The Louisiana English language arts student standards were created by over one hundred Louisiana educators with input by thousands of parents and teachers from across the state. Educators envisioned what proficient students should know and be able to do to compete in our society and focused their efforts on creating standards that would allow them…

The concept of technical assistance predicates that international experts have information that the host country community of practice lacks. At the same time, elementary education is deeply personal and familiar to everyone in the post-Soviet environment; it was a point of pride in the USSR. Navigating this territory requires patience and…

English as a medium of instruction (EMI) has been increasingly used in Higher Education institutions in countries where English is spoken as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL). Research over the last decade has predominantly focused on EMI implementation, perceptions, and attitudes of stakeholders towards EMI as well as the challenges…

A teacher's ability to read effectively is critical to that individual's ability to teach reading skills. Correspondingly, most state departments of education require that prospective teachers earn a passing score on a standardized reading comprehension test before they can enter university-based teacher education programs or otherwise get a…

This U.S. study evaluated the effects of a reading intervention for emergent bilingual students with significant reading difficulties in Grades 6 and 7 within a multisite randomized controlled trial. Emergent bilinguals were randomized to a researcher-provided intervention (n = 171) or business-as-usual comparison condition (n = 169). Results on a…

Boosting literacy among school-age children remains a national priority. Nearly one third of students in the United States have not developed the foundational reading skills needed to succeed academically, with students living in poverty, students with disabilities, and English learners especially at risk. Starting in 2010, Congress invested more…

This narrative essay describes a basic writing instructor's engagement with student confusion in a hybrid Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) course. The story examines the ways confusion can mark sites of engagement for students and teachers and how ALP courses, in particular, might mediate effective (and ineffective) forms of confusion.

Currently, the most acknowledged test to qualify for overseas universities is the IELTS test which is referred to as the International English Language Testing System. It is implemented as an accreditation tool and is believed to be a reputable and trustworthy tool of language competence by tertiary institutions which employ its use. Regardless of…

This article reports on a study which aimed to determine the effect of strength of accent on listening comprehension of interactive lectures. Test takers (N = 21,726) listened to an interactive lecture given by one of nine speakers and responded to six comprehension items. The test taker responses were analyzed with the Rasch computer program…

This study explores whether emphasizing the phonetic components of "kanji," Chinese characters used in Japanese, facilitates second language (L2) learners' novel character learning. Previous L2 studies on Chinese characters indicate that phonology plays a major part in word identification. However, this view remains controversial,…

In this study, we identified the code-related (decoding, fluency) and language comprehension (vocabulary, listening comprehension) demands of the CBM-Maze test, a formative assessment, and compared them to those of the Gates-MacGinitie test, a standardized summative assessment. The demands of these reading comprehension tests and their…

Purpose: The Parent--Enhanced Moved by Reading to Accelerate Comprehension in English (Parent EMBRACE) program offers a bilingual parent-training literacy intervention for Latino families. Within the context of shared book reading, the application leverages both the home language and technology to increase parent question-asking during shared…

This paper reflects on aspects of historical understanding developed in a classroom in which moving-image sources are analysed. Considered as nonfictional representations of the past, moving-image sources comprised broadcast images of historical events on newsreels, news broadcasts and documentaries. The study, carried out in a Maltese state…

Reading is one of the aspects that help students achieve optimal performance in their education. There are several determining factors that can affect reading, particularly its promotion by teachers, and the students' behavior and comprehension. This paper seeks to determine the relationship between reading promotion, behavior, and comprehension…

This study examined the role of reading motivation in reading comprehension achievement of 1070 Chilean third, fourth, and fifth-grade students enrolled in public and private schools. Students were assessed in Spanish reading comprehension and were administered the Motivation to Read Profile from Gambrell, Palmer, Codling and Mazzoni (1996), at…