Peer Assessment of Skimming and Scanning Facilitated by ICT and its Incidence in the Improvement of Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Currently, we live in a globalized world. This world demands the acquisition of English and its proper use in order to communicate, access to knowledge and information, and interact with a work environment (Su-Hie et al., 2017). Graddol (2006) affirmed this idea by stating that “In the last few years pedagogic practices have rapidly evolved to meet the needs of the rather different world in which global English is learned and used.” (p. 85). Reading in English is one of the biggest challenges of schools because reading is complex, one of the hardest formative challenge that people face, which requires memory, knowledge of the language, and inspiration. One of the most serious problems in higher education, but one which is often not recognized is the problem of reading comprehension (Dreyer & Nel, 2003, p. 349), this problem that seems to affect students’ learning process transcends from school to the university. One of the consequences of the deficiency of reading comprehension is low academic performance. Low competence in reading comprehension in this language does not allow students or professionals to have more opportunities at the moment of developing their career at the university and the world of work. (Pitan, 2013). Reading comprehension requires summarizing and reviewing what is expressed in a content, generating meaning, either exclusively built or agreed on by the larger part of readers (Randi et al., 2005). The need to make students thrive at reading comprehension is vital since of the skill takes part in creating academic processes.