The aim of the research was to examine the pattern of relations between (meta)cognitive and motivational variables and to identify predictors of text comprehension. The study was conducted on a sample of eighth-grade students of elementary school in Croatia (N = 240) and ninth-grade students from Slovenia (N = 265). Comprehension of expository and narrative texts was examined on texts used in the international IEA Study of Reading Literacy (1991). In addition to the text comprehension task, Vocabulary test (Hershel, 1963), Metacognitive knowledge questionnaire and summarizing task, as well as The Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (Peklaj & Bucik, 2003) were applied. The best predictor of text comprehension in all students was vocabulary, while intrinsic motivation was also a significant predictor of text comprehension in Croatian students.

text comprehension, vocabulary, metacogntiive knowledge, summarizing, reading motivation