Comprehensive reading and reading speed in students of the students of the University Institute of Languages of the University of Cuenca, Ecuador

Reading is a skill that allows the acquisition of knowledge directly and frequently precisely. A poor mastery of it, on the contrary, makes it difficult and can even make impossible learning and intellectual development of people. This research project aims to determine the levels of comprehensive reading and reading speed of English students at the University of Cuenca, as well as identify sociodemographic and/or other factors related to the reading habit that could influence the results. For this, a reading comprehension test and another reading speed will be administered to around 350 students from the different levels of English offered by the University Institute of Languages. Likewise, a survey on reading habits in English and Spanish and another on sociodemographic data of the participants will be applied. It seeks to reveal a little known reality in our institution in order to achieve awareness of aspects that are of the utmost importance in education, and that are also the basis of other skills necessary to achieve optimal learning, such as the ability to reason critical, synthesis, inference, among others. The development of these elements is essential in every learning process in both the mother tongue and in a foreigner. In an upcoming project, which aims to give continuity to this research, a pedagogical intervention aimed at increasing the levels of comprehensive reading and reading speed will be carried out based on the results of this work.

XVIII UNIVERSITY COMPETITION FOR RESEARCH PROJECTS