Books by Karim Sadeghi

This book investigates the issue of cloze-validity as a measure of second language reading comprehension. It starts off by making a distinction between general reading ability and the more specific reading comprehension followed by a thorough review of the related research on L2 reading comprehension and sorting out the confusion in the literature in this categorization. A comprehensive account of cloze procedure is presented discussing its origin, different versions, its use for teaching and testing purposes, as well the latest research on cloze as measures of readability, language proficiency and second language reading. The book includes studies conducted at several stages on validating cloze as a measure of reading and interview and questionnaire techniques are applied to investigate the validity of eight cloze tests, criterion reading tests, and other cloze and reading tests in general. Two new cloze tests, i.e. reader-centered cloze test and phrase cloze test, are also introduced and researched as measures of reading ability. The book concludes with suggestions for developing tests that can better measure reading comprehension in light of recent research insights on the complex and dynamic nature of reading.This book will appeal to researchers, lecturers and graduate and post-graduate students taking a course in Second Language Acquisition, Applied Linguistics, TESOL, Language Assessment, and Educational Measurement.

Learning a second or foreign language has challenged many a learner, and there is no shortage of theories proposed by specialists in a hope to make this intriguing task a bit simpler. The fact is that we are still far away from a perfect understanding of the processes involved in learning a second language which make it so different from acquiring L1. What we do know for sure is, however, that the ability to speak a foreign language requires more than a mere knowledge of its grammatical and semantic rules. Learners must acquire the knowledge of how native speakers use the language naturally by capitalizing on a wealth of prefabricated forms such as collocations and idioms. Based on such an assumption, this book sheds light on the relationship between collocational knowledge, speaking proficiency, and oral use of collocations in an EFL context, with a focus on the role L1 transfer plays in their production.

An integral requirement of any educational program is the chance to evaluate the effectiveness of the delivery of education. Traditionally evaluative tools of various sorts have been used to measure the process and product of teaching. More recently however as far as English as a second/foreign language is concerned more innovative alternative assessment procedures have been practiced for decades. The problem however with all such assessment techniques has been that they have been static in nature in that they have been meant to measure the product rather than the process of education. Dynamic assessment, which views assessment as an integrated part of teaching rather than as its final loop, has accordingly been proposed as an alternative and complement to static or standardized types of assessment. The focus of this book is on the viability of using dynamic as an instructional adjunct in the development of EFL learners' grammar. The audience of the book includes assessment experts, ELT professionals and SLA researchers.