Abstract
This paper examines the comprehension of different text types by readers at different
proficiency levels. 170 EFL undergraduates read narrative, expository, and argumentative
text types. Significant comprehension differences were found among readers of these text
types. Lowlevel readers performed similarly on the three text types, and thus failed to use
the rhetorical structure of the text types and their related processing requirements to improve
their performance on these texts. On the other hand, more proficient readers used these
features to their advantage in the comprehension process. Their outperforming the low and
intermediate groups in expository and argumentative text comprehension shows that certain
text types are more difficult for lowerlevel underachievers, and by implication certain levels
of proficiency need to be achieved to have a better performance on these texts. This was
further corroborated when we found no significant differences in the performance of the high
group on the three text types.