Theories of visual narrative comprehension have advocated for a hierarchical grammar-based comprehension mechanism, but only limited work has investigated this hierarchy. Here, we provide a computational framework inspired by computational psycholinguistics to address hierarchy in visual narratives. The predictions generated by this framework were…

Developing an adequate understanding of the nature of science includes developing an understanding of the uses and importance of models in science. General accounts of science aimed at university students, however, tend to neglect this aspect. A noticeable exception is the simple model of the key elements of a scientific result presented by Giere,…

In this study, it was aimed to determine the relationship between primary school 4th grade students' reading comprehension level and mathematics course success. The study group of the research consists of 80 students selected by purposive sampling method, studying in the 4th grade of official institutions in the Pazar district of Tokat province.…

This paper discusses the 'fuzziness' of Hungarian legal language as an issue of language planning addressed in the Hungarian language strategy to be published by the Hungarian Research Centre for Language Planning. First, we give a concise historical overview on the status of Hungarian language in Hungary, only to make it evident how its status…

Purpose: Pronouns stitch together discourse by linking referents within and across sentences. Previous research has shown that people often rely on two strategies to interpret pronouns: the subject bias (assuming the pronoun refers to the subject of a prior sentence) and the repeated mention bias (assuming it refers to a person that was mentioned…

Recent research on the use of eye movements to predict performance on reading comprehension tasks suggests that while eye movements may be used to measure comprehension, the relationship between eye-movement behavior and comprehension is influenced by differences in task demands between comprehension measures. In this study, we examined the…

The provision of extra time (ET) is one of the most frequently granted access arrangements in second/additional language (L2) testing. This study investigated whether test takers use ET, provided in the form of pauses at pre-determined locations during the listening input, in digital listening tasks and what factors may affect their behaviour. The…

This study examined the acquisition of numeral classifiers in 120 monolingual Japanese children. Previous research has argued that the complex semantic system underlying classifiers is late acquired. Thus, we set out to determine the age at which Japanese children are able to extend the semantic properties of classifiers to novel items/situations.…

Project-based academic report writing (PBARW), one form of integrated writing, is widely used in Asia. We tested the hypothesis that L2 English learners have to achieve a threshold level of reading comprehension for PBARW strategies to have noticeable effects on writing performance. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were used in the…

Research shows that young children's understanding of death varies considerably by culture. The purpose of this study was to examine the concepts of death held by Chinese kindergarten children in Hong Kong. Eighty-three 4- to 5-year-olds were interviewed about their understanding of six death sub-concepts: inevitability, universality,…

Students in England sit an important gateway examination in English at age 16. Major changes were made to this exam in 2017 resulting in more emphasis on the comprehension of unseen literary texts. This paper uses corpus linguistic methods to identify the kind of vocabulary encountered in these exam texts and compares it to the kind of vocabulary…

Through the application of the experimental research method and the factorial design, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the authoring tools SoftChalk medium and Hot Potatoes medium in the learning management system (LMS), as well as the types of readers (Avid, Passive, and Reluctant), on the reading comprehension…

The collocation frequency of words in the language environment contributes to early vocabulary development. Vocabulary size, in turn, predicts children's reading comprehension skills later in development. Both collocation frequency and reading comprehension have been connected to inferential reasoning at different time points in development. Here,…

This dissertation is a program evaluation of the Building Blocks of Comprehension vocabulary program, which was first implemented during the 2019-2020 school year by the English department at the school site. The study aimed to investigate the impact of morphological instruction on student vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension.…

This study investigated links between the development of children's understanding of ironic comments and their metapragmatic knowledge. Forty-six 8-year-olds completed the short version of the Irony Comprehension Task, during which they were presented with ironic comments in three stories and asked to provide reasons for why the speaker in a story…