Abstract-Most specialists in the field of foreign language reading consider reading as an interactive process between the text and the reader's prior knowledge. Therefore, the activation of prior background knowledge for an effective comprehension is very important. It is generally agreed that the pre-reading phase is the stage where we can help this interaction and activation take place. There are different strategies and techniques which could be applied to make sure of this interaction and to achieve the final goal of reading, i.e. comprehension. In this study, we focus on the pre-reading phase and the impact of three pre-reading techniques (the brainstorming, the kwl (what I know, want to know, learned), and the pre-questioning techniques) on reading comprehension. 125 high school students, both boys and girls, studying pre-university in Tarom, Zanjan, participated in the study. They were assigned to four groups: one control group and three experimental groups for each of the three pre-reading techniques. The results of data analysis indicated that all the experimental groups that used the pre-reading techniques did significantly better in their comprehension than the control group which received no technique. Meanwhile, the KWL group exceeded the other two groups in their performance.

Abstract-Considering speech act formulas as one tenet of pragmatics has been one primary aspect of research domain in the recent years. The current study probes whether proficiency level plays any part in implementing request and apology speech acts, with special focus on Iranian English Teaching Applicants (ETA). To calculate participants' pragmatics performance, two Discourse Completion Tests (DCT) were administered, i.e. a multiple choice (MDCT) and a written form (WDCT), each of which was comprised of 10 request and 10 apology situations. MDCT was adopted from Birjandi and Rezaee (2010), and WDCT was adopted from Jianda (2006), and Olshtain and Cohen (1990). Participants of the study were 157 (81 males and 76 females) English teaching applicants studying in several language centers in Iran. After homogenizing the participants, Pearson product moment correlation was run to detect the relationship between two proficiency level groups' (i.e., high-score and low-score) proficiency scores and their request and apology realization. The resulting data revealed that different proficiency level did not produce any significant differences in request and apology speech act production. Accordingly, proficiency level may not be an influential variable in request and apology realization. The results of this study can inform English instructors and practitioners.

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