iSTART is a web-based reading comprehension tutor. A recent translation of iSTART from English to Spanish has made the system available to a new audience. In this paper, we outline several challenges that arose during the development process, specifically focusing on the algorithms that drive the feedback. Several iSTART activities encourage…

School and university mathematics: Do they speak the same language? Our university mathematics students come from amongst the successful school mathematics students, but what difficulties with symbols do their lecturers and tutors observe? In this paper, we report on data from interviews with 21 first-year lecturers and tutors from four…

Carbon cycling is a key natural system that requires robust science literacy to understand how and why climate change is occurring. Studies show that students tend to compartmentalize carbon movement within plants and animals and are challenged to make sense of how carbon cycles on a global scale. Studies also show that students hold faulty models…

This qualitative case study through Retrospective Miscue Analysis (RMA) investigated the reading process of three Chinese-Mandarin-speaking college English learners (ELs) of varied English language proficiency. In the conversations that occurred during the oral reading of selected texts, the researcher explored students' perceptions about reading…

Verbal working memory resources may impact syntax comprehension. Thirteen Italian children with cochlear implants (CIs) were assessed in relative clause (RC) comprehension, digit span and nonword repetition and compared to 13 chronological age peers (CA) and 13 younger controls (LA) with normal hearing (NH). The RC comprehension task tested…

Vocabulary plays an important role in reading comprehension in both the L1 and the L2 (Murphy, 2018). In measuring vocabulary knowledge, however, researchers typically focus on mono-lexical units where vocabulary assessments tend not to take into account multi-word expressions which include phrasal verbs, collocations, and idioms. Omitting these…

This study investigated the systematic and principled teaching of foreign language (FL) literacy in two young learner classrooms in England. Over the course of 23 weeks, two classes of 9-11 year olds (N = 45) learned spoken and written language through an integrated pedagogy. The underpinning rationale was to explore principled ways of teaching FL…

Teacher knowledge of reading is an important aspect of teacher quality, though limited research has investigated its associations with how classroom teachers report using instructional strategies to engage students in reading. Factor analysis of 28 instructional strategy items led to five self-reported instructional foci among 66 kindergarten and…

This study attempted to investigate the vital role of the internet in enhancing the learning of reading. In addition, the study aimed to measure the students' attitudes towards the internet and to identify to what extent the internet was employed in their reading classes. Moreover, the study aimed to explore the challenges that they encountered…

This research sought to improve students' science reading comprehension ability and marine ecological conservation learning interest through the implementation of an inquiry-based learning course. A Triggered situational interest-Reading-Inquiry-Presentation (TRIP) model was proposed to guide the course design. The quasi-experimental design was…

The differences and similarities in the word recognition and reading comprehension skills of monoliterate Albanian-Greek (ML2), biliterate Albanian-Greek (BL2) and monolingual (L1) children in grades 3-6 were examined in two cross-sectional studies. Participants completed standardized and experimental tasks measuring cognitive, oral language and…

Studies have shown that reading comprehension is the most difficult section of the Paper-Based Test (PBT) TOEFL. Therefore, this research aimed to identify which sub-skill in reading comprehension poses the greatest challenges for the students and how this sub-skill correlates to other reading comprehension sub-skills. To achieve this purpose,…

To address the needs of middle school students who experience difficulty with reading, students are often placed in reading intervention programs to improve literacy skills. This study explores the question: in what ways do students successfully and unsuccessfully use self-initiated comprehension strategies in their efforts to engage with…

English learners with learning disabilities (LD) have well-documented difficulties comprehending text. This study examined the effects of an intensive reading intervention (Reading Intervention for Adolescents [RIA]) on reading outcomes (word reading, vocabulary, and comprehension) for ninth-grade ELs with LD (n = 85). In the RIA, students…

This pilot study explores the effectiveness of a strategy for overcoming post-primary students' misconceptions within the topic of algebra. Although central to the study of mathematics, algebra can be an area of difficulty for many students. A misconception is typically classified as flawed understanding of a concept causing repeated errors, and…