Reflective task 16

For fluent reading with understanding to take place, students need to read texts that activate and build on structures, or schemata, which already exist in their mind (cf 7.1.4). The only way to achieve this is to offer learners a wide range of reading material that focuses on their immediate interest and knowledge or expertise. Plunging first-year students straight into texts in French on cultural theory, into nineteenth-century German novels or texts on Spanish economic history is to place unfair demands on developing L2 readers. Intellectual content clearly cannot be ignored but, initially at least, extensive reading must not move too far from learners' natural sphere of interest.

On this point we would do well to take note of a survey by Yorio (1971) which showed that 65% of students found fiction 'easy', 63% found textbooks 'easy', while the corresponding figures for newspapers and magazines were only 34% and 26%. This is explained as follows: most novels and stories have a storyline which helps readers to predict and to link their predictions to past cues; textbook style is didactic and material is therefore carefully graded; most newspapers, on the other hand, are more concise, dense and lack gradation, while magazines, in particular, use a lot of jargon and non-standard language. These findings should serve to remind us of the fact that, in spite of the downgrading of literature in foreign language teaching in the UK, many L2 readers find much imaginative literature more accessible than the semi-technical journalistic reports of environmental issues or the socio-political pieces teachers feel obliged to use when covering certain topics on the language syllabus. (Typical examples of these can be found in the text corpus - eg Text 6 ('Destination Gridlock') and Text 5 ('It's unthinkable'). We need to bear this in mind when planning reading schemes or encouraging language students to read more extensively. However, 'literature' in the early stages should be understood in its broadest sense to include not just short stories by respected writers of the 'canon' but also examples of 'low-brow' literature, such as:

• adventure stories;
• detective novels;
• children's literature;
• sports and leisure publications;
• general interest magazines;
• student magazines;
• comics;
• special interest websites (eg German cycling sites, Spanish horse-riding sites, French stamp-collecting sites, etc, etc).

See Day and Bamford (1998: 96-106) for a discussion of the pros and cons of the various sources.

The key point is that extended reading must seek to be so pleasurable and/or informative on a subject of interest that there is no conscious focus on the act of reading, for there would seem to be an inversely proportional relationship between fluent L2 reading and awareness of being involved in the activity.

At first sight, extensive reading of self-selected 'light' materials such as those mentioned above might seem to have little place in a university language programme that seeks to engage students in challenging academic work in the foreign language. However, there are very sound reasons for promoting extensive L2 reading of this kind:

• it gradually prepares students for demanding L2 texts by first encouraging them to read widely with more accessible texts;
• it develops automatic word recognition or sight vocabulary;
• it expands learners' general vocabulary;
• it promotes fluent processing of text;
• it develops positive attitudes to L2 reading;
• it increases L2 readers' confidence.

These are all fundamental requirements if students are to be expected to read L2 academic texts effectively. The last point is especially significant as the initial L2 reading experience for an increasing number of first-year modern language undergraduates is a demotivating one and as a result they soon convince themselves that they cannot read academic L2 texts and turn to translations and L1 alternatives.