But statistical results indicated no signi-ficant effect of conjunctions on subjects' reading rates. The relationship between conjunctions and language proficiency revealed that conjunctions tended to assist intermediate level subjects under different conditions, but influenced advanced level subjects only when the task completed was under time pressure. The demonstration of this program will show the general outline of this web-based course designed to help learners focus on academic lexis. The program includes vocabulary tests which enable students to gauge their Eng-lish vocabulary level and then suggests ways of helping them develop their academic word power. Each session deals with a different aspect of vocabulary learning and built-in exercises, or 'quizzes' that allow the students to test themselves and note their progress.
Students can also send messages to a vocabulary course bulletin board for online discussions.
From a teacher's perspective, the program allows tutors to view a log of the students' participation in the course and access a record of students' pro-gress. Detailed statistics can be retrieved to see which areas are most fre-quently accessed by the students and to calculate class grades for assessment purposes. Through the assessment of student performance in Nation's vocabulary levels tests at the beginning of the program, research has been conducted into the vocabulary levels of incoming students and comparisons have been made with native-speaking students in other parts of the world. In order to help the instructor monitor how students are making progress and understand what kinds of problems they are facing while working on their own reading passages, it is imperative to include such individualised assess-ments as the rating of reading materials in terms of linguistic elements and the type of question that can invite the students to indicate their knowledge of any strategies for processing texts, their ability to monitor comprehension, and their ability to adjust strategies as needed. The present study investigated the relationship between strategy use, metacognitive awareness, prior knowledge, and reading comprehension by longitudinally collecting the results of reading comprehension questions and assessments of reading materials from 27 college freshmen attending an inten-sive reading class.