Reading literacy skills in the new external exams in Poland

Abstract

The way reading literacy is conceptualised has changed over the last decades. Regarding comprehension as deep processing, in which skimming or scanning neither encourage the reader to engage in texts nor lead to the expected levels of understanding has influenced the way reading literacy is taught and assessed. The aim of the article is to analyse new task types introduced to the external exams as well as to provide evidence that the changes in the exam format reflect the way reading comprehension skills have recently been conceptualised. The analysis of the exam tasks is preceded by an overview of the recent trends in conceptualising L2 reading literacy.