Reading Passages Research Articles

Virtual assessments for students with disabilities: A case study from India: Virtual assessment in reading

The pandemic in India impacted over 247 million learners (UNICEF, 2021). Children with disabilities were at a significant disadvantage, losing access to rehabilitation, medical and remedial services (Verneker et al., 2020). This article presents a guide to assessing students virtually. It explores one teacher’s attempts to navigate learning to read remotely using a digital curriculum-based measurement tool, Fluency Assessment for Benchmarking in Literacy education (FABLe). It discusses the processes she employed to set goals, monitor progress, and structure virtual assessments over the course of an academic year to build reading fluency. Overall, virtual assessments were easy to conduct. Teachers require two devices when conducting FABLe virtually, one to share the reading passage, and one to mark progress. FABLe provides end-of-year benchmark goals that can be used as individual target goals for students. More research is needed to develop benchmarks specific to the Indian context. FABLe data were most useful when communicating progress with parents and informing instructional practices. Many processes used to implement FABLe virtually can be applied to face-to-face settings, such as goal setting and progress monitoring schedules. Learning was impacted for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who struggled with access to the internet and support in the home settings.

Incorporating reading strategies for EFL undergraduate learners in Saudi Arabia: A think-aloud study.

In language learning, reading is a skill that enables interaction with a text inwhatever field of knowledge thelearner is pursuing. Readers tend to use strategies such as comprehension, interpretation and conception of decoding written language and texts to enhance their reading capacity. This research explores the reading strategies applied by Saudi English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners and compares the reading abilities of male and female EFL students. The study interviewed three EFL students about the reading strategies they applied while reading passages and texts. Then an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) reading test was handed over to 26 randomly selected students. The study found that the reading strategies used by the students interviewed involved skimming, scanning, guessing the meaning from context, identifying the mean idea, and summarizing the body of the text in question. Moreover, the study revealed that both male and female students scored low in the IELTS tests that the researchers conducted. The average mean score they reached was 7.15 out of 20. However, even in the low scoring ratio, female students (M=7.69) outperformed male students (M= 6.62) and the difference between them remained significant, P=.000. The study recommends that the language instructors help EFL learners in developing their reading strategies and applying them every time they read any text.

Using fiction to improve intergroup attitudes: Testing indirect contact interventions in a school context

The aim of the study was to evaluate the efficacy of an intervention using indirect intergroup contact for improving intergroup attitudes in schools, in particular anti-Roma prejudice. Vicarious contact—a form of indirect intergroup contact—can be experienced through fictional book characters, who can serve as positive role models in terms of intergroup attitude improvement. A vicarious contact experiment was conducted with sixth grade students (N = 177) from three Slovak elementary schools, using passages from the Harry Potter series. A three-group pretest-posttest design was adopted; experimental condition 1 involved reading passages without subsequent discussion, experimental condition 2 involved reading the same passages followed by a discussion, while the control group was not involved in any activities. There was a significant improvement of intergroup attitudes in experimental condition 2 compared to the control group, while condition 1 did not show any such improvement. The first contribution of the study is in tackling conceptually distinct mediators of the intervention’s effect – perspective taking and narrative transportation. The second contribution is in demonstrating the added value of discussion in interventions focused on prejudice reduction in schools.

AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT STUDENTS' ABILITY IN TOEFL READING COMPREHENSION

Abstract:
 
