Reading Chinese is one of the most challenging tasks for learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL learners). Studies showed that effective use of strategies (e.g. inferring meaning from context) helps to enhance reading comprehension. However, so far, most studies about reading Chinese as a foreign language have focused on lower-level processing (e.g. word learning strategies, the effects of orthography on word acquisition, etc.). Studies about reading process and strategies of adult CFL learners engaging in independent Chinese text reading are extremely limited, and few studies compare reading strategies and perceptions of successful and less successful CFL readers. This study filled these gaps by investigating adult CFL learners’ reading strategies and comparing strategy use and perceptions of successful CFL readers and less successful ones. Using the Compensatory Model of Second Language Reading (Bernhardt, 2005; 2011) as the theoretical framework, this study answered three research questions with sub questions: 1. What are the reading strategies used by adult CFL learners? (a) What are overall reading strategies used by adult CFL readers? (b) What are effective strategy combinations used by adult CFL readers? 2. How do successful adult CFL readers apply and perceive reading strategies when reading in Chinese? 3. How do less successful adult CFL readers apply and perceive reading strategies when reading in Chinese? Qualitative research methods were used to collect and analyze the data. Twelve college level third-year Chinese learners were asked to read a Chinese text, finish a think-aloud task (verbally express their thought process), recall the content of the text, answer several text-related questions, and engage in semi-structured interviews. This study identified 14 bottom-up strategies and 12 top-down strategies. The effective reading strategy combinations used by CFL readers included 1) inferring word meaning by accessing context cues, character meaning, and mental lexical networks; 2) monitoring comprehension by using context information, rereading, summarizing, noticing text structure, paraphrasing, or translating difficult parts; 3) segmenting Chinese words by checking the dictionary, conducting grammar analysis, and referring to mental lexicons. Through comparing the cases of successful and less successful CFL readers, this study revealed that successful readers were good at using context information, monitoring comprehension, and distinguishing important text segments from less important ones. They showed confidence in applying reading strategies and consciously acquired and practiced using strategies while reading. Less successful readers, on the other hand, had more difficulties in decoding characters and words as well as understanding complicated sentence structures. They did not trust their ability to infer about words and phrases, and relied more on the dictionary and translation. In addition, compared with less successful readers, successful readers used more top-down strategies, and they had better metacognitive competences in applying a wide range of strategies effectively. The findings of this study provide useful pedagogical implications to improve Chinese reading instruction and a better understanding about reading Chinese as well as L2 reading.

This study focused on exploring various dimensions of metacognitive knowledge developed by advanced readers in academic contexts, and explaining their behaviors of using strategies and their languages from metacognitive perspectives. The findings of this study were further discussed with respect to good readers’ characteristics of utilizing their knowledge, strategy and language resources metacognitively in their reading comprehension process. The types of metacognitive knowledge and the ways this knowledge is involved in the reading comprehension process do not seem to vary much according to the languages (L1 or L2) of given tasks. No matter in what languages they were asked to read academic texts, the participants were influenced by their goal and interest, as these played a critical role in guiding the reading comprehension process. While reading academic texts, both languages of these advanced readers actively interacted. First, the readers used their two linguistic resources in processing information of the text. The readers processed information by means of simplifying or elaborating information using their two languages. Secondly, they used their two languages interactively during the entire reading process, from planning, monitoring, and evaluating, to writing a summary. With the findings of this study, theoretical, methodological, and educational implications are made respectively. Finally, several contextual limitations of this study are acknowledged, requiring cautions in interpreting the findings of this study, and calling for future studies. / text

Since the 1990s, the number of U.S. students enrolled in university-level Chinese language classes has grown exponentially. Learning Chinese has become increasingly important to those students’ academic studies, professional success, and personal development. However, despite these students’ eagerness to master Chinese, they face an inevitable challenge to their progress: developing reading fluency and comprehension skills in Chinese. A common experience among those students is that learning to read in Chinese is labor-intensive and frustrating, and it takes much longer than the time they would have to spend on learning to read in alphabetic languages such as Spanish, French, and German. In response to this issue, a small but growing body of research has started to investigate the ways American learners view and comprehend Chinese texts. To contribute to this line of research, the present study examined the process of reading Chinese as a second language (L2 Chinese reading). In particular, this study looked closely into the following key questions: (1) What strategies did L2 Chinese readers use when reading a Chinese expository text? (2) What difficulties did they encounter and how did they solve these problems? (3) What factors influenced their reading process? (4) When, how and why did they shift to thinking in their native language, English? To describe these readers’ approaches to text comprehension and also to understand their own perceptions, this study adopted a few qualitative research methods, including think-aloud reports, recall protocols, post-reading interviews, semi-structured interviews and background surveys. Participants of this study were five American students enrolled in intermediate- and advanced-level Chinese language classes at a Midwest U.S. university. Data collected from these participants were analyzed qualitatively through both an intuitive, holistic approach and a structured, systematic approach. A qualitative data analysis software—NVivo 12—was used to facilitate the coding and analysis process. Results of the study show that L2 (Chinese) reading is primarily a language-based, cognitive-constrained, and individualized process that involves multiple interactive factors. Those factors include but are not limited to linguistic, psychological, textual, environmental, and background factors. In addition, regarding the use of the native language in L2 reading, results of the study show that readers’ L2 language proficiency influences the frequency and effectiveness of their use of their native language. The ways of using the native language also differed across readers with different L2 language proficiencies and reading styles. These results have implications for theories of L2 reading in general and theories of L2 Chinese reading in particular. Pedagogical implications and directions for future research are also discussed at the end of the dissertation.

