This article reports the findings of a study that investigated the role of graphic novels in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) to International Baccalaureate students (aged 15-16) in TED Ankara College Foundation Private High School. Two intact 10th grade classes were randomly assigned to the control and experimental groups who studied…

We tested the effects of teaching reading skills through U.S. History content for 38 eighth-grade poor readers whose reading ability ranged from 2nd to 4th grade levels. Half of the students received special education services and half of the students were English Language Learners. Students were taught to decode multisyllabic words, learn…

Nowadays, preparing learners to communicate successfully in language classes is of utmost importance. But teachers face a lot of difficulties in teaching English in EFL contexts. One of the major problems is students' unwillingness to take part in reading classes. Reading classes seem boring for students who find no occasion to show their ability…

Candidates in teacher education programs who are training to become secondary education content area teachers are required in most programs to enroll in a class dealing with teaching reading in the content areas. A number of these candidates reluctantly attend these courses and question the appropriateness of the content they are required to…

"Research in the Teaching of English" (RTE) is the flagship research journal of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in the United States. It is a broad-based, multidisciplinary journal composed of original research articles and short scholarly essays on a wide range of topics significant to those concerned with the…

The main purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the Reading Apprenticeship professional development program on several teacher and student outcomes, including effects on student learning. A key part of the study was the use of an enhanced performance assessment program, the Integrated Learning Assessment (ILA), to measure student…

Educational practices are needed to promote strong vocabulary growth so that vocabulary can be both the cause and result of successful reading. Vocabulary interventions need to begin early and continue for a sustained period of time (Beck & McKeown, 2007a; Biemiller, 2003; Foorman, Seals, Anthony & Pollard-Durodola, 2003). According to theoretical…

Constrained skills theory is a reconceptualization of reading development that suggests a continuum of skills, with some, such as letter knowledge and decoding abilities, more tightly constrained than others, such as phonological awareness and oral reading fluency. The most constrained skills consist of a limited number of items and thus can be…

This study analyzed the effects of the implementation of the readers' workshop on students' reading levels and comprehension skills in a first-grade, mixed-ability classroom in Lebanon. The instruments used at the beginning were running records and reading continuums, and at the end of the academic year, teachers' professional notebooks and notes…

The purpose of this study was to examine how fourth-grade Spanish-English speaking bilingual students in the USA participated differently in English-as-a-second-language (ESL) literature groups when they were invited to use all of their linguistic resources vs. when they were restricted to communicate in English only. The theoretical underpinning…

This study examined the effectiveness of explicit instruction of metacognitive strategies over a 14-week semester with a group of 40 EFL learners at a private university in Thailand. A metacognitive questionnaire and a reading test were administered at the beginning and at the end of the course to find the changes in both the questionnaire…

It has been hypothesized that students with low self-efficacy will struggle with complex reading tasks in assessment situations. In this study we examined whether perceived reading self-efficacy and reading task value uniquely predicted reading comprehension scores in two different item formats in a sample of fifth-grade students. Results showed…

Cooperative learning is a process through which students with various abilities, gender, nationalities and different level of social skills carry out their learning process by working in small groups and helping each other. Cooperative learning is a pedagogical use of small groups which enable students to maximize both their own and others'…

Cloze testing is a widely-used procedure to test learners' reading comprehension in learning a language, but little is known if it can really improve learners' reading comprehension skills. This paper attempts to seek answers to this question by comparing the cloze test scores of two groups of students (Experimental versus Control) undertaking…

The Matthew effect is often used as a metaphor to describe a widening gap between good and poor readers over time. In this study we examined the development of individual differences in reading and cognitive functioning in children with reading difficulties and normal readers from Grades 1 to 3. Matthew effects were observed for individual…