This study aimed to examine the effects of different text difficulty levels on foreign language reading anxiety (FLRA) and reading comprehension of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. To this end, 50 elementary EFL learners were selected from two intact classes (n = 25 each). Each class was assigned to a text difficulty level (i.e.,…

Retrospective reports gathered from developmental education students as part of a learning assessment revealed the use of several strategies for writing a summary based on a text. Participants were selected for the study based on the richness and variety of their verbal descriptions of task performance in structured, individualized interviews.…

This research investigates the impact of teaching Shakespeare to below-grade-level readers in an English Language Arts classroom on Chicago's South Side. The students studied are five middle school boys who were observed over a two-year course of study under the same teacher who, after finding success with this method, found herself asking, how is…

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…

The study reported here investigates the validity of judgments made when aligning tests to the "Common European Framework of Reference" (CEFR). Listening tests operationalizing pre-defined difficulty-determining characteristics were to be aligned to CEFR levels. We employed a modified version of the item-descriptor-matching-method. Ten…

Wilburn implemented the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) from 2008-09 through 2014-15. TIF [Teacher Incentive Fund] funding supported the performance pay component since 2010-11. All TAP principles were implemented. However, challenges occurred related to staff turnover, scheduling, and the extra work involved. Many teachers did not find the TAP…

This article reports on the extensive reading (ER) component of a reading intervention programme to improve first-year students' reading proficiency. To make the intervention more practical and to accelerate improvement, an ER component was included in the programme. Two groups of first-year students (high-risk and low-risk) were required to read…

This article reports the development of the Test Takers' Metacognitive Awareness Reading Questionnaire (TMARQ) which measures test takers' metacognition in reading comprehension tests. The TMARQ comprises seven subscales: planning strategies, evaluating strategies, monitoring strategies, strategies for identifying important information,…

L2 vocabulary is commonly conceptualized in terms of a size or depth of one's total lexical knowledge and tested discretely with selection-type items. Concerns exist, however, regarding L2 users' ability to cope with unknown vocabulary, especially in the context of academic reading. This motivated the creation of a test which measures the ability…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of using group story-mapping of English as a second language (ESL) on students with learning disability while reading comprehension. The researcher focused on a specific graphic organizer in this study, called group story-mapping. This strategy required students with learning disabilities…

Research suggests that English-language proficiency is critical if students who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH) are to read as their hearing peers. One explanation for the traditionally reported reading achievement plateau when students are D/HH is the inability to hear insalient English morphology. Signing Exact English can provide visual…

Departing from Gonzales and Torres' (2015) quantitative quasi-experimental study on the effectiveness of cooperative learning (CL) on Grade 8 students in a private school in Manila, the present study attempts to uncover possible findings in the affective dimension through a 25-item survey questionnaire that quantitatively gauges the Grade 8…

Departing from Gonzales and Torres' (2015) quantitative quasi-experimental study on the effectiveness of cooperative learning (CL) on Grade 8 students in a private school in Manila, the present study attempts to uncover possible findings in the affective dimension through a 25-item survey questionnaire that quantitatively gauges the Grade 8…

While theories of embodied cognition have been investigated in lab experiments with proficient readers, currently no studies have applied these theories to improving reading comprehension for low-proficiency readers. Using an embodied cognition approach, this study investigated producing comics as an embodied reading activity. To compare effects…

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…