourteen students revealed that they still had difficulties after using the online system. This deserved more investigation in the future.