This study aimed at discovering the role of lexical cohesive links in L2 reading comprehension. For this purpose, the researcher carried out lexical cohesion analysis of two TOEFL reading tests consisting of six texts. First, prior to the reading comprehension tests, the students were administered &ldquo / a vocabulary familiarity task&rdquo / . Second, the TOEFL reading tests were administered to fifty upper-intermediate and advanced level EFL students at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. Third, after each test, a post-reading &ldquo / Lexical links recognition task&rdquo / was given. Finally, the data were analyzed comparing reader performance on each item, both within and across the groups. The researcher analyzed the reading test results besides the results of the accompanying lexical cohesive links tasks to see if there is a &ldquo / significant relationship&rdquo / between the three factors: vocabulary knowledge, reading comprehension level and recognition of lexical cohesive links. The results have indicated that awareness of lexical cohesive links noticeably contributes to reading test scores in L2 and that recognition-level vocabulary knowledge alone may not guarantee better reading comprehension scores. Finally, it is suggested that reading and writing teachers can develop some pedagogic exercises to teach lexical cohesive devices and in this way improve students&rsquo / knowledge of lexical cohesive sub-types, thus enhancing their reading performance.

Research into reading strategies and strategy instruction has indicated their effectiveness and beneficial effects on reading improvement. However, additional effort and support is needed in real-world teaching environments for students to benefit from these research findings. This report reviews research on the effectiveness of the use of L2 reading strategies and strategy instruction. Based on research conclusions, this paper discusses the patterns of strategy use adopted by both proficient and less proficient readers to shed light on what kinds of strategies should be taught and how. It argues that teachers have important roles to play in selecting strategies for instruction and teaching them; teachers need to consider such factors as proficiency levels, text type and task goals. This paper concludes with pedagogical implications, suggesting teachers play roles as coaches and scaffolders, and offering nine strategies for instruction. / text

The College English Test (CET) in China is the largest language test in the world. The number of CET test-takers has steadily increased from 100,000 for its first administration in 1987 to 13 million in 2006. CET scores are used to draw inferences about the test-takers’ English as a foreign language proficiency as well as their specific skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. To justify the inferences drawn from test scores, evidence from a variety of sources should be constantly collected (Cronbach & Meehl, 1955; Messick, 1992; Chapelle, 1998; Bachman, 2000; Weir, 2005). Despite the large-scale and high-stakes nature of the CET and the importance of test validation, studies on the quality of the CET are scarce. This study aims to examine the construct validity of the reading comprehension section of the CET by modeling the internal relationships between test-takers’ scores on the CET reading section and their underlying reading abilities. Six components have been chosen as observed variables of the latent variable of reading ability, namely, word recognition efficiency, working memory, semantic knowledge, syntactic knowledge, discourse knowledge, and metacognitive reading skills. A pseudowords identification task programmed by the DMDX computer software, a revised version of Daneman & Carpenter’s (1980) sentence reading span working memory test, Meara & Milton’s (2002) Yes/No vocabulary tests, the syntactic test used in Shiotsu & Weir’s (2007) study, Abeywickrama’s (2007) discourse knowledge test, and a revised version of Phakiti’s (2008) strategy use questionnaire were utilized to measure these six observed variables. A total of 181 Chinese undergraduates participated in the study. With a baseline confirmatory factor model of reading ability and the CET scores, a structural model was analyzed. The results indicated that the path from reading ability to test performance was .75 and the squared regression coefficient of test performance was .56, which implied that participants’ test performance was strongly underlined by their actual reading ability. Therefore, the scores on the CET reading section are largely justifiable for use in drawing inferences about participants’ reading ability. Implications for validation research and reading instruction were also explored. / text

