Second language (L2) educators have proposed a unique anxiety for general L2 learning and an anxiety specific to L2 reading. Since the early 1990s, the L2 anxiety concept has been challenged on theoretical and empirical grounds. In this investigation, U.S. high school L2 learners were administered the Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS)…

Linguistic abilities as well as home environment explain successful English as a foreign language (EFL) reading acquisition. The aim of this study was to examine the extent to which morphological derivational awareness measured in Arabic as a first language (L1) predicted EFL word recognition and reading comprehension among 66-11th grade female…

The aim of the present study was to examine the measurement invariance (MI) of the reading, mathematics, and science tests in terms of the commonly used languages. It also aimed to examine the differential item functioning (DIF) of the PISA test, the original items of which are in the languages of English and French, in terms of the language…

This study investigated the effects of auditory and audiovisual text presentation on the three levels of mental representations assumed in theories of discourse processing. A sample of 106 children aged 7, 9, and 11 years listened to 16 short narrative texts, 8 of which were accompanied by a series of pictures illustrating the content.…

Studies of interventions' impact on reading self-efficacy have been conducted since the 1980s. The purpose of this project was to conduct a systematic review of these studies because the primary studies often yielded divergent results. Included studies entailed an intervention, addressed reading specifically, and reported explicit pre- and…

The present study examined the development of mathematics skills of Kosovar primary school children in terms of their gender, living area, socio-economic status, and achievement level. A special emphasis was placed on longitudinal investigations of the development of mathematics skills in children with learning difficulties in mathematics over a…

This classroom-based case study examines how Spanish-English emergent bilingual children in a second grade one-way immersion classroom draw on prior knowledge and experiences and use comprehension strategies to discuss and comprehend three texts with different levels of cultural relevance. Through an examination of the rich range of cognitive,…

A 2014 study found that more than half of all Americans aged 16-74 do not possess the literacy skills needed to adequately cope with the demands of day-to-day life, with over 13 million people in the United States alone considered to be functionally illiterate. There have been numerous efforts to address these high illiteracy rates by way of Adult…

Reading is a major problem for most students with learning disabilities in the United Arab Emirates. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of repeated reading intervention strategy on improving oral reading fluency and reading comprehension of 47 United Arab Emirates students with learning disabilities. All participants were assigned…

This study explored differences that might exist in comprehension when students read digital and print texts. Ninety undergraduates read both digital and print versions of newspaper articles and book excerpts on topics of childhood ailments. Prior to reading texts in counterbalanced order, topic knowledge was assessed and students were asked to…

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether integrating online audiovisual materials into the listening instruction of L2 French learners would have a measurable impact on their listening comprehension development. Students from two intact sections of second-semester French were tested on their listening comprehension before and…

This study evaluated the effects of a cross-age peer learning program targeting vocabulary and comprehension in kindergarten and fourth-grade classrooms with substantial proportions of English Learners (ELs). The study followed a quasi-experimental design with 12 classrooms (6 kindergarten and 6 fourth grade) in the intervention group and 12…

Demonstrating comprehension of text is a complex skill that is an area of difficulty for many students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Shared story reading is an intervention that has a history of effectiveness in teaching literacy skills to students with extensive support needs. This study used a multiple probe across participants design to…

One crucial property of verbal jokes is that the punchline usually contains an incongruency that has to be resolved by updating the situation model representation. In the standard pragmatic model, these processes are considered to require cognitive effort. However, only few studies compared jokes to texts requiring a situation model revision…

Some music has been proved effectively to mitigate anxiety, beneficial to reading. However, little was known on its influence of reading behaviors and outcomes. Thanks to the advance of e-book technology, it becomes possible to track reading rate and outcomes in a real-time manner by the underlying mobile devices. This study intends to examine the…