The current study investigated the potential components that affect second language (L2; English) literacy acquisition and cause-and-effect relationships of those factors to L2 reading comprehension via a structural equation model, with the recruitment of 129 4th-graders learning English as a foreign language. This study consists of two levels of…

Phonemic Awareness is the understanding that words are made up of individual sounds. These individual sounds are referred to as phonemes. Within the English language, there are about 44 sounds, and several of these are rather difficult for children to grasp. Mastery of phonemic awareness is a foundational skill for reading, yet is often skimmed…

Comprehension models do not often account for the multifaceted and emotionally charged nature of reading in real-world settings. In addition, studies of how reader emotions influence comprehension often yield conflicting findings due to lack of specificity regarding the process, emotion, and task under investigation. The PET (Process, Emotion,…

Upon hearing a scalar adjective in a definite referring expression such as "the big…," listeners typically make anticipatory eye movements to an item in a contrast set, such as a big glass in the context of a smaller glass. Recent studies have suggested that this rapid, contrastive interpretation of scalar adjectives is malleable and…

There is substantial support for the general idea that a formalization of comprehenders' expectations about the likely next word in a sentence helps explaining data related to online sentence processing. While much research has focused on syntactic, semantic, and discourse expectations, the present event-related potentials (ERPs) study…

This article addresses a question still frequently posed in the context of UK universities which offer courses in the visual arts: "Does the PhD research model of contributing new knowledge fit art, where there are no definitive answers and the main strength of the research is its ability to question?," answering in the positive by…

Although there is no generally accepted list of criteria for the acceptance of proofs in mathematical practice, judging the acceptability of purported proofs is an essential aspect of handling proofs in daily mathematical work. For this reason, school students, university students, and mathematicians need to hold certain acceptance criteria for…

This article has its roots in both literacy studies and environmental education. Beginning with a critical consideration of what it might mean to be 'literate' I argue that a re-evaluation of what it means to be "ecoliterate" is in order. I challenge current articulations of ecoliteracy, both in their relation to foundational literacy…

Purpose: Listener-targeted perceptual training paradigms, which leverage the mechanism of perceptual learning, show strong promise for improving intelligibility in dysarthria, offsetting the communicative burden from the speaker onto the listener. Theoretical models of perceptual learning underscore the importance of acoustic regularity (i.e.,…

This study examined the relationship between knowledge of academic vocabulary and reading comprehension in data contributed by 5855 middle school students. Each student completed an academic vocabulary assessment, a standardized reading comprehension test, and one of four types of novel vocabulary-depth measures. "Multiword expressions"…

Method: Sixty English-speaking children, 7-14 years old with normal hearing, had a single study visit during which each test was administered twice. Changes on retest were summarized by within-subject standard deviation ( S[subscript w]), compared among tests, and compared with binomial model predictions. Correlates of variance were explored.…

Given the importance of word knowledge for second language acquisition, there is always a need for effective word-learning approaches from language learners. With the rapid development of educational technologies, game-based learning is emerging into a field with considerable potential, within which, digital game-based vocabulary learning has…

The study aimed to investigate the effects of Reader's Theater on EFL learners' English reading comprehension. The roles of English learning anxiety and learning styles in the RT instruction were also explored. Mixed methods research was conducted to collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative data. The subjects were 11 graders in a senior…

The Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) is used to evaluate studies and monitor projects that address reading skills in low- and middle-income countries. Results are often described solely in terms of a passage-reading subtask, thereby overlooking progress in related skills. Using archival data of cohort samples from Uganda at two time points in…

The heightened importance of foreign languages (L2) in the post 9-11 world demands more L2 listening research as listening is considered the most critical skill for most American military linguists. Some larger studies show that lexical knowledge can positively affect L2 listening (Chang, 2007; Mehrpour & Rahimi, 2010; Staehr, 2009), yet…