One of the main goals of the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) course is to facilitate the development of learners' reading comprehension and reflective skills in English, which can be developed with appropriate instruction. However, in EFL courses, many students are inactive in reflecting on their reading and are disengaged from learning. To…

Launched in late November 2022, ChatGPT, a large language model chatbot, has garnered considerable attention. However, ongoing questions remain regarding its capabilities. In this study, ChatGPT was used to complete national high school exams in the Netherlands on the topic of English reading comprehension. In late December 2022, we submitted the…

This study explored the diverse responses of Japanese university-level learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) to lexically easy short poems. These participants had attained a high level of English proficiency and were able to grasp the literal meaning of the poems. The investigation employed confidence level and reading time as…

Lexical coverage, i.e. the extent to which words in a text are known, is considered an important predictor of reading comprehension, with studies suggesting 98% lexical coverage leads to adequate comprehension. However, no studies to date have examined how the various lexical coverage percentages suggested in the literature are reflected by the…

It is often observed that many learners prefer reading texts with background music (BGM), which may enhance engagement and mood in reading. However, the impact of BGM on reading comprehension performance or process remains heterogeneous. This study examined how learners' self-provided preferred BGM affected reading comprehension accuracy and…

As classrooms worldwide become diverse, the ways teachers engage children in literacy learning must be inclusive to accommodate the multitude of languages spoken. Multimodal literacy practices using digital tools provide innovative opportunities for emergent bilinguals to express their meaning-making processes. This paper details a year-long…

This systematic review addressed the following question: Which are the relations between L1 and/or L2 foundational and upper-level language skills, cognitive skills, high-order cognitive and self-regulation factors and L2-English reading comprehension skills in 11-to-19 year EFL secondary school students with different L1 language profiles?…

The current study was set to explore the influence of the first (L1) and second (L2) language group discussions on L2 reading comprehension. It also explored two sub-elements that were considered vital to L2 reading comprehension: (a) text genre recognition and (b) character and author's intention and perspective. Participants were 21 college…

The current study examines the role of gender, socioeconomic status, and region in predicting the reading comprehension of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Based on the relevant literature, three hypotheses have been formulated, which entail three independent variables (gender, socioeconomic status, and region) and the dependent…

Reading comprehension constitutes an important part of the Chinese National Matriculation English Test (NMET) which influences English teaching practice greatly. Despite the focus of many studies on NMET reforms, content validity, and washback effects, there remains a notable gap in research regarding the genre of reading texts in NMET. Drawing on…

School-age English learners (ELs) are faced with the challenging task of acquiring a foreign language while simultaneously reading academically demanding literature. Therefore, the current research aimed to examine the relation between the rate of grammatical tense marking errors made by ELs and their performance on measures of reading…

Neural machine translators (NMTs), such as "Google Translate," may assist second language (L2) readers with general comprehension. However, previous empirical studies show mixed results regarding their effectiveness. In this study, 145 Korean English learners from a girls' high school were asked to solve three types of reading…

The concern about learners' use of reading strategies during the reading process for better reading comprehension prompted this investigation, especially at the research site where reading skills play a pivotal role in the student's overall learning process. The main aims of the study included examinations of (1) the frequency of metacognitive…

A growing number of studies have focused on uncovering linguistic and cognitive skills predictive of reading comprehension. Vocabulary knowledge (VK) and morphological awareness (MA) are two important linguistic variables for reading comprehension. In contrast, working memory (WM) is an essential cognitive variable for reading comprehension. The…

Online reading strategies have been a crucial issue in EFL learning because reading strategies are essential for students reading comprehension and the increasing penetration of information and communication technology into foreign language learning has transformed reading and current studies have shown that online text reading requires new…