Until recently, the majority of research in the area of English phonological awareness has centered on segmental phonology as predictors of reading. Current research, however, has expanded the concept of phonological awareness to include prosodic sensitivity⎯the awareness of suprasegmental information. The present study explores the role of five segmental and suprasegmental levels of English phonological awareness as predictors of individual differences in word reading in Korean children learning English. 104 native Hangul speaking children in Grade 3 were assessed on English levels of stress, syllable, rime, simple phoneme, and consonant cluster awareness, as well as, English and Hangul word reading. Hierarchical regression models indicated that awareness of syllables, onset/rime units, and phonemes within consonant clusters were uniquely predictive of individual differences in L2 English word reading after accounting for cognitive ability, English background variables, and L1 word reading. Awareness of stress-timed patterns contributed to common variance in English and Hangul word reading, but was not uniquely predictive in final regression models. No level of phonological awareness was predictive of Hangul word reading. Results support the notion that segmental phonological elements not present in L1 may be predictive of individual differences in L2 word reading. Furthermore, cross-language transfer of PA may be weak in the direction of English (L2) to Hangul (L1). / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2010-06-30 18:10:10.564

This thesis considers possible criteria for the selection of example sentences for difficult or unknown words in reading texts for students of German as a Second Language (GSL). The examples are intended to be provided within the context of an Intelligent Computer-Aided Language Learning (ICALL) Vocabulary Learning System, where students can choose among several explanation options for difficult words. Some of these options (e.g. glosses) have received a good deal of attention in the ICALL/Second Language (L2) Acquisition literature; in contrast, literature on examples has been the near exclusive province of lexicographers. The selection of examples is explored from an educational, L2 teaching point of view: the thesis is intended as a first exploration of the question of what makes an example helpful to the L2 student from the perspective of L2 teachers. An important motivation for this work is that selecting examples from a dictionary or randomly from a corpus has several drawbacks: first, the number of available dictionary examples is limited; second, the examples fail to take into account the context in which the word was encountered; and third, the rationale and precise principles behind the selection of dictionary examples is usually less than clear. Central to this thesis is the hypothesis that a random selection of example sentences from a suitable corpus can be improved by a guided selection process that takes into account characteristics of helpful examples. This is investigated by an empirical study conducted with teachers of L2 German. The teacher data show that four dimensions are significant criteria amenable to analysis: (a) reduced syntactic complexity, (b) sentence similarity, provision of (c) significant co-occurrences and (d) semantically related words. Models based on these dimensions are developed using logistic regression analysis, and evaluated through two further empirical studies with teachers and students of L2 German. The results of the teacher evaluation are encouraging: for the teacher evaluation, they indicate that, for one of the models, the top-ranked selections perform on the same level as dictionary examples. In addition, the model provides a ranking of potential examples that roughly corresponds to that of experienced teachers of L2 German. The student evaluation confirms and notably improves on the teacher evaluation in that the best-performing model of the teacher evaluation significantly outperforms both random corpus selections and dictionary examples (when a penalty for missing entries is included).

This thesis focuses on two important aspects of non-native reading comprehension: text readability assessment, which estimates the reading difficulty of a given text for L2 learners, and learner summarisation assessment, which evaluates the quality of learner summaries to assess their reading comprehension. We approach both tasks as supervised machine learning problems and present automated assessment systems that achieve state-of-the-art performance. We first address the task of text readability assessment for L2 learners. One of the major challenges for a data-driven approach to text readability assessment is the lack of significantly-sized level-annotated data aimed at L2 learners. We present a dataset of CEFR-graded texts tailored for L2 learners and look into a range of linguistic features affecting text readability. We compare the text readability measures for native and L2 learners and explore methods that make use of the more plentiful data aimed at native readers to help improve L2 readability assessment. We then present a summarisation task for evaluating non-native reading comprehension and demonstrate an automated summarisation assessment system aimed at evaluating the quality of learner summaries. We propose three novel machine learning approaches to assessing learner summaries. In the first approach, we examine using several NLP techniques to extract features to measure the content similarity between the reading passage and the summary. In the second approach, we calculate a similarity matrix and apply a convolutional neural network (CNN) model to assess the summary quality using the similarity matrix. In the third approach, we build an end-to-end summarisation assessment model using recurrent neural networks (RNNs). Further, we combine the three approaches to a single system using a parallel ensemble modelling technique. We show that our models outperform traditional approaches that rely on exact word match on the task and that our best model produces quality assessments close to professional examiners.

Reading strategies are consciously controlled actions learners execute in order to aid comprehension. The effectiveness of strategies is increased with metacognitive awareness. Researchers have created instruments to raise metacognitive awareness targeted for native and highly proficient L2 readers. This article outlines the creation of a new survey, the Contextualized Inventory of Metacognitive Awareness for novice to low-intermediate L2 readers. Unlike other instruments, this survey contextualizes pre-, during-, and post-reading strategy deployment with the use of simplified, narrative reading passages. The survey was piloted at an Intensive English Program with 88 subjects. The overall readability of the survey had a Lexile score of 350L and a Coh-Metrix score of 35. The initial reliability of the survey was .69. Pedagogical uses and academic implications of the new survey are discussed.