Compares Japanese women's (N=159) reading comprehension of two original passages in English written for second-language consumers. Results supported the hypothesis that minor changes for unfamiliar cultural elements would result in a significantly better performance on cloze tests. (Author/CB)

The results of a behavioral anchoring analysis of student performance on three English as a second language reading comprehension tests indicated that, for each of three proficiency levels, the higher ability students could comprehend questions with implicit information sources. All students showed competence with linguistic structures that…

First-graders' responses to a battery assessing phonemic awareness, syntactic awareness, receptive vocabulary, word decoding ability, and reading comprehension ability revealed strong zero-order correlations among all the variables, although analysis revealed that metalinguistic ability did not contribute to the prediction of early reading…

This study investigated the validity of having English-as-a-Second-Language test-takers select from a checklist the strategies they believe they use when answering multiple choice reading comprehension questions. Results suggest that the self-report checklist discussed above exercised to an unknown extent an instrument effect on the readers who…

Assessed a large sample of twins between the ages of 7 and 13 years on language comprehension tests sensitive to grammatical specific language impairment (G-SLI), including 37 same-sex twin pairs selected for presence of language impairment and 104 pairs from the general population. Qualitative markers of G-SLI were derived from the tests.…

This paper describes an ongoing project to create an online version of a reading programme, a custom-designed English language proficiency course at a university in Japan. Following an interactionist view of second language acquisition, it was hypothesised that comprehension of a reading passage could be enhanced by online materials promoting…

Assessment of second language reading comprehension has evolved from a relatively narrow conceptualization of reading as a process of mastering hierarchically ordered subskills, with the author as primary creator of meaning, to reading as an interaction among reader, author, and text. Reading assessment has several purposes: sorting students;…

Reports on an experiment that measured passage-dependency in an ESL test. Results suggest that passage-dependency is one measure that can be used to select good reading comprehension tests. (Author/AM)

An English-as-a-second-language reading comprehension test is analyzed, first using classical measurement procedures and then using the Rasch Model latent trait procedures. Results indicate that the Rasch Model analysis procedure produced numerous advantages for the test developer. Summarizes and describes 13 of these advantages. (SED)

Responds to a previous article in which the author of this article's work on reading subskills is critiqued. The author states that, despite the criticism of his work, he feels the critique offers a useful contribution to the debate about subskills and judgments. (JL)

This study set out to empirically determine the reliability and validity of the Vocabulary Levels Tests, both the passive and productive versions. Furthermore, attempt was made to investigate the nature of the students' vocabulary knowledge with regard to their passive and active knowledge of the L2 words as a whole and at different word frequency…

An administrator's manual and two reading comprehension tests in Spanish and English for use in secondary grades and with adults are presented here. The Spanish reading comprehension test was developed, standardized, and normed in Mexico; the English reading comprehension test was translated from the Spanish test. The tests were designed to be…

Based on a paper delivered at the Canadian Linguistics Association Congress held in Toronto, Canada, June 10-13, 1969. (DS)