 The TOEFL test is globally acknowledged as the foremost assessment tool for evaluating English proficiency levels (Warfield, 2013:133). This study explores the English department students' readiness for the TOEFL examination, with a specific focus on 4th-semester students enrolled in the TOEFL preparation class at STKIP MB. An observed issue pertains to reading comprehension difficulties encountered by students in this class. This difficulty primarily stems from the complexity and length of the texts, making it challenging to grasp the core ideas. Furthermore, students have been exposed to Academic Reading and Extensive Reading prior to the advanced Reading (TOEFL reading) section. This context demands specific skills such as extracting key ideas from passages, addressing direct and indirect questions, and enhancing vocabulary (Phillips, 2001).
 This research identifies a link between reading comprehension and reading techniques. Patel and Jain (2008:80) distinguish intensive, extensive, Aloud, and Silent reading techniques, with students struggling to maintain focus and comprehend texts effectively. Inefficient strategies often lead to time-consuming responses to reading comprehension questions. Another significant hurdle is that students tend to read passages word by word, hindering their ability to retain information. Harmar (2018:25) aptly notes, "Reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain," emphasizing that reading serves as a medium to obtain information and understand the meaning of text. However, the reality reveals a deficit in understanding words or sentences in English among some students, indicative of inadequate reading comprehension and limited vocabulary.
 This research also highlights the challenges faced by college students preparing for TOEFL, wherein tests exhibit varied formats, making them significantly different from typical assessments. The abundance of seemingly correct answer choices often perplexes students, leading to confusion and inconsistency in selecting the right answers. Furthermore, the students frequently grapple with tense usage and vocabulary limitations in the English language. Notably, reading comprehension consistently emerges as the lowest-scoring section in the TOEFL test.
 In conclusion, this study aims to address the reading comprehension difficulties encountered by STKIP MB 4th Semester Students in the TOEFL preparation class. By examining the correlation between reading techniques, comprehension strategies, and vocabulary enhancement, the research strives to provide effective solutions to improve TOEFL reading scores and overall English proficiency among students.
 
 Keywords :Reading, Reading strategy , TOEFL.

Comparison of Acoustic Voice Features Derived From Mobile Devices and Studio Microphone Recordings

Improvements in mobile device technology offer new opportunities for remote monitoring of voice for home and clinical assessment. However, there is a need to establish equivalence between features derived from signals recorded from mobile devices and gold standard microphone-preamplifiers. In this study acoustic voice features from android smartphone, tablet, and microphone-preamplifier recordings were compared. Data were recorded from 37 volunteers (20 female) with no history of speech disorder and six volunteers with Huntington's disease (HD) during sustained vowel (SV) phonation, reading passage (RP), and five syllable repetition (SR) tasks. The following features were estimated: fundamental frequency median and standard deviation (F0 and SD F0), harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR), local jitter, relative average perturbation of jitter (RAP), five-point period perturbation quotient (PPQ5), difference of differences of amplitude and periods (DDA and DDP), shimmer, and amplitude perturbation quotients (APQ3, APQ5, and APQ11). Bland-Altman analysis revealed good agreement between microphone and mobile devices for fundamental frequency, jitter, RAP, PPQ5, and DDP during all tasks and a bias for HNR, shimmer and its variants (APQ3, APQ5, APQ11, and DDA). Significant differences were observed between devices for HNR, shimmer, and its variants for all tasks. High correlation was observed between devices for all features, except SD F0 for RP. Similar results were observed in the HD group for SV and SR task. Biological sex had a significant effect on F0 and HNR during all tests, and for jitter, RAP, PPQ5, DDP, and shimmer for RP and SR. No significant effect of age was observed. Mobile devices provided good agreement with state of the art, high-quality microphones during structured speech tasks for features derived from frequency components of the audio recordings. Caution should be taken when estimating HNR, shimmer and its variants from recordings made with mobile devices.

The Application of Semantic Mapping Techniques on Reading Comprehension for Junior High School Curriculum At SMP 22 Medan

Semantic mapping is an excellent strategy to help students engage in higher-order thinking. In learning reading, it is important for the students to make an effort and show their interest. The aims of this community dedication is to improve the student’s reading comprehension ability through semantic mapping technique. This training very beneficial to the students due to their low competence in the reading comprehension skills. In general, the use of semantic mapping in the classroom can be divided into five phases. These are “introducing the topic, brainstorming, categorization, personalizing the map, post-assesment synthesis : a) Introducing the topic: the teacher studies a unit in the syllabus and determines whether or not semantic mapping can be useful. The teacher announces the topic of the unit by drawing a large oval on the board. He states that some teachers display a picture relating to the topic to stimulate students’ thoughts and to get the brainstorming procedure.b) Brainstorming: the teacher draws a blank map which consists of some blank ovals on the board and provides the students with a reading passage. Furthermore, the teacher asks the students to find some information in the passage that are appropriate to be filled into the blank map.c.)Categorization: the teacher does his best to encourage students to see relationships among their ideas in order to form category cluster.d) Personalizing the map: each student makes a copy of the blank map and complete it by using information found in the passage. E) Post-assignment synthesis: The last part of the class period is used to record students’ suggestions from their personal maps to the board version of the map made by the teacher. The discussion will probably be the centre on the amount of information acquired from the reading. Based on the result of the pre-test and post test that given to the students, it was found that there was improvement of the average value between the pre-test and the post test on 59,52 %, where the average value of the pre-test was 44,40 and the post-test 74,60 so it can be concluded that smantic mind mapping technique training was able to increase reading comprehension of the students of SMP 22 Medan
 
 Key Words : Semantics Mapping Technique, Reading Comprehension

Evaluating the effectiveness of physical exercise in improving standardized testing performances through attention indices.

