This study investigates the impact of storyline complexity and language proficiency level on oral performance. The participants were 42 English learners of different proficiency levels. Each participant was asked to narrate two stories (with or without background events) based on two picture stories. They were given each of the picture prompts one at a time and were told that they had 3 minutes to look at each picture prompt and plan for what to say and how to narrate the story. After that, they had 3-4 minutes to tell each story during which time their performance was recorded. The recorded...

This book focuses on the importance of top-down approach to teaching reading. In most reading textbooks the authors are interested in using post reading activities which are more useful for testing rather than teaching reading comprehension. Meanwhile concerning the role of background knowledge this book suggests schema theory based pre reading tasks as more effective means for activating background knowledge and enhancing reading comprehension.