Module 7

Understanding and Developing Reading 
in a Foreign Language

This module is divided into the following sections:
 
Outcomes

Author of this module

Introduction

7.1	 Understanding reading theory
7.1.1  Lessons from L1
7.1.2  A question of reading or language?
7.1.3  Word recognition and memory
7.1.4  Schema theory
7.1.5  An interactive reading model

7.2	  Flexible approaches to reading
7.2.1  Skimming
7.2.2  Scanning
7.2.3  Intensive reading
7.2.4  Extensive reading

7.3	  Improving reading speed  

7.4	  Tackling syntax

7.5	   Processing vocabulary
7.5.1  Ignoring unfamiliar vocabulary
7.5.2  Accessing unfamiliar vocabulary
7.5.2.1  Formal guessing
7.5.2.2  Contextual guessing
		7.5.2.3  Glossing
		
7.6  Working with whole texts
7.6.1  Text organization
7.6.2  Sentence-level features
7.6.2.1  Cohesion
7.6.2.2  Coherence markers

7.7.  Extensive reading
7.7.1   The importance of extensive reading
7.7.2   Challenge and reality of language learning at university
7.7.3   Motivated and flexible readers
7.7.4   Research findings
7.7.5   Extensive reading and vocabulary
7.7.6	What to read
7.7.7	Using dictionaries
7.7.8	Implementing a reading programme
7.7.9	Reading and language teaching in higher education 
	
7.8.  Conclusions

7.9   Assessment task

7.10 Commentary on reflective tasks

References

Recommended further reading

Text bank

ACCREDITATION INFORMATION
Those who are intending to count work on this module towards their university’s postgraduate programme, certificate or diploma in teaching and learning, or equivalent, are advised that sections 7.1–7.6 and 7.8–7.10 (including the assessment task in 7.9), are to be considered core material, while section 7.7 is extension material.

Outcomes
By the end of this module you should be able to:
•	appreciate the relative importance of language competence and reading ability in the development of L2 reading;
•	explain the role of schemas and background knowledge in L2 reading;
•	distinguish different reading purposes and ways of reading L2 texts;
•	employ certain techniques to improve students’ reading speed;
•	identify practical ways to help students process unknown words in an L2 text;
•	devise exercises to raise students’ awareness of how texts are typically organized;
•	use a range of tasks to help students understand textual cohesion and coherence at sentence level;
•	explain why extensive reading is important in language learning and set up an extensive L2 reading scheme for your department.

Author of this module
John Klapper is Director of the Centre for Modern Languages and Professor of Foreign Language Pedagogy, University of Birmingham. He is a trained teacher, a member of the ILT, a HEFCE National Teaching Fellow and from 1997–2001 co-directed the FDTL-funded DOPLA project. His current research interests are language teacher education, factors predictive of success in foreign language learning and the development of undergraduate language competence. He has published on different aspects of the learning and teaching of foreign languages, including teaching methodology, content-based learning, L2 reading, and has produced various commercial materials for the teaching and learning of German and Russian. 

Contact: j.m.klapper@bham.ac.uk

Introduction
One of the problems facing anyone wishing to discuss the topic of reading in a second or foreign language (L2) is that, by its very nature, it is a solitary activity and many consider it the least teachable of ‘the four skills’, something which learners ‘develop naturally’, as it were, in the course of acquiring a second language. This is doubtless partly a legacy of the grammar-translation approach, one of the basic assumptions of which was that, given a mastery of the vocabulary and grammar of L2, a learner will automatically and consistently be able to transfer this linguistic ability to reading any unfamiliar text. Unfortunately, approaches to language teaching that have concentrated on developing listening and speaking skills have compounded this general neglect of reading, with the result that the products of current GCSE, ‘AS’ and ‘A’ level courses have tremendous problems coping with the substantial L2 texts they are confronted with on degree programmes. This represents a major challenge to all involved in the L2 teaching process and requires, above all, a re-assessment of the role played by reading in that process.
	In this module we will be concerned first with theories of reading, both in L1 (first language) and L2. We shall then look in detail at ways in which students  can be helped to develop strategies for processing L2 texts and for coping with specific textual difficulties. Finally, we shall look at the crucial theme of extensive reading. 
There are numerous points of crossover with Module 8, and ideally the two modules should be worked through consecutively.

7.1.  Understanding reading theory
There has been an increasing amount of attention paid in recent years to L2 reading, much of it drawing heavily on the findings and theories of L1 reading research.

7.1.1  Lessons from L1
Theories of L1 reading have traditionally fallen into one of two categories. Reading has been seen as either:

a)	a ‘bottom-up’, ‘data-driven’ or ‘text-driven’ process that emphasizes the text’s role in providing input through decoding, or letter and word recognition; 
or:
b)	a ‘top-down’, ‘concept-driven’ or ‘hypothesis-driven’ process, in which learners make samples and predictions on the basis of their prior syntactic and semantic knowledge. 

The inadequacies of this simple dualism have become clear and a more balanced consensus has emerged which suggests readers make use, often simultaneously, of all sources of linguistic knowledge (orthographic, syntactic, lexical and semantic), drawing more on one particular source when another proves problematical – for example, using context to compensate for difficult lexis. We shall return to this so-called ‘interactive’ position in section 7.1.5 below.
Following Smith (1982) it is possible to identify four distinct characteristics of reading:

1.	Reading is purposeful: we always have a reason for reading, and it is in fact this intention of the reader’s that determines meaning; if we have no purpose in reading (as often happens in the foreign language classroom), we bring little understanding to the text and it will therefore be meaningless.

Reflective task 1

Consider how reading purpose might affect one’s understanding in the following circumstances:
a)	A student has no interest in politics and his teacher gives the group an article on forthcoming local elections. 
b)	You want to go to the theatre and are reading a collection of reviews in the newspaper.
c)	You have bought a self-assembly desk and are reading the instructions.
d)	A primary school pupil is reading a text out loud in front of the whole class.

2.	Reading is selective because we only note what is relevant to our purpose at the given moment. 

Reflective task 2

Try to think of three types of everyday text this might apply to. Click on ‘Commentary’ for some suggestions.

3.	In reading, we anticipate: on a macro level by building assumptions about overall content, and on a micro level by predicting what is likely to come next in the passage. It is in this sense that Goodman (1967) calls reading ‘a psycholinguistic guessing game’, a non-conscious activity in which we repeatedly formulate hypotheses about what is likely to come next and modify these in the light of what actually turns up, simultaneously forming new hypotheses. 

Reflective task 3

Consider the following extract from Text 5 (‘It’s unthinkable’):

Imagine a small island with an established but pressured agricultural base and a faltering industrial heartland. There's widespread affluence and, on the surface, people appear content. Deeper examination, however, produces some disturbing facts about the situation of the youngest in the population: over a third of the children are living in relative poverty, over a quarter of murder victims are children and the only people who can legally be hit are minors.
	It has the highest teenage pregnancy rate and highest infant mortality rate in the European Union. Added to this, it has one of the highest child conviction rates and 75% of the children who leave non-parental care do so with no formal qualifications at all.