In the United States, standardized tests have risen in prevalence, extending their importance from education placement to employment. Attention is crucial to improving testing performance. Past studies have established that acute, coordinative, aerobic exercise improves attention, which is measured by the D2 Attention Test, emotional analysis, reading time, and eye movement tracking. No studies have drawn connections between physical exercise's quantifiable improvement in attention to improvements in standardized tests; therefore, this study would attempt to do so. This study defines attention to be positively related to reading speed and negatively related to the number of eye drifts. High school students were selected to read and answer two reading passages from an SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) exam, before and after a short 80% intensity run. Their reading times, facial video, and test scores were recorded. Dlib plots the facial landmark and OpenCV tracks movement of the pupil. Through paired-samples t-tests, this study found out that after exercise, subjects displayed increased reading speed and fewer eye drifts, coupled with increased mean scores. Thus, this study demonstrated that running, as an acute, coordinative, aerobic exercise, helps increase the testing performance of the SAT reading section by measuring attention. Future research could focus on including head movement as an attention index, replicate the experiment on different standardized tests or exercises, and conduct natural experiments to better simulate real-life conditions to increase applicability.

Enhancing linguistic research through 2-mm isotropic 3D dynamic speech MRI optimized by sparse temporal sampling and low-rank reconstruction.

To enable a more comprehensive view of articulations during speech through near-isotropic 3D dynamic MRI with high spatiotemporal resolution and large vocal-tract coverage. Using partial separability model-based low-rank reconstruction coupled with a sparse acquisition of both spatial and temporal models, we are able to achieve near-isotropic resolution 3D imaging with a high frame rate. The total acquisition time of the speech acquisition is shortened by introducing a sparse temporal sampling that interleaves one temporal navigator with four randomized phase and slice-encoded imaging samples. Memory and computation time are improved through compressing coils based on the region of interest for low-rank constrained reconstruction with an edge-preserving spatial penalty. The proposed method has been evaluated through experiments on several speech samples, including a standard reading passage. A near-isotropic 1.875 × 1.875 × 2 mm3 spatial resolution, 64-mm through-plane coverage, and a 35.6-fps temporal resolution are achieved. Investigations and analysis on specific speech samples support novel insights into nonsymmetric tongue movement, velum raising, and coarticulation events with adequate visualization of rapid articulatory movements. Three-dimensional dynamic images of the vocal tract structures during speech with high spatiotemporal resolution and axial coverage is capable of enhancing linguistic research, enabling visualization of soft tissue motions that are not possible with other modalities.

The investigation of cultural background perception on reading comprehension ability: A case of intermediate EFL learners in Zanjan

Learners’ perception of culture on receptive skills, more specifically on reading comprehension, has been an area facing a big challenge contemporarily. The current research aimed to investigate the cultural perception of Iranian EFL learners on reading comprehension ability. To conduct the study, an exploratory quantitative ex-post facto design (Dornyei, 2007) consisting of a questionnaire and interview study was used. Participants, 50 intermediate EFL learners (25 males, 25 females), were selected using the Oxford Placement Test. The participants were provided with two passages with different cultural contents (one containing Iranian culture and another containing culture of English-speaking countries). Then participants were required to fill in a Likert-scale questionnaire which was distributed through Google Form online platform. Also, an interview session was conducted to gather more detailed data. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded to find common themes. Analysis of interview and questionnaire data showed that learners hold similar cultural perceptions on reading comprehension ability, yet gender and social class have no significant impact on learners’ perceptions. The results of the study specified that Iranian EFL learners held a positive attitude towards the integration of cultural materials into reading passages to better comprehend the target language. Moreover, it was seen that gender and social class did not impact significantly learners’ cultural perceptions of English reading comprehension. The findings imply that ESL students with various reading levels or capabilities can learn from materials that are culturally diverse, specifically the ones at higher reading proficiency levels.

