South African financial reporting students' reading comprehension of the IASB Conceptual Framework

•Students' reading comprehension of the IASB Conceptual Framework is evaluated.•Reading comprehension enables students to access and decode content.•Differences exist in reading comprehension by language of instruction.•Attendance of prior reading courses may influence reading comprehension.•Implicit reading comprehension instruction is needed for second language students.

Students studying principles-based IFRS require a thorough knowledge and understanding of the IASB's Conceptual Framework (Framework). Reading comprehension of the Framework enables students to access and decode its content. This allows the development of the ability to analyze, critique, evaluate and synthesize the content. The objective of this study was to evaluate students' reading comprehension of the Framework using the Cloze procedure. Researchers have questioned whether there should be different assessments of reading comprehension for different demographic groups. This paper explores differences in the reading comprehension of a diverse cohort of South African financial reporting students. Many students demonstrated reading comprehension at the Independent or Instructional Level. Further analysis revealed statistically significant differences between reading comprehension by language of instruction and the attendance, or not, of prior reading courses. While this study considers South African students, the results may be of interest to instructors in other multiracial or multilingual environments.