The effects of text structure, structure awareness and proficiency level on EFL learners＇ reading test performance

The present study probed into the effects of text structure, structure awareness and proficiency level on EFL learners＇ reading test performance. There are 112 college-level students participated in the experiment and their English proficiency belonged to distinct levels. The subjects＇ performance on the recall of two passages written in different types of structure was examined. Results of statistical indicate that text structure, structure awareness and proficiency level all have main effects on the subjects＇ reading performance. More specifically, two major findings emerged from the results of the investigation. One the one hand, text structures significantly affected the quantity but not the quality of the information recalled while proficiency level and structure awareness had significant impact on both the quantity and quality of information recalled. On the other hand, structure awareness was irrelevant to either text structure or proficiency level. The implications of the findings for teaching L2/FL reading were suggested.

An Innovative Teaching Approach for Decreasing Anxiety and Enhancing Performance in L2 Reading and Writing

Research has shown that L2 （second/foreign language） learners with higher anxiety tend to have weaker L2 reading and writing performance. This paper presents an innovative approach of teaching： the combination of extensive reading and writing blogs, which aims at reducing students＇ anxiety and promoting students＇ performance in L2 reading and writing. It also discusses the theoretical framework that supports the use of extensive reading and the reasons for using blogs as writing tools. Relative research on extensive reading and the use of blogs is synthesized. A design for one course that showcases the innovation is also presented. Finally, some suggestions are provided for teachers to help teachers successfully implement the innovative practices.

A Study on the Correlation among FD-FI Cognitive Style,Working Memory Capacity and English Reading Performance among College EFL Learners

In the past few decades,there have been eminent interests in reading performance as essential means for language input.In view of that,extensive studies have been conducted to explore the factors that affect reading performance from various aspects.In the cognitive psychology field,some studies have examined the relationship between field dependent-field independent(FD-FI)cognitive styles and working memory capacity(WMC)on English reading,respectively.However,only limited studies focused on the correlation among FD-FI cognitive styles,WMC and English reading performance.Therefore,this study was conducted to explain these correlations.A total of 42 intermediate“English as Foreign Language”(EFL)learners participated in this study.In order to measure the learners’FD-FI cognitive style,WMC and English reading performance,the Cognitive Style Figures Test,reading span task and the International English Language Test System(IELTS)reading test were adopted,respectively.Data analyses such as Pearson’s correlation,independent sample t-test and two-way ANOVA were done using Statistical Package for the Social Science(SPSS)version 25.The results suggested a statistically significant correlation between FD-FI cognitive style and WM with English reading performance,respectively.The main effect of WM and FD-FI cognitive style is significant while the interaction between them is not significant in reading performance.

The Effect of “Think-Talk-Write” Strategy on EFL Tenth-Grade Students’ Writing Performance

This study investigated the effect of“Think-Talk-Write strategy”on English as a Foreign Language(EFL)tenth-grade students'writing performance.A quasi-experimental design with two groups was employed.The researcher randomly assigned two whole sections of grade 10 from Al-Kharaj Secondary School for Boys.The first section was chosen as the experimental group with(20)students,and the second as the control group with(20).To achieve the purpose of the study,a pre/post writing performance test was designed.In addition,Think-Talk-Write(TTW)strategy was used to teach the experimental group,whereas a control group was taught by the conventional teaching strategies,as suggested in the teacher's book.Results revealed that TTW strategy enhanced students’writing performance.In light of the research results,the researcher recommends to use TTW strategy on other genres of writing.

The Effects of Phonological Awareness Training on the Reading Performance by Child EFL Learners in China

The present study explores the effects of phonological awareness training of child EFL learners in China on their reading performances. Eighty grade one Chinese children from two intact primary school classes participated in the study. The treatment class received a 10-week English phonological awareness training, while the contrast class did not receive any training. Both pre-test and post-test were administered to all participants, including English assessment, phonological awareness measures and English reading measures. The results show that the treatment class outperformed the contrast class in the post-test in reading measures and phonological awareness measures; phonological awareness positively correlated with children＇s early reading performance; phoneme tasks were strong predictors of Child EFL learners＇ early reading performance.

CLEC:Combination Locality Based Erasure Code for Permissioned Blockchain Storage

Building a new decentralized domain name system based on blockchain technology is helping to solve problems,such as load imbalance and over-dependence on the trust of the central node.However,in the existing blockchain storage system,the storage overhead is very high due to its fullreplication data storage mechanism.The total storage consumption for each block is up to O(n)with n nodes.Erasure code applied to blockchains can significantly reduce the storage overhead,but also greatly lower the read performance.In this study,we propose a novel coding scheme for blockchain storage,Combination Locality based Erasure Code for Permissioned blockchain storage(CLEC).CLEC uses erasure code,parity locality,and topology locality in blockchain storage,greatly reducing reading latency and repair time.In CLEC,the storage consumption per block can be reduced to O(1),and the repair penalty can also be lowered to O(1).Experiments in an open-source permissioned blockchain Tendermint show that CLEC has a maximum repair speed of 6 times and a read speed of nearly 1.7 times with storage overhead of only 1.17 times compared to the current work,a great improvement in reading performance and repair performance with slightly increased storage overhead via implementation.

COLIN:A Cache-Conscious Dynamic Learned Index with High Read/Write Performance

The recently proposed learned index has higher query performance and space efficiency than the conventional B+-tree.However,the original learned index has the problems of insertion failure and unbounded query complexity,meaning that it supports neither insertions nor bounded query complexity.Some variants of the learned index use an out-of-place strategy and a bottom-up build strategy to accelerate insertions and support bounded query complexity,but introduce additional query costs and frequent node splitting operations.Moreover,none of the existing learned indices are cache-friendly.In this paper,aiming to not only support efficient queries and insertions but also offer bounded query complexity,we propose a new learned index called COLIN(Cache-cOnscious Learned INdex).Unlike previous solutions using an out-of-place strategy,COLIN adopts an in-place approach to support insertions and reserves some empty slots in a node to optimize the node’s data placement.In particular,through model-based data placement and cache-conscious data layout,COLIN decouples the local-search boundary from the maximum error of the model.The experimental results on five workloads and three datasets show that COLIN achieves the best read/write performance among all compared indices and outperforms the second best index by 18.4%,6.2%,and 32.9%on the three datasets,respectively.

Near vision examination in presbyopia patients: Do we need good homologated near vision charts?

Presbyopia correction is mainly concerned with the goal of regaining an uncorrected reading performance.Since historic reading charts do not provide a unique standard that is applicable for the analysis of clinical and scientific reading performance,new standardized reading charts have been developed,in order to provide reading performance analyses analogous to modern single-optotype distance acuity measurements:the Bailey-Lovie Word Reading Chart,the Colenbrander English Continuous Text Near Vision Cards,the MNREAD Charts,and the RADNER Reading Charts.The last three are also meant to measure reading speed,thus allowing detailed analysis of the reading capabilities of the patient’s functional vision.Furthermore,these reading charts can be declared homologated,based on the standards that were published for reading charts by the Visual Function Committee of the International Council of Ophthalmology(ICO)in 1988.Many research studies have shown that by analyzing the reading performance with homologated reading charts,valuable insight into the reading performance of patients suffering from various diseases can be obtained.These reading charts have also been successfully used in presbyopia research.It therefore seems evident that homologated,standardized reading charts facilitate not only research concerning functional vision in many fields of ophthalmology but also international communication about near visual performance.Homologated reading charts are available in almost all languages and have become a valuable tool in analyzing reading performance.We argue in this review that homologated reading charts are clearly a necessity for presbyopia research.