Previous studies have shown that extensive graded reading (EGR) has an important role to play in second language acquisition. As educational websites for EGR become increasingly prevalent, their ...pedagogical potentials in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching have been noted. Newsela is a fast-growing online platform that provides high-quality graded reading materials and supports real-time assessment for reading comprehension. In this review, we first provide an overview of Newsela's affordances, and then discuss the possible benefits it offers for EFL teaching. Finally, the challenges teachers may face are considered.
Full text
Available for:
NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Purpose/Significance By investigating and analyzing the current situation of graded reading of children's books at home and abroad, this paper compares the gap between children's graded reading at ...home and abroad, and carries out an in-depth study and exploration of children's graded reading system and promotion mechanism with Chinese characteristics and suitable for China's national conditions, in order to provide reference for the implementation and promotion of children's graded reading in China. Method/Process Using the method of literature survey, this paper reviews the current situation of children's graded reading at home and abroad, compares the differences between China and foreign countries, finds out the deficiencies, and designs a set of scientific and rigorous children's graded reading system combined with the actual situation of our country. Results/Conclusions Drawing on the achievements of foreign graded reading system, this paper puts forward that the government should take a lead in bu
Graded reading is one of the important ways of English learning. How to automatically judge and grade the difficulty of the English reading corpus is of great significance for precision teaching and ...personalized learning. However, the current rule-based readability assessment methods have some limitations, such as low efficiency and poor accuracy. In particular, these traditional methods usually lack semantics, which is crucial for students to understand the reading material. Meanwhile, they are difficult to be mapped to the difficulty level, which is not conducive to flexible application in actual personalized teaching. In this study, a method for grading the difficulty of the English reading corpus is proposed. This approach makes use of a pretrained language model and feature fusion embedding to make the most of multifeature data when training. First, based on linguists' evaluations of the variables influencing the difficulty of English reading corpus, three primary statistical features-sentence length, word length, and the number of prepositions-are taken into consideration. Then, the semantic features and part-of-speech features of the text are learned by a pretrained language model and long short-term memory, respectively, to capture polysemy features and fine-grained semantic representations that are difficult to represent with traditional models. Finally, multifeature embedding extractions are fused to grade the difficulty of the English reading corpus. Extensive experimental comparisons on a self-built dataset and two datasets that are freely accessible with various models indicate that our method outperforms the others in the task of grading the difficulty of English reading corpora.
Reading comprehension is one of the essential skills for learning in every language and in Iranian educational system, there seems a need to make some revisions in teaching reading comprehension. In ...an attempt to address this problem, this research set out to utilize Directed Reading –Thinking Activity (coined by Stauffer, 1969) as a teaching comprehension model which was expected to enhance students’ reading comprehension ability of graded readings. To do this end, 50 intermediate students from Zabansara Institute were randomly assigned to two groups (one control and one experimental) each consisting of 25 participants. Drawing on a mixed-methods design, the two groups were compared in pre-test and post-test in the quantitative phase. In the qualitative stage, fifteen students from experimental group were interviewed on the effect of implementing DRTA based setting on their comprehension of graded readings (The implemented readings in this study were narrative texts). The findings of the study revealed that DRTA had significant effect on participants' reading comprehension of graded reading. The study provides some pedagogical implications for EFL teachers and students, and suggests some possible avenues for further studies as well.
Resumo: O ensaio defende (i) o resumo simplificado de texto literário no nível de iniciação do ensino de Português Língua Estrangeira (ii) e a leitura extensiva neste nível de aprendizagem. Para ...isso, toma como referência os textos modificados de língua inglesa, discute os critérios a usar na retextualização, assim como analisa a situação da adaptação em Portugal e das ferramentas existentes para processo. No final, ilustra a reflexão teórica com um fragmento do resumo simplificado de O Senhor Ventura, de Miguel Torga (1943/1985), para o nível inicial, e termina com uma breve apresentação do projeto de adaptação de textos literários “Literatura no Ensino de Português Língua Estrangeira” (LEPLE). Abstract: The essay argues (i) the use of simplified versions of literary texts in the first stage (Beginners Level) of Portuguese as a Foreign Language, (ii) as well as extensive reading at the same level. It takes the modified English language literary texts as criteria reference for this retextualization. It overviews the state of literary adaptation in Portugal and current tools for this process. This article ends with a didactic proposal of a simplified summary of O Senhor Ventura by Miguel Torga (1943/1985) for Beginners Level, and a brief presentation of the literary texts’ adaptation project "Literature in Portuguese Foreign Language Teaching” (LEPLE).
