For elementary learners of Japanese, one of the main difficulties in reading is to distinguish words written in kana. This paper reports on a survey of elementary level learners with two different levels of proficiency to investigate the effectiveness of Japanese graded readers with parts of speech color-coded to distinguish nouns, verbs,…

The present study was focused on acquisition of Chinese relative clauses (RCs) by second language (L2) learners and whether this acquisition was influenced by RC linguistic features, learners' Chinese proficiency levels, and their first language (L1). Data were gathered via a Chinese reading comprehension test, a grammaticality judgment task, a…

Second language (L2) writing has been determined to be influenced by what is read, with language learners tending to borrow words and short phrases from input texts while writing (e.g., Wang & Wang, 2015). This phenomenon is referred to as lexical alignment. Only one empirical study has investigated the influence that the linguistic complexity…

Children learning English as an additional language (EAL) are a growing population of learners in English primary schools. These children begin school with differing levels of English language proficiency and tend to underperform in relation to their non-EAL peers on measures of English oral language and reading. However, little work has examined…

The present study investigates the effects of extensive reading on developing the language knowledge and reading abilities of high school learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) over the course of one school year. Participants were divided into control (n = 205) and experimental groups (n = 200), with the former receiving regular grammar…

This study investigated whether transfer from L2 to L1 in reading occurs, and if so, which reading sub-skills are transferred into L1 reading. The aim is to identify the role of second language reading skills in L1 reading skills by means of transfer. In addition, the positive effects of the second language transfer to the first language in the…

The present study used the mixed Rasch model (MRM) to identify subgroups of readers within a sample of students taking an EFL reading comprehension test. Six hundred and two (602) Chinese college students took a reading test and a lexico-grammatical knowledge test and completed a Metacognitive and Cognitive Strategy Use Questionnaire (MCSUQ)…

Adults demonstrate difficulty and pronounced variability when developing second language (L2) grammatical knowledge and reading skills. We examine explanations in terms of individual differences in working memory (WM). Despite numerous studies, the association between WM and adult second language (L2) acquisition remains unclear, and longitudinal…

This study investigated the relationship between elementary classroom (N = 50) reading activities in Year 1 and reading performance (i.e., passage comprehension, letter-word identification, and word attack) 1 year later for English language learners (ELLs; N = 270). A cross-classification hierarchical model indicated that compared to other reading…

This study aimed at investigating the impact of extensive reading on improving reading proficiency. The study tried to find the effect of ER on EFL student's reading, vocabulary and grammar. The researcher designed two instruments; a program based on the extensive reading strategy and general test. Forty-one university students who study English…

The present study examines how glossing of second language (L2) texts affects L2 learners' reading comprehension as well as their learning of L2 grammar and vocabulary. It employed a pretest, immediate posttest, and delayed posttest design with two treatment sessions. The target features were English unaccusativity and 10 pseudo-word items.…

Three approaches of validation enquiry were applied on the data obtained from a proficiency test carried out with 3,398 PhD candidates as a partial requirement for entering PhD program in Iran. The data obtained from the reading section were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The EFA yielded nine factors in the reading section.…

Recently ELT has witnessed the debate between the proponents of non-interventionist and interventionist views towards SLA. The former, also known as zero option, sees L2 acquisition as an incidental process leaving no role for instruction (Krashen, 1981; Prbhu, 1987), while the latter considers instruction effective and even crucial for some…