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.

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.