What macro and micro reading processes are at work here? Click on ‘Commentary’ for feedback.

4.	Reading is based on comprehension: understanding meaning is integral to, rather than consequent upon reading.

Reflective task 4

Read the following short text:

Consequently there can be no correlation whatsoever since it defamiliarizes the essentially familiar. In accordance with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language is seen as a superficial embellishment of deeper processes of consciousness.

How much of the text did you understand? What difficulties did you have and why? Click on ‘Commentary’.

A number of important points follow from these general characteristics: 

•	Meaning does not depend on particular words; what we remember of what we have read is the meaning attributed to the words, not the actual words themselves. 

•	During the reading process the reader is also constantly seeking to reduce uncertainty about meaning by rejecting erroneous interpretations. (See the notes in ‘Commentary’ on item 3 above.)

•	Comprehension does not entail identifying or examining all the information contained in a text, but involves sampling it, using the minimum of information required in order to verify or modify one’s predictions about the text’s content. (This is an approach we are especially likely to adopt when reading an article on a topic we are very familiar with.)

•	Reading also involves the reader interacting with the text, employing not only the visual data on the page but also a range of other information which she/he brings to the text: knowledge of a language’s structures, spelling rules and other conventions, as well as knowledge of subject area –  an important topic to which we shall return below. In short, understanding a text means making sense of it in the light of what we know. (This clearly applies to the ‘Sapir-Whorf’ text above.)

•	Reading is thus very much an active process: meaning does not lie in a text waiting to be absorbed passively, rather we have to try to ‘open up’ a text by bringing meaning to it. 

7.1.2  A question of reading or language? 

Reflective task 5

Before you read the next section, take a few moments to consider how you would respond to the following questions. You might find it helpful to jot down a few notes to focus your thoughts:

a)	What differences are there in the way you read L1 and L2 texts? Can you explain these differences?

b)	When reading a foreign language text, which is more important in promoting comprehension: knowledge of the target language or knowledge of the particular subject matter?

c)	How important are general reading strategies, of the type you might use when reading your mother tongue, compared to  knowledge of the target language?

A key issue in reading research is whether, for learners, L2 reading is a reading problem as such or whether it is more a language problem. In other words, is poor reading in L2 due to poor reading ability in the mother tongue, or is poor L2 reading the result of inadequate knowledge of the foreign language? There is a full discussion of this topic and of relevant research in Alderson (1984), on which the following summary is based.
On the first view, L2 reading is seen as a question of getting learners to transfer reading ability from L1 to L2. Those who are proficient in L2 but who still read slowly and with poor comprehension are employing bad reading strategies. Therefore the challenge for the language classroom is to teach appropriate reading strategies. Furthermore, if reading strategies can be transferred readily to L2, it might be more efficient to teach those strategies in L1. A variation on this view is that poor L2 reading is due to incorrect strategies for reading that particular foreign language, strategies which differ from the strategies for reading L1. For example, English readers will process L2 German using a subject-verb-object word order and will have problems when they encounter German object-verb-subject word order. This refinement of the view that L2 reading is a question of reading suggests that reading strategies are language-specific and L2 learners have different processing strategies for L1 and L2. Mother-tongue reading strategies will transfer readily where languages are similar, but where they are very different, transfer from L1 to L2 will have a negative effect. 
Research backing for this first hypothesis is rather thin. There does, however, seem to be quite a bit of evidence to support the second position, namely that what matters in reading comprehension is  knowledge of L2. Studies suggest that L2 students at a low level of competence are unable to use their good L1 reading strategies in L2 reading simply because of their lack of proficiency in the foreign language. A crucial extension of this line of thinking is that there is a ‘language competence ceiling’ which prevents good L1 readers from using their reading ability effectively in the L2 and forces them to resort to poor reading strategies. The conclusion seems to be that there are two types of poor L2 readers: (a) poor L1 readers, and (b) good L1 readers who are unable to transfer their L1 ability to the L2 because of their problems with L2. 
These ideas provide an interesting comparison with Cummins’ (1979) ‘threshold level of linguistic competence’ which represents the crucial stage of linguistic development for bilinguals. Readers cannot hope to read as well in L2 as they can in L1 until this threshold level is reached. However, this threshold  is not some absolute measure but is likely to vary depending on different factors. For example, the more demanding the task a learner has to perform, the higher the threshold is likely to be. Conversely, the level is quite likely to be reduced if the learner possesses a high degree of ‘conceptual knowledge’, or knowledge of the particular subject area. Support for this position comes from research in which induced background knowledge enabled L2 readers to use language decoding which was otherwise unavailable to them, thus showing that the competence ceiling is relative and can be overridden.
The tentative conclusion that can be drawn from this research work is that L2 reading is more of a language problem than a pure reading one – at least for lower levels of L2 competence. At upper intermediate and advanced levels the distinction between L1 and L2 reading is greatly reduced and the picture remains much less clear: it may be that at these levels of linguistic proficiency L2 reading is as much if not more of a reading problem.
 
7.1.3  Word recognition and memory

Reflective task 6

Read the following two texts as quickly as you can:

1.	On the third day of the match immediately preceding the First Test in Faisalabad, there was an explosive moment on this tour of extreme sensitivity when Caddick blew up at a poor decision by Akhtar Venkataraghavan, the Pakistani umpire, who gave the batsman, Mohammad Azharuddin not out, even though the latter was clearly playing no stroke.

2.	On the first day, Mr Badger knocked once on Mr Pig’s door and Mr Pig ignored him. On the second day, Mr Badger knocked twice on Mr Pig’s door and Mr Pig shouted ‘go away’. On the third day, Mr Badger knocked three times on Mr Pig’s door and Mr Pig came out and chased him all the way back into the woods.

What was the difference in your reading of these two texts?
 Which was easier to read and why? Click on ‘Commentary’ for some feedback.

Whether in L1 or L2, effective reading depends on the reader’s ability to recognize words very quickly, if not automatically. Words which are automatically and accurately recognized by readers are called their ‘sight vocabulary’. L1 reading research (eg Harrison, 1992) suggests that as fluent readers’ eyes move over a text, they look at or ‘fixate’, almost all the printed words but move easily over them, missing out occasional words, although rarely more than two consecutive ones. By contrast, poor readers rely on the slow sounding out of letters or syllables, called ‘phonemic decoding’, a tactic also adopted by fluent readers when they come across words which do not belong to their sight vocabulary.
	For Stanovich (1992: 4), good word recognition or a large sight vocabulary is a crucial part of good comprehension, but it is not on its own enough. Automatic recognition promotes so-called ‘lexical access’ which is the (again automatic) process of remembering a word’s ‘phonological representation’ and its meanings, which includes both semantic meaning and syntactic meaning, or how the word is being used in the particular context. Where lexical access is less than automatic and the reader has to focus consciously on spelling and meaning, a greater burden is placed on memory and reading slows.
	A common experience when reading dense or complex text with several words that do not belong to our sight vocabulary, is that by the time we reach the end of a sentence we have forgotten what was said at the beginning. Adams (1994: 854–7) argues that we hold the phonological representations of words in working memory and interpret them while we are reading or in the brief pauses which occur at the end of a clause or sentence. In so doing, readers ‘work out the collective meaning of the chain of words in memory and that meaning’s contribution to their overall understanding of the … text’ (Adams, 1994: 857). Where there is phonological overload and we cannot hold parts of a text in our working memory long enough, then our understanding of the text breaks down.

