This study examined the effects of relevance instructions on English as a foreign language (EFL) readers' text processing and memories. The participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: the experimental condition, where they read texts to identify a specific category of information, and the control condition, where they read texts…

Graded reading is one of the important ways of English learning. How to automatically judge and grade the difficulty of the English reading corpus is of great significance for precision teaching and personalized learning. However, the current rule-based readability assessment methods have some limitations, such as low efficiency and poor accuracy.…

Extensive Reading (ER) emerges as a promising approach for acquiring a foreign language, allowing for a large amount of language exposure. However, the influence of supplementary activities within ER programs has yet to be thoroughly investigated, despite previous studies suggesting their potential effectiveness. This research investigated the…

Textbooks, which have a very important place in educational activities, are also a widely used material in teaching Turkish to foreigners. Therefore, the texts in these textbooks play an effective role in learning. For this reason, it is very important to determine the readability levels of Turkish teaching textbooks for foreigners. The aim of…

This study investigated what features undergraduate EFL learners perceive as affecting the difficulty of model paragraphs. Four hundred and seventy-five Vietnamese undergraduates participated in a partial least squares structural equation model design. They ranked five paragraphs from easiest to most difficult and responded to a 10-point Likert…

Typical print formatting provides no information regarding the linguistic features of a text, although texts vary considerably with respect to grammatical complexity and readability. Complex texts may be particularly challenging for individuals with weak language knowledge, such as English language learners. This paper investigates the usefulness…

The aim of this experiment was to investigate how glossing influences second language (L2) reading comprehension in relation to text difficulty and the two local and global meaning representations. Fifty-eight undergraduate students were asked to read three easy, moderate, and difficult texts and, following each passage, answer twenty…

Extensive reading is an approach to language learning that encourages learners to read a large quantity of easy reading material. A substantial body of research confirms the effectiveness of this approach for developing proficiency in both first (L1) and second (L2) languages. This paper explains what extensive reading is, why it is important, and…

This study reports the perceptions and understanding of extensive reading (ER) of 259 ER practitioners in Japan, Thailand, Mongolia, and Vietnam. The majority of participants understood the core principles of ER, namely (a) the fluent reading of (b) a lot of (c) easy texts. However, about 25% of the participants in Thailand, Mongolia, and Vietnam…

The present study investigates whether textual enhancement had any effects on grammar learning (tag questions) and reading comprehension, and whether the types of tag question contributed to the benefits of textual enhancement. The study employed a pretest--posttest design with three treatment sessions. The target forms were English tag questions,…

The importance of input on language learning cannot be overstated. One method of providing input to learners at a level that is appropriate for them is called extensive reading, in which learners read an abundance of texts. In practice, for learners of English as a second or foreign language, these texts are often books that have been written and…

How can we identify authentic reading material that matches the learner's proficiency and fosters their language development? Traditionally, this involves assigning a one-dimensional label to the text that identifies the grade or proficiency level of the learners that the text is intended for. Such an approach is inadequate given that both the…

With the increasing popularity of computer-assisted language learning in the past decades, how to teach English reading in the new educational landscape created has become a challenge. Abundant literature has contributed to reading strategy instruction worldwide, however, empirical studies on computer-aided schema strategy training for Chinese…

Despite empirical evidence from research showing that the use of text-picture combination is beneficial for second language (L2) learning, little is known about the effectiveness of reading comic books for incidental vocabulary acquisition. This study investigated the effects of engaging with comic books on incidental learning of L2 Italian…

This paper presents a novel methodology to determine textbook readability. The method mainly relies on students' lexical coverage to determine the readability level of textbooks, taking into consideration that readability depends primarily on vocabulary knowledge and that it is a function of lexical coverage in teaching English as a Foreign…