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Kremmel, Benjamin; Indrarathne, Bimali; Kormos, Judit; Suzuki, Shungo – Language Learning, 2023
Hu and Nation's (2000) study, which stipulated that second language (L2) readers need to be familiar with 98% of lexical items for adequate text comprehension, has become highly influential in L2 vocabulary research and pedagogy. However, the 98% critical threshold figure is based on findings from a research project in which a regression analysis…
Descriptors: Reading Comprehension, Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Adult Students
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Barr, Christopher D.; Uccelli, Paola; Phillips Galloway, Emily – Language Learning, 2019
This study reports on the conceptualization of a new construct targeting the cross-disciplinary academic language skills most relevant to school reading comprehension, targeting the validation of the Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) Instrument, a novel assessment tool which measures this construct. Participants included Grade 4-8 monolingual…
Descriptors: Academic Language, Interdisciplinary Approach, Reading Comprehension, Elementary School Students
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Leeser, Michael J. – Language Learning, 2007
This study examines how topic familiarity and working memory capacity affect beginning Spanish learners' reading comprehension and their processing of future tense morphology. Participants included 94 adult learners from an accelerated, beginning Spanish course. In addition to completing a computerized version of a reading span test as a measure…
Descriptors: Morphology (Languages), Language Tests, Familiarity, Reading Comprehension
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Leow, Ronald P.; Hsieh, Hui-Chen; Moreno, Nina – Language Learning, 2008
The present study revisited the issue of simultaneous attention to form and meaning from a methodological perspective that addressed several potential methodological issues of previous research in this strand of inquiry. Seventy-two second-semester-level participants were randomly assigned to one of five experimental groups, including a control,…
Descriptors: Experimental Groups, Reading Comprehension, Protocol Analysis, Multiple Choice Tests
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Connor, Ulla; Read, Charles – Language Learning, 1978
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)
Descriptors: Educational Experiments, English (Second Language), Language Tests, Native Speakers
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Henning, Grant H. – Language Learning, 1975
A study to evaluate seven commonly employed reading comprehension testing techniques in terms of predictive validity, difficulty and discriminability is described. (Author/RM)
Descriptors: Language Instruction, Language Tests, Measurement Techniques, Predictive Validity
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Chihara, Tetsuro; And Others – Language Learning, 1977
To determine if cloze items are sensitive to constraints across sentences, sequential and scrambled-type tests were given to native English speakers and Japanese adults studying ESL. Results showed cloze items embedded in prose are sensitive to discourse constraints ranging beyond the immediate limits of a sentence. (CHK)
Descriptors: Cloze Procedure, English, English (Second Language), Language Skills
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Markham, Paul L. – Language Learning, 1985
Describes a study which investigated the intersentential sensitivity of the rational deletion cloze procedure. Eighty-four college-level students of German were divided into two sub-groups; one group completed a sequential cloze task, the other completed a scrambled cloze task. There were not significant differences in performance on the two…
Descriptors: Cloze Procedure, Comparative Analysis, German, Higher Education
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Luppescu, Stuart; Day, Richard R. – Language Learning, 1993
The usefulness of bilingual dictionaries for vocabulary learning was examined with 293 Japanese university students studying English as a foreign language. Students who used a dictionary during reading scored significantly better on a vocabulary test than those who did not, but there was evidence for differential item functioning. (25 references)…
Descriptors: Bilingualism, College Students, Dictionaries, English (Second Language)
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Perkins, Kyle; Brutten, Sheila R. – Language Learning, 1988
Analysis of the keyed responses of items in three English-as-a-Second-Language reading comprehension tests focused on the form and source of information and on the frequency with which the information appeared in the text. Analysis of the results found that these facets were differentially related to the item score at different proficiency levels.…
Descriptors: Context Clues, English (Second Language), Higher Education, Language Proficiency
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Jonz, Jon – Language Learning, 1989
Reports on research into the interactive roles played in the verbal comprehension processes by the sequence of textual elements, text-specific prior knowledge, and levels of language proficiency. Four cloze tests were administered to undergraduate and graduate native speakers of English and to undergraduate non-native speakers of English at three…
Descriptors: Cloze Procedure, Cognitive Processes, English (Second Language), Higher Education
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Buck, Gary; Tatsuoka, Kumi; Kostin, Irene – Language Learning, 1997
Used the rule-space methodology to analyze performance on a multiple-choice reading comprehension test by students of English as a Second Language in Japan in an international business setting. Findings indicate that the rule-space methodology can explain performance on complex verbal tasks, such as reading tests, and provide diagnostic scores to…
Descriptors: Diagnostic Tests, English (Second Language), Foreign Countries, International Trade
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Qian, David D. – Language Learning, 2002
This study was conducted in the context of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) research to conceptually validate the roles of breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension in academic settings and to empirically evaluate a test measuring three elements of the depth dimension of vocabulary knowledge, including,…
Descriptors: College Students, English (Second Language), Foreign Countries, Higher Education