This research compared the contributions of lexical inferencing, decoding, and listening comprehension to reading comprehension in Chinese-speaking learners of English as a second language (ESL) enrolled in university bridging programs in the U.S. and Chinese-speaking university learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in mainland China.…

This technical report describes the development of oral reading fluency passages for use in the CBMSkills assessment system. Seventeen passages were created for each of Grades 1 through 5. Passages were designed to target the fluency component of a developmental model of reading. All passages were written with the specification to use language and…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine student sentiments regarding high-quality vs low-quality teaching. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a text mining technique to identify the positive and negative patterns of student sentiments from student evaluations of teaching (SET) provided on Ratemyprofessors.com. After identifying…

Background knowledge is a strong predictor of reading comprehension, yet little is known about how different types of background knowledge affect comprehension. The study investigated the impacts of both domain and topic-specific background knowledge on students' ability to comprehend and learn from science texts. High school students (n = 3,650)…

In recent years, readability formulas have gained new prominence as a basis for selecting texts for learning and assessment. Variables that quantitative tools count (e.g., word frequency, sentence length) provide valid measures of text complexity insofar as they accurately predict representative and high-quality criteria. The longstanding…

Background knowledge is a strong predictor of reading comprehension; yet little is known about how different types of background knowledge affect comprehension. The study investigated the impacts of both domain and topic-specific background knowledge on students' ability to comprehend and learn from science texts. High school students (n = 3650)…

The purpose of the research was to examine the function and application of delimitations--what the researcher includes and excludes in a study--in the dissertation process. The aim was to map the delimitations process to improve research, rigor and relevance of findings, and doctoral completion rates using a formalized and standardized approach…

This study examined the effects of watching gestures and lip movement on second language (English) listening comprehension. The participants were 30 high and 22 low proficient learners of English. There were six listening tasks combining two variables: modality and difficulty. The modality consisted of three types of assessments: Body (the upper…

The strong presence of culturally relevant materials in classrooms is seen as an indicator of good teaching but the development and use of these materials is under-investigated. Similarly, the actual construction and use of culturally relevant materials for literacy assessment purposes is under-reported. This paper examines the development and…

Longitudinal research has suggested that sexual assault on college campuses is widespread and grossly underreported. To date, scholars have not examined a seemingly commonsense aspect of sexual assault reporting: the readability of the reporting instructions themselves; therefore, in this study the author examined the readability--using four…

Purpose: The readability and comprehensibility of Learner's Permit Knowledge Test practice questions and the relationship with test failure rates across states and the District of Columbia were examined. Method: Failure rates were obtained from department representatives. Practice test questions were extracted from drivers' manuals and department…

However influential the interdependence hypothesis has become in bilingual research, it still lacks full empirical support. This longitudinal study explores the parallels in the biliteracy development (L1 Spanish and L2 English) of 20 students in a European immersion programme (i.e. CLIL) over a two-year period. A bilingual learner corpus of…

Metadiscourse is a tool for writers to guide and interact with readers through texts. Yet in most student texts, one of the points lacking is the interaction between writers and readers. In this study, frequency and type of interactive and interactional metadiscourse features were explored via students' research-based essays based on Hyland's…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze the readability of Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Part B procedural safeguard documents, as distributed by each of the 50 U.S. states. Results were compared to the 5th- to 6th-grade readability guideline for documents recommended by experts in health literacy and health…

Leader self-efficacy (LSE) is a construct studied in adults and college students which is associated with leader emergence, individual performance, and group performance. However, to date, it has not been heavily examined in youth. Therefore, a five-item youth LSE scale was created which can aid in further research of this construct. This holds…