7.1.4  Schema theory

Reflective task 7

Read the following opening paragraph:
The prelude to Christmas and the dawn of the real new millennium produced little good cheer. In the subcontinent, life bans for Mohammad Azharuddin and Ajay Sharma, and continuing investigations by Sir Paul Condon's team of ‘sleaze-busters’ cast a pall every bit as bad as the evening smog in Faisalabad.

Can you guess what this text is about? Try reading the next section:
In England, Mark Ramprakash's search for pastures new, which seems to have been going on for ages, again made the tabloids. In Australia, West Indies suffered the humility of sound drubbings by the all-conquering Australians, despite the arrival on the scene of Brian Lara's new girlfriend. Even the hacks were involved in an outbreak of dog eating dog.

Any the wiser? If not, read the third paragraph:
In the case of the hackle-raising among the hacks, the Daily Telegraph's Michael Henderson was the prime player. Michael writes well, if not always with the keenest insight into the game. He speaks his mind and he should be admired for that. But his judgements are sometimes unnecessarily harsh. When his targets are players, such as Ian Salisbury or Graeme Hick, his views are tolerated at least by colleagues, although some may wish for a kinder way of describing failure. When he picks on a venerated former plier of the same trade as himself, no longer in a position to answer back, such as E. W. Swanton, the fur tends to fly. Several pieces in The Guardian and one in The Times gave Michael a fair old roasting.

If you still cannot work it out, read the fourth paragraph:
Stories that Henderson's original obituary of Swanton, written fittingly in his capacity as cricket correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, suffered a severe case of the spike may or may not be true. Certainly no appreciation under Henderson's by-line appeared. Since then, his determination to get his views into print have surfaced in the December issue of a cricket magazine (yes, there are others besides The Cricketer). The opportunity presented itself when a book, paying homage to Swanton, was published.

The chances are that, unless you are a cricket fan, it will have taken you up to here to realize the text is about cricket. Imagine, then, how much more difficult it would be for, say, a Chinese learner of English to make sense of the text. The text illustrates very well how background  and ‘inside’ knowledge of a topic can radically change the experience of reading, a key issue for foreign language teachers to bear in mind when selecting texts. 
	Some of the most significant research into psycholinguistics and reading over the past 25 years has centred on the role which background knowledge or ‘schemata’ (singular ‘schema’) play in helping readers deal with larger units than those processed in slow, literal decoding. This is a topic which has major implications for the teaching of L2 reading. (See also Module 8, section 8.2.5, on ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ processing of texts.) 
	For a long time the sentence was considered by linguists and reading specialists to be the most important unit for linguistic description and analysis. The principal concern was with how readers associated the string of words (surface structure) with its semantic representation (deep structure). Gradually the focus of research has moved away from the sentence towards the way in which the reader contributes to the text and relates the knowledge encoded on the page to previously acquired knowledge. Schemata are cognitive structures which incorporate generalized knowledge about objects or events (Anderson et al,1978). As a reader processes a text, ‘slots’ within these structures are ‘instantiated’ or filled with information from the text. The schema that will be brought to bear on a particular text depends on the reader’s ‘primary cultural reference group’ (Wilson and Anderson, 1986: 34), on his/her sex, race, religion, nationality and occupation. While reading, readers monitor their comprehension by seeking correspondences between what they know and what the written message tells them. However, if the readers’ schemata are substantially different from the writer’s, there is a danger they will misinterpret the passage, distort meaning and try to fit the text’s propositions to their own schemata.
	Effective readers, it has been established, deal with as large a linguistic unit as they can, processing phrases rather than individual words and often sentences rather than phrases. This ‘chunking’ of information and concepts which a well-developed schema makes possible, ensures more essential material enters long-term memory, while less essential material is discarded. The process causes the text’s message to move in directions anticipated by readers, confirming their expectations of the text and providing reassurance. In this way, schemata not only promote faster reading, they also, more importantly, help readers to recall things they have read but forgotten. 
It has also been suggested (Carrell, 1983b) that besides schemata relating to the content of texts, there are schemata for the form and structure of texts which provide knowledge of various types of rhetorical organization – for example, the normal ingredients of simple stories or folk tales and other organizational conventions (see section 7.6 below; for an example of an exercise to exploit this, see Module 8, section 8.3.3). 
	Schemata have been shown to be crucial in L2 reading comprehension (Carrell and Eisterhold, 1983; Carrell, 1983a). Background knowledge, in particular, enhances global comprehension of L2 texts. However, with some L2 learners the required schemata for a lot of the texts they have to tackle may be either wholly absent or, at best, poorly developed – the result of a lack of experience of life in general, and of the foreign culture in particular. In order to avoid the resulting slowness in developing reading for meaning, or possible misinterpretation of a text’s message and a consequent return to decoding, the teacher needs to establish background to the text, to help fill in inadequate schemata and to establish cultural context (see Module 8, sections 8.3.1–8.3.2). 

7.1.5  An interactive reading model 
Rapid or automatic recognition of words allows the L2 reader to free up attention to apply simultaneously his or her knowledge of the subject, general background knowledge and expectations regarding the likely development of clauses, sentences, paragraphs and whole texts. However, the interaction of these higher-order comprehension processes posited by schema theory requires a lot of the mind’s processing capacity. Consequently, if a reader has to devote conscious attention to word recognition or decoding, the processing of higher-level elements in the construction of meaning is impaired. In beginning readers, comprehension can be even more severely disrupted as readers engage in the slow, cumbersome process of alternating between non-automatic, conscious decoding and the construction of meaning (Samuels, 1994: 821–2).
	It is therefore important to recognize that providing background information on a text and previewing its content are even more crucially important for less able language learners than for proficient L2 readers. Although the former’s problem tends to be that their reading breaks down at the word level, to deprive them of content preview makes their task doubly difficult, since it is very demanding to have to tackle both linguistic and cultural codes at the same time (Carrell and Eisterhold, 1983). If, on the other hand, the semantic content is conveyed to them, they are free to concentrate on the vocabulary and structures that express that content.
	In the same way that low-level readers can benefit from higher-level strategies, fluent readers rely to a large extent on low-level identification of forms to support their top-down semantic predictions. As Eskey (1986:14) points out, it is precisely the fluent reader’s ability to process language automatically and in fairly large amounts that allows the conscious mind to devote itself to the overall question of meaning.  Good decoding in a reader is therefore a cause, not a result of fluent reading (Eskey, 1988:94), as top-down theorists used to assume. Proponents of this ‘interactivist’ view believe, moreover, that as the proficiency of good readers increases, they do not become less concerned with identification of language forms but increasingly efficient at it, at the same time as their interpretative skills develop.
	To sum up, then, a tentative consensus has emerged in L2 reading theory. The meaning of a text is reconstructed through a constant interaction between the information obtained through bottom-up decoding and that derived from top-down analysis, both of which rely on various types of prior knowledge and information-processing skills, and at all levels of language proficiency these skills are interactively available to process and interpret texts.

