| Summary: | Studies show that some pupils with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) can have difficulties in understanding written texts. The present study seeks to examine whether pupils with ASD differ in their reading comprehension of a factual text and a literary text. Another aim of the study is to obtain a picture of the reading habits of high school pupils with ASD, what reading strategies they use, and how they work with texts in Swedish lessons in school. The study uses texts from PISA surveys from 2009 and 2000. The factual text Varmluftsballongen (The Hot-air Balloon) was taken from the try-out for the 2009 survey and the literary text Gåvan (The Gift) was taken from the 2000 PISA survey. To gain some idea of the pupils’ reading comprehension of the texts, the present study used the tasks accompanying the texts, with certain changes in the questions about the text on the hot-air balloon. The pupils also had to complete a questionnaire about their reading habits, how they go about understanding the texts better, and how they work with texts in Swedish lessons. The pupils were interviewed to yield a little more information about how they comprehended the two different types of text. The study was conducted at two high schools geared to pupils with ASD, including a total of twelve pupils. Four of these pupils were also interviewed. The result of the reading comprehension tests show that the majority of the pupils found it easier to answer the questions about the factual text. The pupils who read a lot and are interested in reading achieved better results in both text assignments. There was a clear association between the pupils who have difficulties concentrating and finishing a book and their results on the reading comprehension tasks, which can be explained by their functional impairment. The result of the pupils’ questionnaire showed that they use different strategies when reading factual texts and literary texts. There were also differences in how the pupils work with different texts in school, both individually and together with other pupils, depending on which type of text it is. The help that pupils receive from their teachers can be limited by the pupils’ functional impairment, but according to the study this help is significant for the pupils’ reading comprehension, especially of literary texts.
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