In EFL countries where English is rarely practiced outside the classroom, textbooks have become the major input source for learners. Particularly in Vietnam, multiple textbook series are available simultaneously for the same grade. Thus, it is important to examine if their vocabulary is appropriate and of similar difficulty. This study aims to…

Using metacognitive strategies to enhance EFL reading comprehension is well-established, but it remains unclear how strategy use may differ according to individual reader characteristics like gender and reading ability. To address this limitation in the literature, 137 Chinese EFL university students completed a reading comprehension task and the…

Comparing language tests and test preparation materials holds important implications for the latter's validity and reliability. However, not enough studies compare such materials across a wide range of indices. Therefore, this study investigated the text complexity of IELTS academic reading tests (IRT) and IELTS reading practice tests (IRPrT).…

A great deal of past research in reading fluency has focused on oral reading fluency in L1, but literature in EFL oral reading and silent reading is still in its infancy. This study attempts to examine the development of silent reading fluency in a speed reading course and aims to determine whether an improvement in silent reading speed…

For students of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), reading articles in their field of study in English is particularly challenging. One of their main difficulties is understanding unfamiliar words. The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of online monolingual and bilingual dictionary tools on reading comprehension in English and…

This study investigates the relationships among working memory (WM), syntactic parsing ability (SP), and L2 reading performance across varying proficiency levels. A cohort of 120 L1-Persian EFL learners was categorized into beginner, intermediate, and advanced proficiency groups based on their IELTS scores. Participants completed a reading span…

Recent research has shown that reading and listening together can be helpful in developing EFL reading fluency, but learner-autonomous bimodal reading research remains scarce. The present study, in an intensive academic English program in Japan, was intended to explore whether reading rates and related reading skills might improve while…

This study investigates L2 reading speed of developing readers. While L2 reading speed has been a topic of research, almost all studies to date investigate L2 adult learners and do not take into consideration samples of middle school students in the earlier stages of L2 development. Using data from a sample of 124 German eighth-graders, who range…

Reading engagement is crucial to motivating EFL learners in reading classes. Recent research has attempted to explore the effect of affective engagement on reading comprehension, but there exists little empirical research regarding the effect of a text-driven approach to task design and development that draws on second language acquisition…

Developing second/foreign language (L2) comprehension skills can represent a challenging endeavor for learners with autism spectrum condition (ASC) because their social and verbal cognition may be impaired in terms of abstract reasoning, organizing, and retelling events, inferring intentions, and identifying emotions contained in a text. Thus, it…

Analysis of the different methods of teaching English has become increasingly important as the subject of global Englishes receives greater attention. In Asia, more educators have been using textbooks that are culturally specific in their design; however, a limited number of studies have been conducted that demonstrate their practical efficacy.…

This study investigates 62 EFL young adults' vocabulary learning rates immediately after reading ten graded readers, and their vocabulary decay rates after a three-month period. The participants were divided into two relative levels: higher (n = 31) and lower (n = 31). One hundred target words were semi-randomly selected from the reading texts and…

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…

Although the number of emergent bilinguals (EBs), also known as English language learners (ELLs) in U.S. K-12 schools is growing at an increasing rate, K-12 mainstream teachers remain predominantly white and monolingual and receive little training for working with such learners. In addition, many states mandate "English-only" policies…

This study investigated perceptions of a class of 20 first-year Japanese college students on peer questioning in cooperative reading activities. After the instructor gave an hour of interactive explanations of the reading, in which students were encouraged to interact actively with the instructor in interpreting the reading material, students were…