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With four comprehension reading tasks for poetry and four for prose, eye movement registrations were used to study reading and response processes for poetry and prose among 38 students in grades 8, 10 and 12 of secondary school. First, the time taken by a student to read a line of text for the first time (area of interest, abbreviated as AOI) was measured. This reading measure - the Initial Reading Time, i.e. 'first pass first gaze' - is an indication of the extent to which the explicit text content (textbase) is processed. In all grades, the Initial Reading Time for the reading process shows little difference between poetry and prose. Secondly, the extent to which the Total Reading Time in an AOI differs between poetry and prose was examined. The Total Reading Time represents all the times that a reader has looked back at a line of text, making this reading measure an indication of the construction of a situation model of a text. The Total Reading Time for the reading process shows significant differences between poetry and prose. Students need more time to construct a situation model of a poetry text compared to a prose text. Furthermore, the Total Reading Time for the reading process of poetry and prose, significant differences have also been demonstrated between grades 8 & 12, while the values for year four fall between these two extremes. 12th graders make (more) effort to build a situation model from a poetry text by connecting parts of the text to each other and to their background knowledge. For the response process, the Total Reading Times between poetry and prose differ significantly for an average text-before-question AOI. After reading a question, 10th and 12th graders spend considerably more time reading a text-after-question poetry AOI. The reading process, as measured, does not appear to be related to answering text comprehension questions; no difference can be demonstrated in the reading process of students who answer a question correctly and students who answer a question incorrect. The longer reading times for poetry text AOIs compared to prose text AOIs are supported by findings from the interviews, namely that students from all grades find the poetry texts more difficult than the prose texts.