This study intended to explore the interplay between young language learners' sense of self-efficacy regarding reading comprehension in their reading test performance associated with learning English among universities. To undertake the study, a purposive sampling method was adopted. A total of 60 freshmen undergraduate learners of English consented to participate in this study.  A self-efficac...

The role of spelling recognition was examined in word reading skills and reading comprehension for dyslexic and nondyslexic children. Dyslexic and nondyslexic children were matched on their raw word reading proficiency. Relationships between spelling recognition and the following were examined for both groups of children: verbal ability, working memory, phonological measures, rapid naming, word...

This paper describes a study exploring automated assessment of reading proficiency, in terms of oral reading and reading comprehension, for a middle school population including students with reading disabilities and low reading proficiency, utilizing automatic speech recognition technology. We build statistical models using features related to fluency, pronunciation, and reading accuracy to pre...

In recent years, a number of large-scale writing assessments (e.g., TOEFL iBT) have employed integrated writing tests to measure test takers’ academic writing ability. Using a quantitative method, the current study examined how written textual features and use of source material(s) varied across two types of text-based integrated writing tasks (i.e., listening-to-write vs. reading-to-write) and...

The present study compared two reading modes of oral and silent reading to investigate which mode was more advantageous for EFL reading comprehension. The participants were thirty-three Japanese university students. In the experiment, the participants read narrative passages orally and silently. After each reading, a comprehension test was given to see if they comprehend the contents of the pas...

This paper focuses on reading fluency by bilingual primary school students, and the relation of text fluency to their reading comprehension. Group differences were examined in a cross-sectional design across the age range when fluency is posed to shift from word-level to text-level. One hundred five bilingual children from primary grades 3, 4, and 5 were assessed for English word reading and de...

The present study was an attempt to determine a relationship between foreign language reading anxiety and reading strategy use among a group of EFL Iranian readers (no = 100) with low vs. high proficiency levels. To this end, FLRAS (Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale) developed by Saito, Horwitz, and Garza, (1999) was used in order to measure the participants’ level of anxiety in reading an...