Reading and comprehension of research articles (RA) by undergraduate chemistry students provides a greater ability to develop criticism and establish links between scientific contents. Even being such a relevant skill, research on the subject is scarce, especially in the Brazilian context. From this perspective, this paper aims to investigate the text comprehension of RA about the topic of biofuel, extracted from the “Química Nova” journal, by undergraduates from the area, in the context of a scientific communication discipline. Therefore, we initially analyzed the retextualization carried out by a group of students from RA for corresponding oral presentation, and then established links between retextualization operations and text comprehension. The analysis was based on studies on retextualization operations and text comprehension, from the perspective proposed by Marcuschi. The results indicated that the development of the oral presentation component slides took place without impairing the communicative purpose established by the RA authors, suggesting the undergraduates understood it.