A distinction is sometimes made between reading ‘skills’ and ‘strategies’. The former relate to the motor skills of early reading, to decoding, or the (bottom-up) ability to recognize word shapes and patterns; the latter denote (top-down) approaches for getting at meaning through context, which are influenced both by the reason for reading and the type of text being read. In sections 7.2–7.6 we shall explore a number of strategies that promote more effective L2 reading. 

7.2.  Flexible approaches to reading
Many L2 learners find it difficult to suppress the desire to understand everything in a text, to accept that with many pieces of L2 writing they can get away with using only the minimum of syntactic and semantic clues to meaning. It is curious that many learners feel guilty about adopting such tactics, when they already employ them in English, even though they may not always be aware of the fact.

7.2.1.  Skimming 
Skimming denotes quick reading to get the drift of a passage. It is not only a valid initial technique for accessing a text, a preliminary to subsequent, more detailed work on the text, but also a method for training the reader to be less dependent on word-by-word processing, to reduce eye movements and take in larger chunks of text at a time. The latter needs a great deal of practice on non-complex texts, ideally with no new vocabulary in them. It can be promoted through such exercises as:
•	identifying which of a list of topics is discussed in the text;
•	letting one’s eyes catch only the adjectives or adverbs or nouns (especially effective in German) in three different texts and deciding which text deals with topic ‘x’; 
•	choosing a suitable title for the text from a given selection.

An example of a skimming exercise is the following task relating to Text 10 (‘Film Guide’):

Read the reviews through quickly and find which of the films being shown on Saturday deals with the following:

Topic	Film	
Making films in the early days of cinema		
Actor finds it difficult to give up career		
Spy adventure in exotic setting
		
Deadly tropical insects take over small US town		
Western starring John Wayne
		
US policeman exposes corruption		
Girl goes back in time under hypnosis		

7.2.2  Scanning
This is usually mentioned in the same breath as skimming and denotes the rapid processing of text for the purpose of locating specific information. Training should ideally begin in the early stages of language learning, with such exercises as finding as quickly as possible how many times a particular word appears on a page. The practice should continue through more advanced levels of linguistic proficiency, when a quite valid way to approach a new text would be first of all to get students to try to identify which section refers to a specific historical event or a particular economic problem. For example, to use the film reviews again:

Read quickly through the film reviews and find which film(s):
•	are accompanied by hard rock music;
•	contain scenes of violence;
•	are set in the United States.

7.2.3  Intensive reading
Intensive reading is the approach most often adopted when working on L2 texts in class. This type of reading, which seeks to grasp the whole message, including both main arguments and supporting detail, encourages careful, literal processing of text. At times it is an essential approach to reading but it carries with it the danger that learners come to accept it as the only way to read. When it is used, therefore, the teacher needs to make a point of clarifying the purpose and emphasizing that it is an inappropriate, occasionally even inadequate approach to adopt on certain types of text. See Module 8 for a range of approaches to intensive reading in class.

7.2.4  Extensive reading
This involves reading long texts, usually ones chosen by students themselves. It is an important topic and has a whole section devoted to it below (see 7.7).
	One of the major concerns for any HE language teacher today must be the amount of reading in L2 that the average undergraduate engages in. There is abundant anecdotal evidence to suggest that reading has become the poor relation of HE language study. Many students, especially those on ab initio programmes, find the prospect of reading anything more than a few pages in the foreign language too daunting to contemplate. The reasons for this are varied: we are generally a society much less orientated to the written word; well-intentioned changes in public examinations have meant secondary curricula now place less emphasis on the study of lengthy texts; and, perhaps most significantly, the undergraduate curriculum has changed, with the growth of modular degrees and of options open to both linguists and non-linguists.
	However, reading remains a key source of rich exposure to L2, and one of the goals of every undergraduate language programme must be for students to become fluent readers across a range of text-types and topics. As teachers, we need to think about ways of providing a supportive environment for this and must encourage students at every opportunity to read outside the curriculum and beyond the prescribed minima.
Although section 7.7 has been designated extension material for this module, the topic should not be thought to be of less significance than other forms of L2 reading. Indeed, the section might serve as background reading for a departmental workshop on ways to encourage students to embrace the principle of extensive reading.

Reflective task 8

Find four texts in your target language suitable for use as comprehension texts. Each should lend itself to practising one of the four types of reading explained above. For each text, devise two exercises that make explicit to students the different approach to reading required.

7.3  Improving reading speed
There are a number of basic points that need to be considered when seeking to improve L2 learners’ reading speed.
First, reading speed and comprehension are closely linked. As seen in 7.1.3 above, slow reading can often lead to poor understanding because it places too great a burden on the reader’s memory: by the time a reader has reached the end of a multiple-clause sentence or a long paragraph, he or she has often forgotten the beginning (although it is not clear whether people understand readily because of the speed at which they read or whether they read rapidly because they understand easily). Any work on improving reading speed must therefore avoid challenging texts.
Second, most people would agree that we read more quickly when we are enjoying what we are reading; forcing students to read texts that hold little interest for them personally is likely to make the task of reading a chore. (Extensive reading has a major role to play here.) 
Third, one thing we sometimes forget when talking about reading speed is the legibility of the material. Unclear or densely printed text is difficult to read and can slow reading speed considerably. It also contributes to low motivation to read.
	Fourth, word recognition is fundamental. This can be practised through rapid phrase and word recognition exercises that get learners to react quickly and accurately to the appearance of lexical items, in order to help develop their visual image of selected key words. For example, simple matching exercises such as the following where the learner has to spot the pair as quickly as possible:

strahlt strafen stahl strahlend strahlt strahlen

Gras Graf Grab Graben Gras Grad Grat, etc. 

The same can be practised with short phrases (e.g. adjective and noun, pronoun and verb, and so on). The important thing is that there should be plenty of examples for learners to work through as quickly as possible.
	To summarise, the four prerequisites for work on increasing learners’ reading speed are:
•	material must be readily comprehensible;
•	it must be interesting to the reader;
•	it must be clearly legible;
•	it should include regular word recognition activities.

Beyond this we need to take account of the fact that reading is not always a strictly linear process and that effective readers do not process text word by word. When we read, our eyes tend to jump across the page, taking in text in chunks or ‘fixations’. It is generally acknowledged that the fewer fixations one makes, the more effective one’s reading is. 
	Furthermore, we tend to chunk text in sense groups. Thus, to take Text 17 (‘Karla’) as an example, a beginning reader might chunk the first sentence like this:

Morgens / um sieben / ist / für Karla / die Welt / noch / in / Ordnung. / Da / sitzt /  sie / gemütlich / am / Frühstückstisch, / allein / übrigens, / verzehrt / zwei Scheiben / Toastbrot, / ein / hartgekochtes / Ei / und / etwas / Schinken.

