The present study was conducted to examine empirically and systematically the effect of explicit instruction of Comprehension strategies on EFL learners‟ reading anxiety and reading Comprehension in Iranian high schools. To this end, two intact classes (65 students) participated in this study as members of control and experimental groups. The experimental group underwent 10 sessions of reading strategies training based on McNamara, Ozuro, Best, and O‟ Reilly's (2007) 4-pronged Comprehension Strategy Framework. Data were collected through the employment of Saito, Garza, and Horwitz's (1999) Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS) and Preliminary English Test (PET) multiple-choice reading Comprehension tests. All the students filled the FLRAS questionnaire and took the reading Comprehension test two times, once as a pre-test one week before the beginning of instruction and the other as a post-test one week after the instructional treatment. After the post-test, a group of 7 students who received instruction participated in the focus group interview. T-tests were used to analyze the obtained statistical data. It was revealed that explicit reading strategy instruction was quite beneficial in improving EFL high school students' Comprehension and reducing their anxiety level, while reading anxiety and reading Comprehension were negatively correlated. The results of the interview with the focus group revealed the positive effect of strategy training on learners' reading Comprehension and alleviating reading anxiety. This study rendered some educational implications for materials developers and instructors to invest on reading as a fundamental skill in education.

Dynamic Assessment is an approach to assessment within Applied Linguistics which is stemmed from Vygotsky’ s Socio-Cultural Theory of mind, his concept of Zone of Proximal Development and Feuerstein’ s theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability. This study is an attempt to pinpoint the sources of mental processing problems in listening Comprehension and applies dynamic interventions to remove the problems and promote listening. Two male classes (each containing 5 upperintermediate members) ranging in age from 19 to 24, were selected based on an intact group design. One class was selected as the control and another class as the experimental group haphazardly. The research was on the pre-test, mediation, and post-test paradigm. In the beginning, the two groups were pre-tested purposefully and their real time listening problems were detected through verbal and nonverbal recall protocols. Then, in the mediation phase dynamic group experienced different treatment sessions in two weeks to overcome the problems detected on the pre-test. The experimental group was instructed with mediations based on the Sandwich format of interventionist dynamic assessment while the control group received no intervention and was taught traditionally. Finally, all two groups were post-tested. The qualitative analysis showed that both groups suffered from various listening problems related to mental processing in Comprehension. Result of quantitative analysis also revealed that the experimental group which was instructed dynamically outperformed the control group which was taught non-dynamically. The findings of this study suggest that dynamic interventions would not only affect the promotion of the EFL listening Comprehension in educational settings but also have a significant effect on the performance of the dynamic group in comparison with the nondynamic group.

Many context effects in language Comprehension appear at the earliest point in time – closely temporally coordinated with when context effects could emerge in line with interactive accounts of language processing; some context effects may even resemble preferences and override the short-term frequency of experience via language input. However, variability in the timing and robustness of context effects shines through when we look at contextual relations that are indirect and likely accessed via inferences or where knowledge may be variable (for instance, due to age differences or differences in language background). This talk discusses (accommodating) variability in context effects on language Comprehension.