The purpose of this study was to compare the functioning of five restrictive CDMs, including DINA, DINO, A-CDM, LLM, and RRUM, against the G-DINA model to identify the best-fitting CDM which can better explain the interaction underlying the attributes of the reading comprehension section of an Iranian high-stakes language proficiency test. To this…

Literacy is a term generally used for adults and young people. Basically, it is an acquisition that includes the process of reading, writing and understanding symbols in any language. While this concept, whose definition and scope has expanded over time, refers to people who can only say their names in the past, today it refers to individuals who…

Estimating the difficulty of reading tests is critical in second language education and assessment. This study was aimed at examining various text features that might influence the difficulty level of a high-stakes reading comprehension test and predict test takers' scores. To this end, the responses provided by 17,900 test takers on the reading…

In this project, 54 Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners (16 to 21 years) participated in 15 sessions in which they were asked to read and study books from a structured series of L2 reading materials. Half the students studied with relatively easy materials ('i - 1'), that is, materials rated as being below their competency level. The others…

Rasch testlet and bifactor models are two measurement models that could deal with local item dependency (LID) in assessing the dimensionality of reading comprehension testlets. This study aimed to apply the measurement models to real item response data of the Iranian EFL reading comprehension tests and compare the validity of the bifactor models…

This study investigated the effects of different text difficulty levels on Iranian EFL learners' foreign language reading motivation and reading comprehension. To fulfil this objective, 40 Iranian participants were selected among 50 students based on the results of Interchange Placement Test (Richards et al, Placement and Evaluation Package…

Considering the vital role of comprehensible input, this study attempted to compare the effects of input with various difficulty levels on Iranian EFL learners' reading comprehension and reading motivation. To fulfil this objective, 54 Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners were selected from two intact classes (n = 27 each). The selected…

In many reading comprehension tests, different test formats are employed. Two commonly used test formats to measure reading comprehension are sustained passages followed by some questions and cloze items. Individual differences in handling test format peculiarities could constitute a source of score variance. In this study, a bifactor Rasch model…

This study aimed to examine the effects of different text difficulty levels on foreign language reading anxiety (FLRA) and reading comprehension of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. To this end, 50 elementary EFL learners were selected from two intact classes (n = 25 each). Each class was assigned to a text difficulty level (i.e.,…

The present study examined the effect of L1 domain-relevant knowledge on L2 reading comprehension texts among student teachers of ELT (N = 90), drawn from a population of 270 student teachers studying at an undergraduate program in some state universities in Iran. A proficiency test was applied to control language proficiency of students. Among…

Given the deficiencies of readability formulae as reliable tools for measuring text readability in educational settings, this study aims to offer a new measure to improve the current methods of testing the readability levels of texts through the incorporation of the newly-developed concept of emotioncy. To this end, a group of 221 students were…

Derived from Vygotsky's works, dynamic assessment (DA) enables learners to move beyond their current level of functioning through offering needs-sensitized mediation. This study aimed at exploring the learners' development in novel and increasingly more challenging situations called transcendence (TR) in an L2 context focusing on reading…

In recent years, gloss presentation format or the location where a gloss appears with respect to its related target word has received renewed attention. Research suggested that different gloss presentation formats could have differential effects on reading comprehension and/or vocabulary learning. This study hypothesized that the effectiveness of…

This study was framed in the sociocultural theory to look into the evolution of L2 learners' beliefs about the general English course during a term. One hundred ninety-eight male and female university students and their general English course teacher were randomly selected as the participants of the study. Data were gathered through the…

The aim of this research was to probed whether using supplementary readings (short stories containing idioms) increase conceptual fluency of L2 learners. In line with the goal of the study, first, the researcher selected a sample of 30 female lower-intermediate L2 learners from Sadr Private Language Centre in Isfahan. She selected them based on…