A more fluent reader, on the other hand, might break the sentence up as follows:

Morgens um sieben / ist für Karla / die Welt noch in Ordnung. / Da sitzt sie gemütlich / am Frühstückstisch, / allein übrigens, / verzehrt zwei Scheiben Toastbrot, / ein hartgekochtes Ei / und etwas Schinken.

The chunking that takes place will depend on both familiarity with the language (see section 7.1.3 on sight vocabulary) and on accustomed reading style: if fixations in L1 are frequent, they are unlikely to be radically different in L2.
	In L2, beginning readers tend to process text word by word, but they need to be encouraged from the start to improve their reading habits by practising chunking on easy texts. Computers have a role to play here as they can be programmed to present language on screen in phrases, either by revealing the text chunk by chunk or moving through the text at a certain speed and highlighting it phrase by phrase. More conventionally, all the phrases in a fairly basic text might be bracketed together or separated by spaces. For example, Text 8 (‘Recommendations aux résidents’) might be presented as follows:

Les étudiants   sont responsables   du mobilier   et du matériel   mis a leur disposition   dans le logement   qui leur est attribué.   Ce mobilier   ne doit   ni être démonté,   ni être déplacé.

Another technique is to chunk a text in narrow columns to get students into the habit of reading in sense groups. For example, using the same text, one might present students with the following on the overhead projector and gradually uncover each line at an appropriate pace:

Les étudiants
sont responsables
du mobilier
et du matériel
mis a leur disposition
dans le logement
qui leur est attribué.
Ce mobilier
ne doit
ni être démonté,
ni être déplacé.

A further approach is to employ a text mask. Students can hold a piece of paper or a bookmark above the line they are reading and move it down as they read. This helps readers to focus on the line beneath the mask, while allowing the eye to move forward freely to the next line, something not possible when using a mask held below the line. Nuttall (1996: 59–60) suggests using a cut-out mask of the type below:

Figure 7.1 Mask to promote reading speed
(Adapted from Nutall, 1996: 60)

This reveals one line and the start of a second, encouraging the reader’s eye to move down lines without a break. Since the mask blocks out the rest of the page, it prevents eyes being distracted by other features on the page and allows readers to control and steadily increase their reading speed.
	Of course, encouraging students to improve their reading speed presupposes they and you know what it is at present. It is a good idea to establish this early on, using a relatively straightforward text to find out how many words per minute they can cover with good understanding. After a few weeks or months the teacher can measure any improvement in speed. It is important that the teacher recommends a text for this follow-up measurement so students can be sure the level of difficulty of the text is approximately the same as the first time round. In periodically checking their reading speed in this way, students can benchmark their own performance and check progress. The teacher does, however, need to emphasize that progress may not always be linear: text difficulty is not easy to replicate and if one is tired, or if one is reading about an uninteresting subject, speed may suffer.

7.4  Tackling syntax
The most fundamental syntax-attack strategy, required by all L2 readers, is the ability to identify linguistic forms; eg, noun phrases, principal verb parts,  participial and prepositional phrases, subordination and, closely linked to this, an awareness of what forms commonly follow on from these.
	Nuttall (1996: 82–6) explains an approach to sentence orientation in English based on simplification. With appropriate modification this can be readily applied to most European languages. It involves the following stages:
•	identifying cohesive elements (eg ‘one’, ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘these’, ‘such’, ‘they’, ‘their’, ‘his’, ‘her’, ‘the former’, ‘the latter’, etc) and working out what each refers to (see section 7.6.2.1 below on ‘Cohesion’);
•	rewriting the sentence as two or more sentences by removing conjunctions such as ‘and’, ‘but’, etc;
•	locating nouns and removing inessential items from noun groups (eg the underlined noun phrase in ‘The UN spokesperson noted that the objection raised by the Russians to the proposed revival of the US space defence initiative should not endanger the talks scheduled to begin next week in New York’ might be simplified to ‘the (Russian) objection’);
•	establishing what propositions are implied by any nominalizations (ie the process of making a noun group out of a clause). For example, in the sentence ‘The removal of the Russian objection to American plans to continue with research into space defence has greatly improved the prospects of further progress in this round of talks’ contains the unstated propositions that (a) the Russians object to American research, and (b) the objection has been removed. Identifying and working out underlying propositions such as these are key aspects of getting to grips with complex sentences;
•	locating verbs and, by means of the ‘who/what does what?’ technique, identifying subject and object. This requires an awareness of which verbs are transitive, which take an indirect object, which can be followed by an infinitive, etc, and of the different characteristics of main and subordinate clauses. This is an especially helpful technique with complex noun phrases which in many languages can act as the subject or object of a main verb (as in the example above: ‘The removal….into space defence’) or constitute a subordinate clause, eg ‘That the Americans had already provided numerous reassurances about their research seemed to offer little comfort to the Russian delegation’.    
•	finding out where any remaining clauses or phrases fit in, using the same ‘who/what does what?’ technique. 
The procedure is a very deliberate one and may even seem laborious. It is probably most suited to intensive reading with a teacher, but as a training in how to approach difficult syntax it can also serve extensive L2 readers well when syntactical complexity threatens to defeat them. For proficient L2 readers it should become an increasingly instinctive procedure.
	Clearly, the precise details of syntactical structures and their unique interrelationship will vary from one target language to another and readers of this module will be well aware of those features in their target language that are likely to cause learners particular difficulties. For ideas on how to support learners in coping with these difficulties, you are referred to the following language-specific manuals: German: Coles and Dodd (1997); French: Jubb and Rouxeville (1998); Italian: Oriolo et al, (1995); and Spanish: Sancho et al, (2000).

Reflective task 9

Choose a text in your target language suitable for use as a comprehension passage with a second-year post-‘A’ level group. Underline all the difficulties you think post-‘A’ level students would have with the syntax of this text. Now practise applying the six-stage procedure outlined above. 

7.5  Processing vocabulary
Approaches to the learning and teaching of vocabulary are the subject of  Module 10. Here we shall be concerned more specifically with the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and the L2 reading process.
	The scale of the problem facing L2 learners in acquiring sufficient vocabulary to be able to read with relative freedom becomes clear when one considers that in a typical 12-year period of schooling, L1 learners encounter 100,000 different word meanings (Nagy and Anderson, 1984), while L2 learners are unlikely to come across more than 3,000–4,000 using standard textbooks. In an effort to bridge this gulf, traditional (behaviourist-influenced) views on the role of reading in L2 learning emphasized language practice through ‘simplified’ texts and graded readers. Subsequently, however, there was a move away from controlling the lexis and structures of reading material towards discovering the type of difficulties L2 readers usually came up against, with a view to helping them develop appropriate strategies.
	
