We investigated the word-reading development of adult second-language learners of English. A sample of 70 (Mandarin or Cantonese) Chinese-speaking students enrolled in a university-level English bridging program at a Canadian university silently read passages of text at the beginning and end of the program while their eye movements were recorded.…

Recent developments in English language teaching and learning have heightened the need for the use of tasks to foster second language (L2) learning. Central to task-based interaction is the repetition of the same task. Task repetition (TR) stimulates cognitive skills for speech learning and functionality. It has been emphasised in research and…

An auditory lexical decision experiment was conducted to find out whether sound-to-spelling consistency has an impact on German spoken word processing, and whether such an impact is different at different stages of reading development. Four groups of readers (school children in the second, third and fifth grades, and university students)…

In this chapter, we describe several intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) designed to support student literacy through reading comprehension and writing instruction and practice. Although adaptive instruction can be a powerful tool in the literacy domain, developing these technologies poses significant challenges. For example, evaluating the…

Compared with reading, writing and listening, there has been a paucity of empirical data documenting learners' experiences of speaking English as a second language (ESL) or English as a foreign language (EFL) in different learning contexts in spite of the fact that developing the ability to speak in a second or foreign language is widely…

Two experiments investigated the relationship between masked form priming and individual differences in reading and spelling proficiency among university students. Experiment 1 assessed neighbor priming for 4-letter word targets from high- and low-density neighborhoods in 97 university students. The overall results replicated previous evidence of…

"QuickAssist," the program presented in this paper, uses natural language processing (NLP) technologies. It places a range of NLP tools at the disposal of learners, intended to enable them to independently read and comprehend a German text of their choice while they extend their vocabulary, learn about different uses of particular words,…

The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between spelling knowledge and reading skills among a group of 16 intermediate-level Arab learners of English as a second language (ESL) and a corresponding comparison group of 21 intermediate-level ESL learners in an English for academic purposes (EAP) program. A spelling task was used…

The 10th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2017) is held under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society at the Optics Velley Kingdom Plaza Hotel, Wuhan, Hubei Province, in China. This years conference features two invited talks by: Dr. Jie Tang, Associate Professor with the Department of Computer…

Five experiments were conducted on the ways that college students processed ambiguous words in sentences. Two classes of ambiguous words (noun-noun and noun-verb) and two types of context (priming and nonpriming) were investigated using a variable stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) priming paradigm. Noun-noun ambiguities consisted of two semantically…

Highly skilled and less skilled college readers (n=29) were compared on several information-processing and language-comprehension tasks that tap cognitive components of reading. Results confirm that both areas distinguish skilled and less skilled readers and suggest that reading ability is a continuous function. (SLD)

This study examined the summarizing skills of university students and developed from their protocols a scale for coding replications and distortions of the original. Findings indicate that underprepared students omit more main ideas and include more sentence-level reproductions than mainstreamed students. Data indicated no other significant…

In this study, the author elucidated whether reading experience continues to contribute to word recognition skills in readers with well-internalized reading skills. The participants performed consecutive same or different judgments regarding the identicalness of letters, words, and pseudohomophones. For a more detailed examination of how increased…

The role of grammatical knowledge in second language (L2) lexical processing is far from clear. Providing evidence from a recent introspective study, this paper seeks to demonstrate the significant contribution that such knowledge can make to inferring the meanings of unfamiliar words while reading, and to possible consequent acquisition of L2…

Sixteen third grade students, 16 college students, and 16 older adults performed a lexical decision (word-nonword) task to determine age-related differences in the magnitude of contextual priming effects. Context length and target quality (intact versus degraded) were within subject manipulations. A significant Age X Context Length X…