The purpose of the study was to identify factors related to reading comprehension, and to compare similarities and differences in the reading processes of deaf and hearing adults. The sample included four groups, each consisting of 15 adults. The groups were identified as (a) deaf high-achieving readers, (b) deaf low-achieving readers, (c) hearing…

There are many questions about how EFL learners infer word meanings from context and what distinguishes successful from less successful inferencers. This study explored the lexical inferencing strategies used by EFL learners and the characteristics which distinguish successful from less successful inferencers. To this end, 15 EFL students in an…

Comparisons of literary experts and novices indicate that experts engage in interpretive processes to "get the point" during their reading of literary texts but novices do not. In two studies the reading and interpretive processes of literary novices (undergraduates with no formal training in literature study) were elicited through…

Three experiments examined whether the process of lexical inferences differs according to the direction of contextual elaboration using a semantic relatedness judgment task. In Experiment 1, Japanese university students read English sentences where target unknown words were semantically elaborated by prior contextual information (forward lexical…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the type, pattern, and complexity of Internet reading strategies used by seven accomplished high school readers. Individual participants performed an academic Internet reading task with the goal of developing critical questions about their chosen controversial topic. Strategies for Internet reading were…

Recently, reading researchers have come to assume that the ability to synthesize units of information across multiple texts on a topic by comparing, contrasting, synthesizing, integrating, and building a mental representation of them--referred to as multiple-documents literacy--is a far more required literacy in the present knowledge societies…

This study investigated the relationship between task-induced involvement load and ESL learners' inferencing and learning word meanings from context. Thirty-two ESL learners were randomly assigned to one of three groups, with each group receiving a different version of a text that was assumed to differ from one another in terms of the degree of…

In recent years the study of second language (L2) vocabulary learning through reading has attracted much attention in the field of L2 acquisition. A specific area that has received wide interest is the examination of the processes involved in deriving word meanings from context. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationships…

State tests, which assess reading comprehension, ask students to make inferences and connections beyond the text. The problem of practice in which this study is situated is that students are having difficulty making meaningful connections and developing inferences in relation to the material that is read aloud together in class or assigned for…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) and other recent changes in federal legislation have placed greater emphasis on accountability in large-scale testing. Included in this emphasis are regulations that require assessments to be accessible. States are accountable for the success of all students, and tests should be designed in a way that…