7.5.1  Ignoring unfamiliar vocabulary
Learners need convincing that they can very often understand texts containing several unfamiliar words. It is therefore important for teachers to demonstrate that redundancy in texts is common and nothing to feel uneasy about, by themselves ignoring words during intensive reading classes. There are a number of possible approaches here:

•	A useful exercise for training learners to ignore inessential words is described by Nuttall (1996: 64-6). It involves presenting learners with a cloze-type exercise in which a number of words are deleted from carefully selected, easy-to-read paragraphs; this shows students that they do not need to analyse every word on the page, and helps to mitigate the intimidating effect unknown lexis has on many L2 readers. 
•	A variation on this is to use complete texts with difficult words that students do not need to understand in order to get at the gist. 
•	Alternatively, students might be given a text, with questions relating to items of difficult lexis featured in the text, and asked to answer as many questions as they can without using a dictionary. 
•	To vary this, one could limit dictionary use to a certain number of words and tell students they must isolate (for example) the ten words they feel they need to look up in order to answer the questions on the text.

7.5.2  Accessing unfamiliar vocabulary
Work on L1 vocabulary acquisition among children shows that reading and vocabulary learning are complementary activities (Sternberg, 1987). Similarly, L2 reading research indicates that vocabulary develops incidentally through meaningful interaction with written text (Coady, 1993) and that guessing from context is crucial to this process. 
In discussions of vocabulary acquisition a distinction is often made  between ‘formal’ and ‘contextual’ guessing. 

7.5.2.1  Formal guessing 
This denotes reliance on resemblance to a word already known to the reader, while any guessing which does not is contextual. 
When they encounter unfamiliar words, students need to be encouraged to try to recognize those parts of the word they do know to help them make a guess at the overall meaning. This ability to make formal guesses can be developed through work on the following:
•	word roots;
•	the formation of compounds;
•	the role of affixes in building up words, especially suffix and prefix meanings;
•	recognition of morphological clues, especially in inflected languages;
•	identification of grammatical category (nouns, adverbs, adjectives, etc). 
For example, in German, one might present students with a list of common verbal prefixes and their meanings and subsequently provide practice in recognizing them in context:

ab-  away; off : 
abfahren to depart, absteigen to get off, abstellen to put down or to turn off 

an-  to / onto; starting something; doing something partially:  ankommen to arrive, anlaufen to start up, anbrennen to catch fire or to singe

auf-  up; on:  
aufstehen to get up, aufsetzen to put on

aus-  out; off:	
ausgehen to go out, ausmachen to switch off

Alternatively, students might be invited to explore adjectival suffixes:

-arm (nouns)  poor in, and -reich (nouns) rich in: 
kalorienarm low in calories, nikotinarm low-nicotine, vitaminreich rich in vitamins, kinderreich with lots of children 

-bar (verbs)  often equivalent of English ‘-able’ and ‘-ible’:  
fahrbar mobile / on castors, trinkbar drinkable

-en / -ern (nouns)  denotes something made of the material of the original noun (-ern forms take an umlaut):  
bronzen bronze, stählern made of steel

-feindlich (nouns)  hostile towards, and -freundlich (nouns)  friendly towards:  
frauenfeindlich misogynous, umweltfeindlich harmful to the environment,  hundefreundlich welcoming dogs, kinderfreundlich welcoming children 

-frei (nouns)  free from, and -los (nouns) without, like English ‘-less’: 
alkoholfrei non-alcoholic, autofrei car-free, zeitlos timeless, endlos endless

7.5.2.2  Contextual guessing
We tend to learn the meaning of the vast majority of L1 words by using the surrounding context, without reference to a dictionary or teacher. The process by which this occurs is a gradual one: on first encounter we get an initial approximation of meaning based on the immediate context and then refine the meaning as we meet the word on subsequent occasions in different contexts. In some cases, when we do not meet the word very frequently, our understanding of it may be imprecise or even inaccurate and it is these words we might eventually look up in the dictionary to reassure ourselves. However, in the majority of cases we are able through extensive reading to assimilate meaning from context.
	Nuttall (1996: 72) gives an example of an exercise that promotes the conscious use of inferencing which can be used to illustrate this process to students. Students are shown the sentences below, one at a time. After reading each of them, they make a note of the information they have about the meaning of the word ‘tock’, before going onto the next sentence:

1.	She poured the water into a tock.

2.	Then, lifting the tock, she drank.

3.	Unfortunately, as she was setting it down again,
          the tock slipped from her hand and broke.

4.	Only the handle remained in one piece.

This exercise can be readily adapted to your own particular target language, and indeed will be even more effective in L2. But it is still a good idea, especially with less fluent L2 learners, to do the exercise in L1 first. 
	Students can gain a number of key insights from doing an exercise such as the one above. They can:
•	acknowledge that, depending on their purpose for reading, certain unfamiliar words are less crucial to the text and can be ignored;
•	recognize that reaching for the dictionary every time is counter-productive and unnecessary;
•	learn that working out meaning from context, especially on first encountering a word, is about getting at probable meaning or gaining a rough idea of what a word means;
•	come to accept probability and not want absolute certainty every time they meet a new word;
•	see that context clues can help them make basic guesses about the sort of meaning an unfamiliar word might have (ie whether it is a verb or a noun; whether it is a positive or a negative attribute, etc);
•	realize they can achieve an acceptable approximation of meaning  based on context and that they should resist any temptation to stop reading when they meet unfamiliar words since valuable clues are frequently found later in the sentence or in the following sentence;
•	learn that the more often they meet a word, the more precise their understanding will become and that this is the way to move from probability to certainty.
	One way to train students to get at meaning from context is to give them practice on text extracts containing unfamiliar words and to offer them possible definitions to help them exclude those for which there is no textual evidence. For example:

Dehydrating diets are completely unrealistic – quite apart from their bad effect on the kidneys –  for the weight increases again with the first cup of liquid taken.

‘Dehydrating’ means: 
a)	starvation  b) crash  c) depriving of water  d) eating irregularly

Clues: ‘increases again with liquid’ (ie not food); ‘kidneys’ (need liquid)
Answer: c  (a and b are possible but less likely).

Alternatively, one can provide a text in which a key word is repeated and replace it by a meaningless word. Students have to choose the most likely meaning. For example: 

Safety in the Home

Don’t overload your ZONGS. Make sure no liquid or food gets on or is placed near ZONGS. Keep young children well away from ZONGS as they are likely to stick some object into the ZONG. Always turn ZONGS off when not in use and at night be sure to switch off and unplug from the ZONG all electrical equipment.

ZONG means:  a) electrical point     b) washing machine  
                         c) television set        d) CD player

See Grellet (1981: 32–42) for a range of exercises of this type.

