The primary aim of this study was to investigate barriers to English learning for adult immigrants residing in urban America. A secondary aim was to study the effect of baseline reading levels on immigrants' participation in English class. The study design was a survey study of a convenience sample of 1,254 immigrants living in Indianapolis,…

Background/purpose: Traditional language instruction in Saudi EFL classrooms often limits learners' exposure to authentic language, reducing communicative competence. This review article explores how corpus-based approaches, particularly using the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), can bridge this gap and foster pedagogical…

Intervention studies targeting developmental language disorder (DLD) have been conducted mainly with monolingual English-speaking children and bilingual children learning English. There is a need to explore the application of current methods to more languages. However, adapting an existing intervention to other languages can be a daunting task as…

This study provides novel and nuanced insights into the relationship between adolescents' fiction reading and their wellbeing. In total, 19 adolescents (aged 15-17-years-old) living in the UK participated in semi-structured interviews exploring three aspects of wellbeing: positive affect, connection and personal growth. In relation to positive…

State-level governments across Australia have made a commitment via public announcements to ensuring that all schools are teaching reading using 'consistent', 'compulsory', 'common practice'. Through a mixed-methods questionnaire with 51 schoolteachers from four states across Australia, this paper examines practitioner experiences of teacher…

The direction of feedback (i.e., emphasizing positive or negative aspects about the object of feedback) and students' feedback perception are major factors driving their engagement in the feedback process and motivation. Positive performance feedback tends to be more readily accepted and perceived as more useful, enhancing motivation for further…

This simulation study examines the characteristics of the Explanatory Item Response Model (EIRM) when estimating treatment effects when compared to classical test theory (CTT) sum and mean scores and item response theory (IRT)-based theta scores. Results show that the EIRM and IRT theta scores provide generally equivalent bias and false positive…

The present study examined the complex structural relationships between the factors that influence L2 writing in more and less cognitively demanding tasks. To this end, 298 10th graders were recruited from a local high school in Korea. Participants completed tasks measuring L1 and L2 writing skills, L2 reading comprehension, L2 proficiency, L2…

This study is intended on the development of the learners' reading comprehension and story analysis skills under the implementation of PowToon as an innovative instructional material for learners' development in reading comprehension and story analysis skills. This study provided various evidence on how innovation can be a great step in developing…

Education has faced unprecedented disruption during the COVID-19 pandemic; evidence about the subsequent effect on children is of crucial importance. We use data from an oral reading fluency (ORF) assessment--a rapid assessment taking only a few minutes that measures a fundamental reading skill--to examine COVID's effects on children's reading…

One of the major aims of discourse-processing literature is to understand whether and when readers form discourse-level representations online. To test this, two word-by-word, self-paced reading experiments investigated the time course of integrating incoming information about the protagonist into the unfolding discourse-level representation in…

With the fast-paced development of technology in today's society, there has been emerging a shift from paper-based reading to digital online reading. While the benefits of exposure to print have been well-established in previous studies, how online reading may impact individuals' literacy development is largely underexplored. The current study…

The authors examined the dimensions of reading engagement for rural ninth-grade students who participated in a supplemental literacy intervention for students who struggled with school-based reading. Using a comparative case study approach, researchers investigated the ways in which engagement was characterized and undermined within the context of…

This study investigated the effectiveness of a supplemental reading program that emphasizes phoneme awareness and phonics with small groups composed of both at-risk native English-speakers and at-risk English language learners (ELLs) whose first language is not Spanish. A multiple-baseline-across-participants design was utilized to investigate the…

This study examines associations between leisure reading and reading skills in data of 2,525 students followed from age 7 to 16. As a step further from traditional cross-lagged analysis, a random intercept cross-lagged panel model was used to identify within-person associations of leisure reading (books, magazines, newspapers, and digital…