This study explores the differential effects of medium of delivery of aural input during listening tasks on learners noticing and type of comprehension (top-down and bottom-up) of Spanish object pronouns during focus on form listening tasks. Twenty-two college students enrolled in second year Spanish in a technology-enhanced classroom participated…

The present study aimed at exploring the effectiveness of using explicit language learning strategy-based instruction in developing secondary school students' EFL listening comprehension skills. It was hypothesized that using explicit strategy-based instruction would develop students' EFL listening comprehension skill and its sub-skills. The…

This study used an alternating treatment design to examine the use of a listening reading comprehension intervention package. This package was implemented in English as well as bilingually (on alternating days). This package was applied to four participants who were English Language Learners, were diagnosed with a severe intellectual delay, and…

Reading is a complex process involving numerous skills and abilities contributing to acquiring meaning from text. Individuals without the requisite reading skills will have difficulty not only in school but throughout their lifetimes. The purpose of the study was to compare the reading ability of incoming college freshmen with that of adults with…

The goal of this study was to explain individual differences in both native and non-native listening comprehension; 121 native and 113 non-native speakers of Dutch were tested on various linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive skills thought to underlie listening comprehension. Structural equation modeling was used to identify the predictors of…

Purpose: The authors assessed adult selective auditory attention to determine effects of (a) differences between the vocal/speaking characteristics of different mixed-gender pairs of masking talkers and (b) the rhythmic structure of the language of the competing speech. Method: Reception thresholds for English sentences were measured for 50…

The researchers investigated the effects of listening to expository text on the listening comprehension and book choice of 77 first-grade students. Two intact classes of experimental children heard expository read-alouds over four weeks while two intact classes of 40 controls received no intervention and followed their teacher's normal read-aloud…

This study examines whether unfamiliar proper names affect English as a second language (ESL) learners' listening comprehension. A total of 110 intermediate to advanced ESL learners participated; comprehension of a short news text was tested under two conditions, Names Known (all proper names pre-taught in advance) and Names Unknown (all proper…

Many empirical studies carried out to test the three major functions of the Comprehensible Output Hypothesis proposed by Swain lend some support to the Hypothesis in one way or another. This study aims to investigate whether giving the Chinese EFL learners an opportunity for oral output encourages them to notice their linguistic problems in oral…

This research compared the effect of using dictogloss and dicto-phrase tasks on EFL learners' listening comprehension. To fulfill the purpose of the study, a piloted sample Key English Test (KET) was administered to a total number of 90 Iranian female teenage EFL learners at Kish Language School, Tehran, and then 60 were selected based on their…

The simple view of reading posits that reading comprehension can be decomposed into a print-specific component (concerning decoding and sight word reading) and a language comprehension component (concerning verbal and metalinguistic skills not related to print). One might properly consider lexical skills, indexed by vocabulary measures, part of…

We examined data from an 18-week kindergarten vocabulary intervention study to determine whether treatment outcomes had differential effects that favored English language learners (ELLs) or English-only learners (EOLs) and whether the relationship between initial English general receptive vocabulary knowledge and response to vocabulary…

Differential item functioning (DIF) analysis is a way of determining whether test items function differently across subgroups of test takers after controlling for ability level. DIF results are used to evaluate tests' validity arguments. This study uses Rasch measurement to examine the Michigan English Language Assessment Battery listening test…

This article seeks to develop the research agenda of multilingualism and multicompetence by bringing together three research fields and their related methodologies: bilingualism, third language acquisition and language learner strategies. After a brief introduction to each area, it describes a study to explore whether bilingual adolescent students…

Changing the order of items between alternate test forms to prevent copying and to enhance test security is a common practice in achievement testing. However, these changes in item order may affect item and test characteristics. Several procedures have been proposed for studying these item-order effects. The present study explores the use of…