	A similar guided approach to inferring meaning from context is to present students with a blanked text and to offer them alternatives for each missing word so they can draw on contextual clues to choose the most appropriate alternative. For example, consider the first paragraph in Text 6 (‘Destination Gridlock’):

A lonely row of concrete pillars stretches endlessly into the smog of a grimy Lima dawn in the middle of the ____ (1) Avenida Aviación. They are flanked by a constant stream of cars, mini-vans and buses spewing curls of black ____ (2). The decade-old pillars represent the ____ (3) plans of a socialist government to connect the capital's outlying 'cones', or low-income neighbourhoods, with a massive, high-speed electric train. Wracked by a corruption ____ (4), the project was shut down just before President Alberto Fujimori came to power, chaining Peru to neoliberal ____ (5) and a doctrine of privatization.

Which words best fit the blanks?
1. a busy	b empty 	c quiet 
2. a smoke	b exhaust  	c dust 
3. a brilliant  b successful  c unfulfilled
4. a scandal	b rumour    	c president
5. a rules 	b reforms 	c recommendations 

	To help develop students’ ability to infer meaning, it is a good idea to give them a cloze exercise in English and then to try something similar in L2. Such an exercise forces learners to draw on whatever contextual clues are available to them. For example, mother tongue English students would cope easily with most of the following in which every seventh word is blanked mechanically:

The United Kingdom has the highest ____ pregnancy rate and the highest mortality ____ in the EU. Added to this, ____ has one of the western world’s ____ conviction rates amongst children and 75% ____ the children who leave non-parental care do ____ with no formal qualifications at all.

	Once they have done this, learners could be given a similar text in L2 with the regular gaps replaced by deliberately difficult L2 vocabulary. For example, to use a German example from Text 17 (‘Karla’):

Da sitzt sie mit den alten Menschen bei einer Tasse Kaffee und hört geduldig zu, wenn sie sich über die Missstände des Lebens beklagen. Das reicht von Einsamkeit, den Nachbarn, deren Kinder und ihrer Rücksichtslosigkeit bis hin zum Desinteresse der Verwandten. Um die Einsamkeit ein wenig zu beleben, organisiert Karla F. in der Gemeinde Kaffeekränzchen  und Seminare für alle zum Thema Freizeitgestaltung.

Students at intermediate level will struggle with most of the highlighted words and the contrast with how they access meaning in the first (L1) text with their problems understanding the second can be extremely instructive. Nevertheless, the teacher can first point out how much of the German text can still be understood and can prompt a few strategies to get at the meaning of the ‘difficult’ lexical items.
	All these exercises are best done with a teacher, as students need to focus on the reasons for the choices they are making, not just the answers. They need to be critical and questioning in their approach to texts, to learn to interrogate the context and eventually to transfer this approach to their own independent reading.
	Guessing effectively from context is also influenced by readers’ ability to recognize linking techniques, since clues to meaning are often not restricted to the clause or sentence in which the word occurs, and students need to get used to reading ahead to the following sentence for help in ‘attacking’ an unknown word. Reference back and forward within a text can be achieved by any of the following:
•	demonstratives;
•	pronouns;
•	comparison;
•	synonymy, especially in apposition;
•	summary words;
•	hyponymy;
•	nominal and verbal substitution. 
There is no doubt these phenomena frequently represent a barrier to comprehension but given the wide variation of ways in which a writer can achieve backward and forward reference, it is not clear to what extent formal practice can help L2 readers. Those interested in pursuing the theme are referred to Grellet (1981: 44–7) and Nuttall (1996: 86–94), although of course the examples presented there will need to be adapted to the characteristic referencing conventions of your particular target language.

7.5.2.3  Glossing
It is claimed by many, although little documented in research literature, that for most learners the practice of providing selected vocabulary in the margin or, indeed, of learners doing the same for themselves by writing meanings in above the line (glossing, as it is often called), has no significant effect on vocabulary learning. Clearly, unglossed texts are more natural and are closer to ‘real’ reading, encouraging learners to look for contextual clues rather than relying on supplied definitions, while glossed texts interrupt readers’ flow and concentration. However, at low to intermediate levels of L2 proficiency the main objective must be to give learners the opportunity to read intrinsically interesting texts and thereby to help them catch the L2 ‘reading bug’, something which owing to their chronic shortage of vocabulary they cannot do without the aid of glossing.

Reflective task 10

Find target language texts suitable for use as comprehension passages at each of the following three levels:
•	learners one year into an ab-initio course (c. 400 words);
•	first-year post-A level learners (c. 700 words); 
•	final-year post-A level learners (c. 1000 words).

Identify in your chosen texts:
a)	all the words that students could readily ignore when reading the text for general meaning;
b)	words whose meaning they might access via formal features and the procedures that would help them do this;
c)	words whose meaning they could guess through contextual clues.

If your chosen text does not offer many instances of (c), consider how you might adapt it to provide more contextual clues for learners. 

7.6  Working with whole texts
Besides learning to tackle syntax and vocabulary, L2 readers need to appreciate that the unit of meaning is not the sentence or the paragraph, but the whole text. They need to recognize that there are features belonging to the organization of texts that, inevitably, occur in sentences but whose function can only be understood by seeing the patterns of logical connection crossing sentence boundaries. These features are conventions that a reader can expect an author writing in a shared native language to use, and similarly that an author can expect a reader to be familiar with. They can be broadly divided into organization at the level of the text and at the level of the sentence. Once again, English will be used here for illustrative purposes, but the points in this section are almost certainly applicable, with suitable adaptation, to most European languages.

7.6.1  Text organization
It is important for non-native speakers to gain some awareness of text conventions in the foreign language. Seeing how ideas are typically arranged can help the reader to make predictions about the content and likely development of a text. 
The following aspects of meaning organization at the level of the text are especially relevant:
•	conventions of text layout;
•	typical openings and closures;
•	how texts are structured or organized, including the logical relationships between paragraphs;
•	how arguments within a paragraph or a whole text move from the general to the specific, or vice versa; 
•	how sentences are organized and how they relate to each other;
•	the use of connectors or markers to signal the sequence in which events occurred or the author’s attitude towards the facts;
•	how comparison and contrast are normally employed.

Exercises which promote an awareness of such text organization include the following: 

1.	Completing skeleton outlines. For example, with the first three paragraphs of Text 5 (‘It’s unthinkable’): 

Read the text and complete the following outline of its contents:

Small island / child poverty / __________ / child conviction rates / ________. 

UN Convention / basic standards / start of C20th / __________  / child labour / children invisible / seen as __________.

 NSPCC / Victorian times /  Save the Children / free __________ and _________.

This can help to make the structure of a text more visible to students.

2.	Extracting the main information from a text by completing gapped sentences to reproduce the general sense. This is another good way to help students see the structure of a text more clearly, as the line of argumentation, the narrative or the description is pared down to the absolute minimum. For example, Text 6 (‘Destination Gridlock’) might be used as follows:

Read the whole text and then complete the following skeleton summary. What do you notice about the way the author structures the article?

1.	A row of concrete pillars symbolize the failure of the Peruvian socialist government’s plans for ……………………. in Lima. 

President Fujimori rejected the scheme as an example of the …………………………of the ………..…… and pushed ahead with privatization measures. 

