This study examines the impact of authentic versus modified text on L2 Turkish learners' reading comprehension. A total of 230 B1-level Turkish language learners were randomly divided into two groups: one reading a modified text (n = 115) and the other an authentic text (n = 115). Both groups completed a surface-level reading comprehension test.…

The present study is a partial replication of the most widely cited study of lexical coverage and reading comprehension by Hu and Nation (2000). Ninety-four advanced L2 learners read a short story at one of 90%, 95%, 98%, and 100% lexical coverage and then completed a 14-item reading comprehension test. The results showed that although…

This study examined the impact of extensive reading (ER) on Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) among advanced-level Chinese EFL learners, the interplay between reading enjoyment and material difficulty, and the challenges and strategies related to online ER. The following research questions are addressed: (a) what are the effects of a semester-long…

Challenges in reading Chinese as a foreign language involve the large proportion of two-character compound words which have complex intra-word morphological structures and scriptal distance between learner's native language (L1) and Chinese as a second or foreign language. This study extended a previous investigation on the processing of Chinese…

Although proponents of extensive reading (ER) have recommended easy reading material, book difficulty has been poorly defined and operationalized in previous studies. The present study argues for the use of perceived text difficulty for operationalizing book difficulty based on empirical findings (Holster et al., 2017), reading purposes in ER, and…

When learners can comprehend 98% or more of the tokens within a text, the lexical difficulty of the text is unlikely to inhibit reading comprehension (Schmitt et al., 2011). This phenomenon will be referred to as the Coverage Comprehension Model (CCM). The CCM is present in countless articles that describe the percentage of tokens necessary to…

The study investigates the effect of the perception of text and task difficulty on adults' performance in reading tests in L1 and L2. The relationship between the following variables is studied: (a) readers' perception of text and task difficulty in L1 and L2 measured in a self-reported post-task questionnaire, (b) the number of correct answers to…

The incidental or implicit learning of vocabulary has long been a topic of interest in various disciplines. In studies on foreign language acquisition, reading is often the activity that researchers use to generate their findings. "Reading in a Foreign Language" has maintained its position at the forefront of this research, consistently…

This study investigates the effects of the text difficulty of extensive reading materials on the reading comprehension and reading motivation of English as a foreign language (EFL) vocational high school students in Taiwan. Two experimental groups were assigned, on an individual basis, to read graded readers at either one level below ('i-1') or…

This study examined the effects of relevance instructions on English as a foreign language (EFL) readers' text processing and memories. The participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: the experimental condition, where they read texts to identify a specific category of information, and the control condition, where they read texts…

The present study investigated the applicability of word reading, word segmentation, and text reading as diagnostic tools to assess comprehension, detect struggling readers, and inform instruction for low-level Chinese as second language (L2) learners (n = 70). The results showed that the three instruments measured different dimensions of word…

Nation (2014) concluded that most of the vocabulary one needs to read challenging texts in English can be acquired incidentally through voluminous reading. This study examines possible texts that second language (L2) readers can use to move from controlled-vocabulary materials such as graded readers, which go up through approximately the…

This study aimed to examine the effects of different text difficulty levels on foreign language reading anxiety (FLRA) and reading comprehension of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. To this end, 50 elementary EFL learners were selected from two intact classes (n = 25 each). Each class was assigned to a text difficulty level (i.e.,…

The author really enjoyed reading the study by Cheng and Good (2009). The results of their study seem especially interesting from the point of view of reading comprehension. Indeed, their results mirror to some degree Joyce's (1997) study, in which glossing actually had a somewhat negative effect on third semester second language (L2) readers'…

Publishing graded readers is big business, but there is evidence that the texts themselves are not being read in sufficient quantity to improve language proficiency. This article reports on a study of graded readers, focusing on interviews with some major publishers of graded readers, to investigate their production rationales. The findings…