Abstract
The article presents a teaching experiment contextualised in three
schools in the city of Temuco, Chile. The study included courses in
primary and secondary schools, and was planned to address a problem of
low reading comprehension among the pupils identified in standardised
tests like the Education Quality Measurement System (SIMCE). The problem
arises especially from the lack of specific reading strategies to
facilitate comprehension by the pupils, especially though inference,
interpretation and reflection. The object of this teaching experiment
was to impart to pupils a grammatical summarising strategy to enable
them to schematise and grasp the information in a text, allowing them to
gain reading skills. To do this, a summarising technique was developed
and taught to teachers and pupils in municipal-public and subsidised
schools; the results were assessed through reading comprehension tests
focused on the skills of reflection on the text and relation and
interpretation of the information. The principal finding of the
experiment, based on the levels achieved in the tests, was that the
summarising technique helped the pupils to locate information, which was
reflected in their increased ability to draw inferences from and reflect
on the text.