Underdeveloped reading comprehension skills can limit academic success; a particular challenge for English language learners (ELLs). The current study investigated whether a web-based text structure strategy, delivered via the Intelligent Tutoring of Structure Strategy (ITSS) program to adult Chinese ELLs, improved students' use of reading…

Twenty adult ESL students at a community college participated in a semester reading intervention. Participants received a modified extensive reading treatment, and some participants received an additional repeated reading direct instruction reading intervention. The author examined the impact of the reading interventions on ESL students' reading…

The current study was conducted to investigate the effect of task-based and topic-based speaking activities on improving the speaking ability among Iranian EFL learners. The study used quasi-experimental design. The subjects consisted of 60 male and female students who were selected from among 90 EFL learners by applying the nelson proficiency…

Social science research often uses educational qualification as a signifier for characteristics such as abilities, earnings potential, and civic participation in adulthood. This study focused on two types of adult literacy students who were native speakers of English and identified words at the 3rd to 5th grade levels but differed in one key…

Millions of adults in the United States lack the necessary literacy skills for most living wage jobs. For students from adult learning classes, we used a lexical decision task to measure their knowledge of words and we used a decision-making model (Ratcliff's, 1978, diffusion model) to abstract the mechanisms underlying their performance from…

This study examines how Chinese ESL learners recognize English words while responding to a multiple-choice reading test as compared to Romance-language-speaking ESL learners. Four adult Chinese ESL learners and three adult Romance-language-speaking ESL learners participated in a think-aloud study with the Michigan English Language Assessment…

Many empirical investigations have demonstrated that explicit Focus on Form (FOF) methods are more effective than implicit Focus on Meaning (FOM) methods (Norris & Ortega, 2000), because in FOF instruction learners' attention is drawn to linguistic form while FOM instruction requires learners' attention to communicate (Ellis, 2001). However,…

Having low literacy skills could impact everything from reading a newspaper and balancing a checkbook to wise consumer decisions and job advancement. This study estimates adult literacy measures for Cuyahoga County, Ohio and its municipalities. It is also important to have a sense of how many children are at risk for developing literacy problems…