Adopted innovative methodologies in teaching reading comprehension have been a topic of interest by reading scholars among which textual awareness raising seems to be effective in the reading classroom. Following this, the present study looked into the effect of reading instruction by raising the students' awareness of different expository text…

The difficulties with developing high-order reading comprehension skills negatively impact academic success across fields. The current study investigated whether the text structure strategy instruction, delivered through the Intelligent Tutoring of Structure Strategy (ITSS) to adult English learners as a foreign language (EFL), can improve reading…

This study investigated the impact of conversational agent formality on the quality of summaries and formality of written summaries during the training session and on posttest in a trialog-based intelligent tutoring system (ITS). During training, participants learned summarization strategies with the guidance of conversational agents who spoke one…

Purpose: This study aims to examine the writing outcomes of 6th-grade students learning English as a second language. Design/methodology/approach: In all 45 students in a text structure instruction (TSI) group were compared with 45 students in a self-regulated strategy instruction (SRSI) group and 43 students receiving traditional writing…

Despite a plethora of research on the utility of drama in the foreign language classroom (e.g., Boudreault, 2010; Gorjian, Moosavinia, & Jabripour, 2010; Zafeiriadou, 2009; Ziltener, 2011), less research addresses its effect on skill development (e.g., Al-Rabadi & Bataineh, 2015; Bataineh, Al-Rabadi, & Smadi, 2013). This study examines…

This article introduces a pedagogical intervention that includes a set of creative activities designed to improve the oral and written production of students in the English classroom, especially those who have shown a lack of interest or attention. It was observed that participants initially seemed careless about studying the language. Eventually…

It is argued that tasks with different structures yield different performances in terms of accuracy, fluency and complexity. The present study is thus an attempt to investigate the impact of task structure on second language task performance. Thirty two upper-intermediate Iranian learners of English performed two narrative tasks (Structured vs.…

Rhetorical structure refers to a complex network of relationships and the way the underlying ideas are organized within a text. This study was conducted to see whether explicit instruction of descriptive and causative text organization positively affected L3 reading recall. 240 Turkish students of EFL who had Persian as their second language were…

As an instructional tool, graphic organizers (GOs) have been highly recommended and used in contemporary classrooms. Over the past decade, a number of concerns have been raised about claims for the effectiveness of GOs. These concerns involve the inconsistent research results on student improvements, the limitation in generalizability from…

Today, English language learners (ELLs) represent an increasing proportion of U.S. middle and high school enrollment. As a result, mainstream content-area teachers are more likely than ever to have ELLs in their classrooms. At the same time, education policymakers and researchers are increasingly calling for improved academic literacy development…