In the light of research into the key part played by motivation in L2 acquisition, and more especially in view of the ideas presented in section 7.1.1, it is clear that reading needs to be a purposeful and meaningful activity, not an excuse for playing with words. In the past, too many textbooks have made use of contrived texts as a vehicle for specific points of grammar, paying little or no attention to either learners' interests or their purpose in reading. Although, in the early stages of learning a foreign language, it is very difficult to avoid presenting language that conveys information the learner already has, increasingly the language of reading materials can and should convey messages which are either intrinsically interesting or which the reader feels there is some point in reading.

Reflective task 14

One of the problems with the way most of us usually approach the teaching of L2 reading is that we limit our efforts to intensive reading of one particular text in class and all too often end up doing most of the work ourselves. Learners can only become independent readers by regularly tackling new texts on their own, while the teacher's role must be to show learners how to generalize reading strategies so that they become better equipped to tackle any text they come across. Moreover, exclusive use of short texts, the staple diet of reading in class, means that learners never get the opportunity to acquire those reading strategies which are associated with longer texts:

• collecting disparate facts and details in order to judge the whole text;
• linking parts of a text with each other;
• interpreting aspects of a text in the light of the whole piece.

The corollary of this, of course, is that learners must come to treat texts on merit, showing certain pieces less respect than they might normally feel inclined to do. As suggested in section 7.2, they need to realize that it is wasteful to read everything with the same care: reading should always have a purpose and not every purpose requires that all words are understood.