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Abstract-The core interest of this study was to investigate whether teaching critical reading strategies had any significant effect on advanced EFL learners' vocabulary retention. In order to make a homogenous sample, 96 language learners in an English institute in Sari were invited to participate in a paper-based TOEFL test. Finally, 48 of them regarded as advanced EFL learners were selected to participate in the study. The instrument employed in the study included five critical reading comprehension texts selected from Critical Reading Workbook for the SAT (2006) by Green and Weiner and one supplementary material from Cambridge IELTS7. After the pretest had been administered, advanced EFL learners had 8 sessions of explicit teaching and practicing the critical reading strategies such as annotating, questioning, summarizing, and inferencing. Then, they had their posttest and finally the mean scores of pre and post-test critical reading were compared through Paired samples t-test which led to the rejection of the null hypothesis. At the end of the instruction, Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) was administered with the repeated measures designed to measure the retention of inferred meanings after an interval of 2 weeks. By applying one way ANOVA, the researcher could claim that there was a significant difference between VKS pre-test and VKS immediate posttest, and there was no significant difference between VKS immediate and VKS delayed post-test. The participants' knowledge remained largely the same during the two weeks interval. Therefore, teaching critical reading strategies affirmed to have a significant effect on advanced EFL learners' vocabulary retention.

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Abstract-This study attempts to explore the effect of studying authentic texts in classrooms on reading comprehension and motivation of intermediate language learners. To address this issue, a quantitative study was conducted on 24 language learners from language teaching institutes. Participants were divided randomly in two groups: authentic group and simplified group. Four online authentic texts with appropriate readability were selected for the authentic group. Simplified group received the simplified form of those texts. A Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ) containing 18 items on eight domains of motivation was also conducted to measure authentic groups' motivation before and after reading authentic texts. Using independent samples t-test and mean of gain scores of groups on pre-post tests revealed that reading authentic texts has positive effect on the reading comprehension of intermediate students. Conducting the motivation questionnaire on the authentic group showed positive changes on four domains of motivation.

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