This essay, called Motivation and reading comprehension, is a study of the correlation between the motivation to read and the reading comprehension of Swedish students in their final year of school before university level, meaning that they are eighteen or nineteen years old, sometimes more.

The relation between the identity of the individual and the learning process has been a matter of scientific interest for some time, and this essay works in that tradition by investigating the connection between how pupils regard reading and how well developed their ability to decode text is.

The reading comprehension is measured through a test that consists of a text from the Swedish epic by Vilhelm Moberg, Invandrarna, where the reader at certain intervals throughout the text is asked to mark the correct word from a choice of three. This test has been used and evaluated extensively by Per Fröjd, who has found that the results are reliable and useful.

To measure the motivation to read I’ve constructed a survey to be answered before taking the reading test. It focuses on three different parts of reading motivation that are noted as the most important ones by Ivar Bråten. These are the feeling of joy and interest for reading, the goal to acquire knowledge of a specific subject, and the expectations that you have on yourself as a reader.

Results show a weak or non-existent correlation between the two factors for the whole of the subjects, but once those who have a first language other than Swedish are removed the correlation becomes significant. There does not appear to be any difference based on gender, at least none that can be divined from these results.

The analysis does not give any reason to question previous research, and together with earlier studies of compulsory school this means that we can assume that the relation between motivation and reading comprehension is relevant throughout all the stages of schooling.

Regarding further studies a possible fruitful area of inquiry could be the significance of motivation for the students who are studying at a different language than their first.