iii   this study was an attempt to determine the effect of task-based approach vs. traditional approach on the narrative and expository writing of the iranian efl learners. there were two control groups as well as two experimental ones in the current study. in the two control groups namely g1 and g2 narrative and expository writing were taught respectively using the traditiona...

This paper describes the effects of different methods to enhance students’ understanding and learning from a text. We compared the efficiency of a text revision procedure (“from the text”) and inferential activity engagement (“toward the text”) in the comprehension and recall of a History text. A total of 338 undergraduate students (aged 19-20) participated in the study. We wrote five versions ...

Exploring expository texts presents an interesting and important challenge. They are read routinely and extensively in the form of online newspapers, web-based articles, reports, technical and academic papers. We present a system, called Texplore, which assists readers in exploring the content of expository texts. The system provides two mechanisms for text exploration, an expandable outline th...

There has been a widespread appeal for the inclusion of more informational text in elementary reading programs and instruction. This appeal is motivated by claims that children's early reading material is dominated by narrative texts and by recognition of the importance of learning to read other types of text. Commercial reading programs provide a significant source of material used in reading ...

The current article was an attempt to investigate the effect of semantic mapping strategy instruction on reading comprehension performance of EFL learners. To this end, thirty homogeneous Iranian intermediate EFL learners attending a language school in Bonab, Iran, were randomly assigned to two groups, one as the experimental and the other as the control. The experimental group received instruc...

Argumentation skills of secondary school students were evaluated in Finland (n=290), France (n=54), and England (n=41). The data were collected from 4 tasks comprising 7 variables. The results indicated that most of the students had correctly justified arguments and conclusions, and composed clear claims and relevant arguments. However, many students had difficulties in recognising the main cla...

We propose a conceptually and technically neat method to identify known semantic patterns close to a novel pattern. This occurs in the context of a system to acquire knowledge incrementally from systematically processed expository technical text. This semiautomatic system requires the user to respond to specific multiple-choice questions about the current sentence. The questions are prepared fr...

This document contains an extended outline of the course including a bibliography. The idea of this reader is to provide a bird’s eye view of the literature and to list the main examples, definitions and theorems we will use throughout the course. As a consequence, expository text will be kept to a minimum. The website for the course is staff.science.uva.nl/∼epacuit/formep esslli.html On this w...