Articulatory undershoot of vowels in isolated REM sleep behavior disorder and early Parkinson’s disease

Imprecise vowels represent a common deficit associated with hypokinetic dysarthria resulting from a reduced articulatory range of motion in Parkinson’s disease (PD). It is not yet unknown whether the vowel articulation impairment is already evident in the prodromal stages of synucleinopathy. We aimed to assess whether vowel articulation abnormalities are present in isolated rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder (iRBD) and early-stage PD. A total of 180 male participants, including 60 iRBD, 60 de-novo PD and 60 age-matched healthy controls performed reading of a standardized passage. The first and second formant frequencies of the corner vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/ extracted from predefined words, were utilized to construct articulatory-acoustic measures of Vowel Space Area (VSA) and Vowel Articulation Index (VAI). Compared to controls, VSA was smaller in both iRBD (p = 0.01) and PD (p = 0.001) while VAI was lower only in PD (p = 0.002). iRBD subgroup with abnormal olfactory function had smaller VSA compared to iRBD subgroup with preserved olfactory function (p = 0.02). In PD patients, the extent of bradykinesia and rigidity correlated with VSA (r = −0.33, p = 0.01), while no correlation between axial gait symptoms or tremor and vowel articulation was detected. Vowel articulation impairment represents an early prodromal symptom in the disease process of synucleinopathy. Acoustic assessment of vowel articulation may provide a surrogate marker of synucleinopathy in scenarios where a single robust feature to monitor the dysarthria progression is needed.

The effect of non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation on memory recall in reading: A pilot study

Expert reading acquisition is marked by fluent, effortless decoding, and adequate comprehension skills and is required for modern daily life. In spite of its importance, many individuals struggle with reading comprehension even when decoding skills are adequate. Unfortunately, effective reading comprehension interventions are limited, especially for adults. A growing body of research suggests that non-invasive transcutaneous stimulation of the auricular vagus nerve (taVNS) may drive neural plasticity for low-level reading skills such as speech sound perception and letter-sound learning, but it is unknown whether taVNS can improve higher level skills as well. Thus, the current pilot study was designed to evaluate the effect of taVNS paired with passage reading on reading comprehension performance. Twenty-four typically developing young adults were recruited and screened for baseline reading and working memory skills. Participants received either sham or active taVNS while reading short passages out loud. Immediately following each passage, participants answered a series of test questions that required either direct recall of passage details or more complete comprehension of the passage content. While taVNS did not improve the mechanics of reading (e.g., reading rate or accuracy), there was a significant effect of active taVNS on test performance. This effect was driven by significant improvement on accuracy for memory questions while there was no effect of taVNS on comprehension question accuracy. These findings suggest that taVNS may be beneficial for enhancing memory, but its efficacy may be limited in higher cognitive domains.

Obsequies of My Lady Mary (II): A Fragmentary Syriac Palimpsest Manuscript from Deir al-Suryan (BL, Add 14.665, no. 2)

This Syriac palimpsest manuscript with four remaining folios bound with others into one volume runs under the shelf mark Add 14.665, no. 2 in the British Library. It displays a well-executed 5th century Estrangela. William Wright in his Contributions to the Apocryphal Literature of 1865 offered only readings of some scanty passages. The text has been neglected ever since. Preserved in it are sections of an early witness for the Obsequies of My Lady Mary in Syriac (S1) covering the final part of the second book, the beginning of book three, and central sections of book five with the apocryphal History of Peter and Paul according to the Ethiopic five-book cycle. The textual diversity is at times considerable in comparison to the other early transmissions in Greek and Christian Palestinian Aramaic, and the much later Ethiopic one. It has been the first Syriac source to attest the central term for the palm tradition ܬܘܠܣܐ ‘palm-shoot’. The new and additional readings intend to fill some lacunae in the only partially preserved transmission of the early Syriac translation of the Dormition of Mary from Upper Mesopotamia.

Transcranial direct current stimulation over the primary motor cortex improves speech production in post-stroke dysarthric speakers: A randomized pilot study.

