Several cross-linguistic studies found that oral reading prosody (i.e., prosodic variations in reading aloud) correlates with reading comprehension. As an extension, the present study aimed to examine the relationship between oral reading prosody and beyond word-level reading abilities in tone languages like Mandarin. One hundred and nine…

Purpose: This study aims to explore the contributions of phonological awareness (PA) and morphological awareness (MA) to the reading comprehension skills of Chinese-speaking children with hearing loss (HL) and examine the possible mediation effect of vocabulary knowledge on the relationships of PA and MA with their reading comprehension. Method:…

This study explores relationships between Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL) and Chinese reading comprehension with 65 deaf adults/youth (study 1: ages 14--50 years) and 27 deaf children (study 2: ages 6--13 years). Significant relationships were found between scores on two tests measuring TSL tasks. In study #1, the TSL tasks (measured by Taiwan Sign…

Student response systems (SRSs) have been applied in a wide array of educational contexts to promote engaging learning. There exists scant empirical evidence about comparing web-based SRS with other modalities of response methods. In the present study, a quasi-experimental research design was undertaken to compare three learning conditions on EFL…

The effects of social annotation on critical literacy remain controversial, and little research has explained why some students can benefit from social annotation in critical literacy, and some cannot. This chapter investigates the effects of social annotation on critical literacy and the interactive patterns of social annotations. The…

L2 test developers often use scripted spoken texts in their L2 listening tests, because it is efficient and practical to create scripted spoken texts that meet predetermined test specifications. But because scripted spoken texts differ in a number of fundamental ways from unscripted spoken language, there are potential threats to validity when…

This study compared the reading speed, comprehension and perceptions of two groups of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. Each group addressed one of two types of narrow reading: same genre and same title. The same genre texts were three graded readers in the "Sherlock Holmes" series, and the same title texts were "The…

Since Taiwanese readers have international and multicultural reading interests and habits, this study aims to develop a Chinese title recognition test, a translated title recognition test (TTRT), and a Chinese author recognition test as measures of print exposure for fifth graders in Taiwan, and to investigate the relative extent to which…

This study set out to develop a Chinese Author Recognition Test (CART) that might be used as a measure of objective print exposure for college students in Taiwan. We found that there is a linkage between print exposure and general reading achievement for college students. We also found that, among self-reported reading habits, comparative reading…

Previous studies have evaluated reading comprehension as the general understanding of reading texts. However, this broad and generic assessment of reading comprehension overlooks the specific aspects and processes that students need to develop. This study adopted Kintsch's Construction-Integration model to tap into reading comprehension at…

This study extends current knowledge by exploring the effect of different annotation formats, namely in-text annotation, glossary annotation, and pop-up annotation, on hypertext reading comprehension in a foreign language and vocabulary acquisition across student proficiencies. User attitudes toward the annotation presentation were also…

This study details the development of six second language learners in an English listening course that focused on developing their bottom-up listening skills. The research employed longitudinal multi-case studies to chart the development of these lower proficiency-level Taiwanese university learners, and their progress in the course was analysed…

Thirteen English as a foreign language students read 26 passages during a 13-week period. Each passage was read five times, and students answered comprehension questions after the first and the fifth reading. Another 13 students read the same number of passages but without repetition and only answered the comprehension questions once. All students…

Many studies have concluded that question generation has a positive effect on students' reading comprehension. However, few studies have delineated how students generate questions from a text and what processes are involved in question generation. This study aims to investigate how the question generation processes improve students' reading…

Investigated the effects of three aural-advance organizers on student comprehension of second-language (L2) videotaped materials. Subjects were 160 low-intermediate Chinese students of English in Taiwan. Suggests that in preparing advance organizers for English-as-a-Foreign-Language students, teachers should focus on new words rather than on video…