We investigate the issue of classifying short essays based their linguistic issues, for English at the high school levels. A good selection of appropriate essays is crucial for the language learners and for the reading comprehension tests, which is an important type of tests for language competence examinations. Although the text alone does not allow us to judge the difficulty of reading compre...

it is well documented that language learning success or failure is influenced by the affective side of the learner. self-efficacy and anxiety are among the affective factors influencing language learning. this study first explores the relationship between efl learners' self-efficacy in reading comprehension and their reading anxiety. secondly, it explores the relationship between efl learners' ...

When taking multiple-choice tests of reading comprehension such as the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), test takers use a range of strategies that vary in the extent to which they emphasize reading the questions versus reading the passages. Researchers have challenged the construct validity of these tests because test takers can achieve better-than-chance performance even if they do not read t...

This paper describes our use of inter-word latency, the delay before a student speaks a word in the course of reading a sentence, to assess oral reading automatically. The context of our study is a Reading Tutor that uses automated speech recognition to listen to children read aloud. Using the data from 58 students from grades 1 through 4, we used inter-word latency to predict scores on externa...

This study attempted to determine the effect of background music while silent reading on Iranian EFL learners’ reading comprehension. The participants were 57 Iranian EFL learners between the ages of 14 and 16 in two 3rd grade high schoolclasses at pre-intermediate proficiency level. Before treatment,both experimental and control groups took a reading comprehension pretest. In the experimental ...

Scores from high stakes tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) are commonly used as criteria for college admission decisions. So, it is of applied importance to identify factors that contribute to susceptibility to failure on these tests. One potential factor addressed in the current study was whether emotional cognitive load differentially impacts those with low working memory capaci...

The present study aimed at investigating the relationship between interpersonal intelligence of Iranian bilingual and multilingual EFL learners and their reading comprehension achievement. To do so, 60 intermediate EFL students were selected from a group of 80 based on their OPT scores. They were non-randomly divided into two experimental groups. Data collection took place during the summer sem...

abstractin the present study, attempt has been made to examine the effectiveness of peer and teacher scaffolding in reading comprehension of intermediate efl students in symmetrical and asymmetrical groups. to do so, sixty intermediate students were purposively selected out of 150 intermediate students in hamadan islamic azad university and kish language institute in hamadan. they were divided ...

The research reported here examined the relative effectiveness of semantic mapping, as an interactive pre-reading strategy, on reading comprehension of Iranian undergraduate students (non-EFL majors). It also examined whether there was an interaction between gender and the effect of teaching semantic mapping strategy on reading comprehension. The participants in this study consisted of 120 male...