PurposeThe current study investigated the therapeutic potential of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on speech intelligibility, speech-related physiological and vocal functions among post-stroke dysarthric patients.MethodNine chronic post-stroke dysarthric patients were randomly assigned to the stimulation or sham group. The stimulation group received 2mA of anodal tDCS over the left inferior primary motor cortex for 15 minutes, while the sham group received 30s of stimulation under the same settings. All the participants received 10 daily 15 minutes of individualized speech therapy targeting their dominant phonological process or phonemes with the greatest difficulty. The outcome measures included (1) perceptual analysis of single words, passage reading and diadochokinetic rate, (2) acoustic analysis of a sustained vowel, and (3) kinematic analysis of rapid syllable repetitions and syllable production in sentence, conducted before and after the treatment.ResultsThe results revealed that both the stimulation and sham groups had improved perceptual speech intelligibility at the word level, reduced short rushes of speech during passage reading, improved rate during alternating motion rate, AMR-kha1, and improved articulatory kinematics in AMR-tha1 and syllables /tha1/ and /kha1/ production in sentence. Compared to the sham group, the stimulation group showed significant improvement in articulatory kinematics in AMR-kha1 and syllable /kha1/ production in sentence. The findings also showed that anodal stimulation led to reduced shimmer value in sustained vowel /a/ phonation, positive changes in articulatory kinematics in AMR-tha1 and syllables /pha1/ and /kha1/ production in sentence at the post treatment measure. In addition to positive effects on articulatory control, reduced perturbation of voice amplitude documented in the stimulation group post treatment suggests possible tDCS effects on the vocal function.ConclusionsThe current study documented the beneficial effects of anodal tDCS over the primary motor cortex on speech production and suggested that combined tDCS and speech therapy may promote recovery from post-stroke dysarthria.

A Comprehensive Application for Grading Severity of Voice Based on Acoustic Voice Quality Index v.02.03

Acoustic Voice Quality Index is a six-variable acoustic model for the multiparametric measurement developed by Maryn et al. Studies have provided evidence regarding the practical usefullness, internal consistency, external validity, diagnostic accuracy, and responsiveness to change of AVQI. Recently, researchers have been exploring the utility of AVQI in classifying the voice severity. The aim of the present study was to determine the diagnostic accuracy of the AVQI v.02.03 in discriminating across the perceptual levels of dysphonia severity in 18-40 years age range in Kannada speaking population; and to develop an application to depict the AVQI based severity of dysphonia. For the study, 163 individuals in normophonic and 134 individuals in dysphonic group were considered in the age range of 18-40 years. All participants were native speakers of Kannada language. The sustained vowel /a/ and reading of standard Kannada passage were considered as stimuli for extracting AVQI analysed using AVQI script version 02.03. The AVQI cut-off values obtained were 2.50 (AROC=0.894; Sensitivity= 84.7%; Specificity= 83.1%), 4.17 (AROC=0.953; Sensitivity= 84.4%; Specificity= 88.5%) and 6.23 (AROC=1.000; Sensitivity= 100%; Specificity= 100%) for normal vs. mild, mild vs. moderate and moderate vs. severe respectively. A user friendly application was developed which provides a simplified output for AVQI cut-off values which can be comprehendible by patients with voice disorder/ non-professionals and health professionals.

Hippias, Heraclitus, and Socrates: Unity of Opposites in the Hippias Major

Abstract This paper investigates the hypothesis that Heraclitus was a formative influence on the Hippias Major. Specifically, it establishes connections between the dialogue's presentation of “the fine” (τὸ καλόν) and Heraclitus's “unity of opposites” idea. It argues that the fine is characterized by specifically Heraclitean oppositions, and it concludes that this makes a difference for the reading of certain passages in the dialogue and for philosophical conclusions regarding the fine.

Effectiveness of a Negotiated Syllabus on the Reading Achievement of Intermediate-Level EFL Learners

Few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of a negotiated syllabus on the reading skill of learners. The present study attempts to establish if a negotiated syllabus had any effect on the reading achievement of female EFL learners at intermediate level English proficiency. The study was conducted with the participation of 61 learners placed into the experimental group ( n = 32) and the control group ( n = 29). The element of negotiation in this study was the topic interests of the experimental group surveyed on an interest areas questionnaire on the basis of which instructional reading passages were selected. Topic interests were not surveyed in the control group and the texts given to them were selected by the teachers. Both groups were tested at the beginning of the experiment and retested at the end of the experiment with a valid reading comprehension test comprising 22 items. A two-sample t-test was performed to compare any means difference between the scores of the experimental group and the control group on the reading test. The results indicated that no statistically significant difference was observed between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups.

