The article focuses on defining how background knowledge impacts on second-language acquisition by giving a brief overview of schema theory, the interaction of the basic modes of information processing. A challenge of dealing with culturally specific texts in second language acquisition is also touched upon. Different research-supported views on…

Despite the recognized importance of morphological knowledge to literacy outcomes such as vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, two of its subconstructs--morphological awareness and morphological processing--have received comparatively little attention. In response, the aim of the study reported here was to examine how the relationships…

An NLP algorithm was developed to assess question quality to inform feedback on questions generated by students within iSTART (an intelligent tutoring system that teaches reading strategies). A corpus of 4575 questions was coded using a four-level taxonomy. NLP indices were calculated for each question and machine learning was used to predict…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether processability theory (PT; Pienemann, 1998, 2005) accounts for the emergence of grammatical forms and structures in comprehension. Sixty-one learners of English participated in oral interviews that elicited a variety of structures relevant to PT. Learners were divided into two groups: those who…

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…

Intelligent tutoring systems for ill-defined domains, such as reading and writing, are critically needed, yet uncommon. Two such systems, the Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking (iSTART) and Writing Pal (W-Pal) use natural language processing (NLP) to assess learners' written (i.e., typed) responses and provide immediate,…

The assessment of writing proficiency generally includes analyses of the specific linguistic and rhetorical features contained in the singular essays produced by students. However, researchers have recently proposed that an individual's ability to flexibly adapt the linguistic properties of their writing might more closely capture writing skill.…

One of the special arrangements in testing contexts is to allow dyslexic students to listen to the text while they read. In our study, we investigated the effect of read-aloud assistance on young English learners' language comprehension scores. We also examined whether students with dyslexia identification benefit from this assistance differently…

The aim of this study was to investigate relations between lexical-semantic processing and two components of reading: visual word recognition and reading comprehension. Sixty-eight children from private schools in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from 7 to 12 years, were evaluated. Reading was assessed with a word/nonword reading task and a reading…

Previous evidence suggests that grammatical constraints have a rapid influence during language comprehension, particularly at the level of word categories (noun, verb, preposition). These findings are in conflict with a recent study from Angele, Laishley, Rayner, and Liversedge (2014), in which sentential fit had no early influence on word…

This study is a mixed methods analysis of reading processes and language experiences of deaf and hearing readers. The sample includes four groups each with fifteen adults--identified as: deaf/high-achieving readers, deaf/struggling/non-academic readers, hearing/high-achieving readers, and hearing/non-academic readers. The purpose of this study is…

Purpose: This clinical focus article will highlight the importance and role of morphological awareness (MA) across orthographies, in particular, the role it plays in reading development, specifically with bilingual populations. MA supports reading acquisition and development beyond other predictors of reading, such as phonological awareness,…

The present study brings together methods of extensive reading studies and eye-movement research to track the cognitive effects of exposure frequency on vocabulary processing and learning. Forty-two advanced second language learners of English read a stage 1 graded reader, "Goodbye Mr. Hollywood," on a computer screen while their eye…

Purpose: Sentence processing can be affected following a traumatic brain injury (TBI) due to linguistic or cognitive deficits. Language-related event-related potentials (ERPs), particularly the P600, have not been described in individuals with TBI history. Method: Four young adults with a history of closed head injury participated. Two had severe…

In this paper, we applied the crowdsourcing approach to develop an automated popularity summary scoring, called wild summaries. In contrast, the golden standard summaries generated by one or more experts are called expert summaries. The innovation of our study is to compute LSA (Latent Semantic Analysis) similarities between target summary and…