Recent studies have shown that fluent reading of word lists requires additional skills beyond efficient recognition of individual words. This study examined the specific contribution of between-word processing (sequential processing efficiency, indexed by serial digit RAN) and subskills related to text-level processing (vocabulary and syntactic…

Background: Executive function (EF) is significantly associated with reading comprehension outcomes, yet the interaction between EF and critical language skills (including vocabulary, morphological awareness (MA) and syntactic knowledge), across these levels of reading comprehension (literal, inferential and evaluative comprehension) has rarely…

Purpose: To date, research on effects of prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) has focused on a broad range of cognitive impairments, but relatively few studies have examined effects of PAE on development of reading skills. Although PAE has been linked to poorer reading comprehension, it remains unclear whether this impairment is attributable to…

This study discusses the role of stylistic analysis in the development of critical language awareness (CLA) which is crucial for assessing ideologies transmitted in discourse. The Critical Stylistic approach is used to compare narrative strategies in fiction and non-fiction: in Ishiguro's novel "The Buried Giant" (2015) and in Wolff's…

Fourth graders who were good readers (N=95) and poor readers (N=27) were given tests of syntactic competence, vocabulary, and auditory and reading comprehension. Scores on the auditory and reading comprehension tests were significantly correlated. Poor readers performed significantly poorer on the syntactic test, but results did not support the…

In three experiments, the meaning of the textual materials was held constant while structural (surface) variables, such as vocabulary, syntax, and signals about idea importance, were manipulated. Findings in all cases indicated that aspects of the surface structure of text made demands on the reader's cognitive processing capacity. (Author/GK)

Simplification of text as a pedagogical technique in second language instruction implies: (1) the selection of a restricted set of features from the full range of foreign language resources (linguistic simplification) and/or (2) the rearrangement of content of foreign language messages (content simplification) for purposes of instructional…

Analysis of several texts simplified to teach reading comprehension to college second language students shows that simplification affects both textual cohesion and coherence. Moreover, simplification restricts the amount of significant semantic information and creates a more transparent pattern of reference. The use of cohesive conjunctions varies…

Nassaji and Geva (1999) concluded that lower level processes, particularly efficiency in phonological and orthographic processing contributed significantly to individual differences in adult ESL reading. Moreover, they reported that speed of letter naming, while not directly associated with reading comprehension, was related to linguistic…

A study applied Relevance Theory to interpretation of texts written in Ghanaian English, particularly those intended for reading by multiple audiences. The nature of such "hybrid" texts is examined and key principles of Relevance Theory are outlined. Relevance is defined in terms of contextual effect and processing effort. Contextual…

Forty bilingual Ss were tested in four experiments to see if decoding of linguistically mixed texts with one-word substitutions in the other language would take more time than decoding of unilingual material. The overall aim was to further explore the nature of the language switch mechanism as it functions in input. In the first experiment,…

Television is of limited value to hearing-impaired children, who cannot benefit from the soundtrack. Traditional caption writing techniques, which involve editing of the audio track, have been based primarily on the captioner's empirical knowledge and intuition and aim the captions at a presumed average language and reading ability of the target…

Papers on French linguistics, most in French, address the following topics: micro structural treatment of regionalisms in three French dictionaries; effects of the use of Quebec French on the intelligibility of synthesized speech; reading comprehension as a constructive process; acoustic markers of the utterance in Quebec French; constraints and…