Capturing vocal fry: Understanding the acoustic and perceptual differences in elicited and naturally produced vocal fry

Vocal fry, used frequently by both men and women, is often associated with negative stereotypes of young women. This study examines how different ways of eliciting vocal fry affects acoustic properties as well as listener perceptions of speech. Stimuli in previous studies have been obtained from actors who were presented with obvious examples of fry from media sources and were then instructed to produce speech with vocal fry. This method of eliciting fry may introduce other vocal characteristics that activate stereotypes. We obtained natural stimuli by asking speakers to read passages with no instructions about vocal fry and created a corpus of acoustic and prosodic data about naturalistic fry. We then recorded actors who listened to naturally-produced examples of vocal fry. We compared the acoustic characteristics of low and high fry speech from our naturally-produced utterances, our actors, and stimuli collected by Anderson et al. (2014). Elicited fry (from both studies) differed when compared to naturally-produced fry. Additionally, elicited fry in our study differed from that of Anderson et al on jitter and other measures. The three sets of stimuli were used to replicate and extend Anderson and colleagues’ study on listener perceptions of men and women using vocal fry.

2013-2022학년도 수능 영어 읽기 지문의 텍스트 유형 비교

As a follow-up study to J. Y. Chang (2022), the purpose of this study was to examine the text types of 250 English reading passages in the 2013-2022 College Scholastic Ability Tests (CSAT) based on Biber’s (1989) typology. The computer software Multidimensional Analysis Tagger (MAT, Version 1.3.2) (Nini, 2019) was applied to identify the text type of each passage with its dimension scores. Text types were then compared between the norm-referenced (2013-2017) and criterion-referenced (2018-2022) assessment periods. Results show that the most frequently occurring text type was involved persuasion followed by general narrative exposition, scientific exposition, and learned exposition. In particular, involved persuasion, scientific exposition, and learned exposition together accounted for 64% of the total reading passages. Between the two assessment periods, there was no significant difference in the overall distribution of the text types. However, the proportions of scientific exposition, involved persuasion, and learned exposition increased in the latter period. These results suggest that there was a tendency in the CSAT English reading passages to reflect the text types that students experience at college and measure their preparedness as college students.

Assessing and Overcoming Reading Difficulties: Students’ Views on Reading Short Passages

This paper aims to investigate how students can maximize and develop their skills for reading short passages. It also aims to explain and evaluate students’ views of and experiences with reading such passages. To meet these objectives, the study adopts a quantitative approach. Data are collected from 540 students studying English in the second semester through an online questionnaire. The study indicates that most participants are intensely interested in developing their reading skills in short passages. It also shows that although most participants can understand the meaning of ‘some’ words in the selected passages, they cannot pronounce/read them accurately. Therefore, the current paper attempts to understand whether these students can shift from a weaker to a stronger level of short passage reading. Based on these findings, we make two recommendations: to adapt short passages to low-ability students and to engage these students with different follow-up systematic reading techniques and practices – which differ from those used with students of higher ability. However, despite the importance of our study findings, further research is still required in this area.

Assessing English Oral Reading Fluency of Kurdish EFL Students at University of Duhok

This study aims to identify the overall oral reading fluency level of the Kurdish EFL first- and second-year students at the English Language Department, College of Basic Education, the University of Duhok, over two years of their first and second years of study, 2020 – 2021. Besides, it aims to find out the significant difference between the Kurdish EFL first- and second-year students in the level of oral reading fluency according to MDFS dimensions. This paper also aims to determine the significant difference in the level of oral reading fluency between the first -and second-year students according to the gender variable. Seventy-four Kurdish EFL students participated in the study. Cover-to-Cover 1& 2 textbooks were used to train students based on a modeling technique. Then, the level of students’ oral reading fluency was measured based on the four dimensions of the MDFS model; Expression and volume, phrasing, smoothness, and pacing. The data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS 24). Results have revealed that students achieved a low overall oral reading fluency level; however, the level of second-year students has improved in pacing, smoothness, phrasing, expression and volume dimensions, respectively. It is recommended that teachers should expose their students to as many extensive and intensive reading passages as possible.