The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of CALL in developing reading proficiency of Iranian EFL learners in comparison to paper-based instruction and to investigate any significant difference in the reading comprehension of the high and low proficient learners after receiving computer-assisted instruction (CAI). This study also investigated the participants’ attitudes toward ...

Most deaf children and adults struggle to read, but some deaf individuals do become highly proficient readers. There is disagreement about the specific causes of reading difficulty in the deaf population, and consequently, disagreement about the effectiveness of different strategies for teaching reading to deaf children. Much of the disagreement surrounds the question of whether deaf children r...

This longitudinal study examined the development of the brain mechanism involved in phonological decoding in beginning readers using magnetic source imaging. Kindergarten students were assigned to 2 groups: those who showed mastery of skills that are important predictors of proficient reading (low-risk group) and those who initially did not show mastery but later benefited from systematic readi...

This article presents a tripartite framework for analyzing multimodal texts. The three analytical perspectives presented include: (1) perceptual, (2) structural, and (3) ideological analytical processes. Using Anthony Browne’s picturebook Piggybook as an example, assertions are made regarding what each analytical perspective brings to the interpretation of multimodal texts and how these perspec...

Earlier studies have suggested that proficient map readers employ cognitive strategies such as information chunking and schemas to aid information processing. In this paper experienced and non-experienced map readers studied and reproduced firstly a town map and then a topographical map. No group differences were observed for the town map task. When the topographical map was recalled the expert...

General academic words are those which typically learned through exposure to school texts and occur across disciplines. We examined vocabulary assessment data from a group of English-speaking middle students (N = 1,747). tested how word frequency, complexity, proximity, polysemy, diversity related students’ knowledge target ability levels. Our results affirm the strong relation between reading ...