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.…

The knowledge relating to the effect of learning a second language (L2) on the mother tongue (L1) is relatively limited. Most studies focused on linguistic and reading skills, but we did not find studies relating to handwriting performance. Our study focused on the transfer effect of handwriting performance from Hebrew L2 to Arabic L1. The sample…

This descriptive qualitative research aims to describe the selection and usage of English for Islamic studies material based on Islamic character values. It was conducted at English for Islamic studies class followed by the students of "Akhwal As Syakhsiyyah" Department, IAIN Pontianak. The results showed that the lecturer chose internet…

Standards of coherence are one of the major factors that influence reading comprehension. This study investigated the standards of coherence that second language (L2) learners employ when reading. In a pair of experiments, Japanese learners of English read two-sentence texts with varying causal and semantic relatedness between sentences and then…

This study is a quantitative, quasi-experimental investigation focusing on the effects of word recognition training on word recognition fluency, reading speed, and reading comprehension for 151 Japanese university students at a lower-intermediate reading proficiency level. Four treatment groups were given training in orthographic, phonological,…

Developing reading skills in a second language presents learners with many challenges, including lexico-grammatical decoding. An additional challenge is posed by the different registers of written text and the associated lexico-grammatical features with which learners must contend. Questioning the efficacy of using non-academic reading texts in…

Tests empirically the model of second-language reading proficiency promoted by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). Reader developmental levels are not consistent with the ACTFL hierarchy of text types and reading skills. Graphs compare hypothesized and obtainable results. (LMO)

Investigates the degree to which potential users of language reading proficiency scales acquire the standard for accurately grading reading passages of foreign-language learners. A five-day workshop helped users of the guidelines rank reading passages for levels of difficulty and rate them accurate according to the ACTFL scales. (Author/CB)

For its 53rd annual meeting, the Association of Educators and Researchers met in Charlotte, North Carolina at the Marriott Charlotte City Center. This year's conference theme was "Building Literacy Communities", which was also used as the title for this year's Yearbook, Volume 32. This organization has long been the home of some of the nation's…

Ten papers from the 1988 Finnish Association of Applied Linguistics (AFinLA) Symposium are presented in this collection. All but two of the papers are in Finnish. Papers and authors are as follows: "Learning to Read: Process and Problems in Acquisition" (E. Bialystok--in English); "When Experts Write for Students: Familiar Concepts in Weird Texts"…

This paper is the fourth in a series of studies focusing on the problems that Israeli students encounter in reading technical texts in English. This study deals with non-native students' understanding of what they read and on how their understanding compares with that of natives. Also being tested is a method for investigating students'…