The Covid-19 pandemic is having an undeniable impact on all the statements of society. Regarding teaching and learning activities, most educational institutions suspended in-person instruction and ...moved to remote learning during the lockdown of March and April 2020. Although nowadays many countries have progressively re-opened their educational systems, blended learning is a common practice aimed to reduce the spread of the Covid-19 disease. This disruption has supposed an unprecedented acceleration to the digitalization of teaching and learning. Teaching professionals have been forced to develop their digital competence in a short amount of time, getting mastery in the management of information, the creation of audiovisual contents, and the use of technology to keep their students connected. This Special Issue presents contributions regarding the adoption of distance learning strategies, experiences, or lessons learned in this domain.
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in many educational changes, especially the shift towards the use of technology in all subjects. This longitudinal study was conducted to investigate the effect of ...learning environments—blended and online, alone and with graded-reading websites/applications—on the reading comprehension of Saudi undergraduates majoring in English during COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, 130 participants were selected (control: male N = 21, female N = 54; or experimental: male N = 21, female N = 34). Although the four gender-based groups were exposed to the same learning environments—first blended and later online, which were either partially or dependent on technology—only the male and female experimental groups were required to use graded-reading websites/applications for approximately 10 months during the COVID-19 school lockdowns. All participants took four tests (pretest, posttest 1, posttest 2, and delayed posttest). Using the SPSS program, the results indicated that the learning environments alone had a limited positive effect on the control groups’ reading comprehension in the short term, which either decreased significantly (male control group) or remained unchanged (female control group) in the long term. There were significant differences between all control groups and experimental groups across all tests (p < 0.000). However, the experimental male group outperformed their male counterpart across all posttests except for the second posttest: experimental male group mean was 15.43 whereas it was 16.19 for the control male group. However, combining learning environments and graded-reading websites/applications yielded gradual positive effects on the reading comprehension of the experimental groups in the short term, which continued into the long term for the male experimental group. The experimental groups outperformed the control groups on at least two out of three posttests. The study concluded that the effect of technology on the reading comprehension of Saudi male and female undergraduates is bounded by the type of specialized technology (i.e., reading websites/applications) and the applied learning environments (i.e., blended and online). Additionally, the study indicated that there is a need to investigate other important factors related to technology used in Saudi institutes, as well as its effects on students’ learning processes in ongoing changes in the education sector in Saudi Arabia.
Low reading proficiency skills may impede understanding of the reading materials being read and hence affect interest in reading. This paper discusses a case study on the use of graded reading ...materials in increasing reading skills among children with reading difficulties. A set of two graded reading materials was used on two children with reading difficulties aged 7 years according to prescribed teaching reading stages. The suitability and challenges in using the materials were observed and noted qualitatively. The findings showed that the children have increased skills in reading. There were also increased interest and confidence among these children. There is pedagogical implication for the use of alternative strategies in the teaching of reading for struggling readers.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
This article discusses the interchangeability of three self-report measures for reading anxiety. Despite their differences in target constructs, the three scales have been used for similar lines of ...research. After computing shared variance between the target scales and examining the behavior of anxiety indexes in relation to the amount of graded reading and reading comprehension performance, the author reaches the conclusion that each of the three scales should be treated as a unique research tool (i.e., the scales are non-interchangeable with one another). The overall results also suggest the utility of each reading anxiety scale in educational research and practice.
Extensive graded reading (EGR) was carried out with a cohort of 600 engineering students in a university in northern Japan. Pre-and post-surveys were conducted to discover changes in the general ...reading habits of students, their attitudes toward the assessment method and how goals changed over the course of study. The first survey was carried out in week 2 of the 15-week course and the second in week 13. An analysis of changes showed that EGR was generally well accepted, that students' perceptions of studying English seemed to improve, that students spent a little less time on recreational reading to compensate for the increases required in the EGR course and that most read considerably more running words than their initial goals. In addition, the results suggest that the short MoodleReader quiz format used for assessment was also generally well received by students. Implications for teachers using EGR are discussed.
PDF