2.	But now Peru’s Greens want …………………………..

3.	Most Peruvians are not aware that the government commission responsible for the transport scheme has in fact ……………….

3.	Expanding on a skeleton outline (closely linked to the subject matter of a text that students have recently studied). In this slightly more challenging task, learners have to create a piece of continuous prose, focusing once again on the way the outline structures the information to be conveyed. This is also a useful technique for developing essay-writing skills.

4.	Discussing the possible order or likely chronology of a jumbled text. For example, with Text 7 (‘Bangladesh’), one could simply re-order the six headed sections and ask students to restore the chronology. This exercise also works well with clearly structured narrative texts.

5.	Dividing a text into paragraphs. Taking Text 12 (‘The issue’) as an example, one might remove the questions and paragraph divisions and  ask students to divide the text into paragraphs.

6.	Understanding the role of paragraphs. Using Text 12 again, the teacher might remove the questions but retain the paragraphs, and ask students to work out the questions which originally went with each paragraph (intermediate students could be given a jumbled list; advanced learners could attempt the task ‘cold’). This exercise would help sensitize learners to the role of paragraphs and topic sentences and could lead neatly on to the next task.

7.	Locating key or topic sentences. Identifying the principal sentence of each paragraph in long or complex texts is an especially important skill for L2 readers as it helps them to orientate themselves within the text and to process the text more quickly. This can be practised by getting students to underline each topic sentence in a multi-paragraph text and then discuss the reasons for their choice. 

8.	Supplying the missing topic sentences from each paragraph in a text. This is a very challenging exercise and can only be done with fairly straightforward texts in which topic sentences are short and to the point, preferably appearing as either first or last sentence in the paragraph.

9.	Identifying generalized and specific points. For example, with Text 7 (‘Bangladesh’), students might be asked to draw up a table like this:

General 	Specific	
Deep cultural and linguistic roots	Bangla language dates from 7th century; literature from 11th century	
Religiously distinct in region	Buddhist, not Hindu until 12th century; since then Islam has dominated	
Autonomous until 1757	Resisted Indian expansion and Portuguese raiders; British soldiers under Robert Clive victorious at Plassey/Polashi	
British left large landowners in control. 	Zamindars owned vast estates; upper-caste Hindus	
Bhadralok were money collectors, lived in cities, etc. 	Bhadralok also Hindus; collected money from Muslim peasants; formed a new middle class, etc.	

10.	Re-ordering the different points of a text using a skeleton outline of its structure. For example, with a text about the introduction of central computerized recording of school exam marks in Argentina, students might be set the following task: 

Before you read the text, look at the following summary of its arguments and try to work out a logical order for them:

Resistance to greater use of IT
Elimination of human error and corruption
The Argentinian government’s standpoint
Negative views of civil liberty organizations
Presentation of the proposal
Arguments in favour from schools
The likely outcome
Argentinian scepticism towards the project
Positive reaction from universities

Now read the text and see if your version matches the original. Here is the actual structure:

Introduction 	Presentation of the proposal
Part One 	
A	Resistance to greater use of IT
	B 	Argentinian scepticism towards the project
C	Negative views of civil liberty organizations
Part Two	
A 	Arguments in favour from schools
B 	Positive reaction from universities
C	Elimination of human error and corruption
Conclusion 
A	The Argentinian government’s standpoint
B 	The likely outcome

11.	Understanding how descriptive texts are organized. Descriptive texts typically move from:
•	outside to inside (top-down) or inside to outside (bottom-up);
•	detail to overall appearance, or vice versa;
•	a specific instance to a generalized statement, or vice versa. 
Students could be given an extract to illustrate each of these and asked to complete a grid such as the following to show which approach characterizes which text:
 
TEXT	A	B	C	D	E	F	
Top-down
							
Bottom-up
							
Detail to overall appearance							
Overall appearance to detail							
Specific instance to general statement							
General statement to specific instance							

12.	Linking sentences in such a way as to establish a logical connection. A very useful exercise to sensitize students to this issue is to get them to link several short sentences to create a coherent paragraph. For example, the first paragraph of Text 12 (‘The issue’) might be used as follows:

Read the following text and try to use the link words below it to connect the sentences to each other. You can either leave them as separate sentences or merge sentences, as you see fit:

Tina Betts, 30, works freelance. She has no prospect of joining an employer’s pension scheme. She is an ideal candidate for a stakeholder pension. Tina says: ‘I had a personal pension before I went freelance. I stopped paying the £40 a month. I wasn’t sure what my earnings would be’. She could now probably afford to put around £75 a month towards her pension. She’s also saving up to buy a house. She isn’t sure she wants to commit herself to regular monthly contributions. Her previous pension did not allow her to stop and restart payments without penalties. A stakeholder allows her to vary the payments if she wants to.

although  since  because  but  therefore  while  whereas

See Grellet (1981: 44–52) and Nuttall (1996: 110–11) for extensive lists of useful exercises relating to text organization.

7.6.2  Sentence-level features 
Apart from organizational features at the level of the text and paragraph, L2 learners also need to understand how meaning operates within and between individual sentences. Two topics are especially important here: cohesion and coherence.

7.6.2.1  Cohesion 
In all languages there are a range of cohesive devices that are used to link clauses and words in a non-explicit manner:

•	Substitution words
In English this would include the use of ‘one’ (as in ‘this one’ or ‘that one’), or the use of the verb ‘to do’ to indicate another verb (e.g. ‘He wanted to give up and so did I’). 

•	Forward and backward referencing markers
Anaphoric (backward-pointing) reference markers in English are often seen in the use of pronouns (‘it’, ‘this’, ‘that’) to refer back to a previous clause or sentence, while examples of cataphoric (forward-pointing) markers are: 
‘In what follows the development of the housing problem will be outlined...’
‘This is what the working party proposes...’. 

•	Ellipsis, as in the following sentence where the verb is not repeated, is a major difficulty for low to intermediate L2 learners, in particular. For example:  
‘I brought the food and Peter the drink.’

•	Synonyms: 
‘The hut stood by the riverside. The old shack had been built in the 1950s.’
‘The 1946 Bentley was a classic of its kind. The sleek exterior was matched by the noble vehicle’s smooth engine.’

•	Hyponyms: students can have difficulties recognizing that the more general word denotes the same thing or person as the specific noun. For example:
‘De Gaulle was not interested in co-operating. The President did not feel he could trust the Americans on this issue.’

‘Vehicles were not normally allowed onto the estate. But visitors’ cars were occasionally seen and on Mondays delivery lorries arrived. Moreover, when the children returned for the weekend, the roar of motorbikes could often be heard.’

Lexical cohesion is often sporadic and there may be few examples of it in the relatively short texts we typically use in the language classroom.  Rather than being something we can practise systematically, therefore, it is probably a feature of written L2 to which learners should be alerted whenever it is met during intensive work in class. They can then be encouraged to find and note further examples in their independent reading. 

7.6.2.2  Coherence markers
Coherence markers indicate to the reader that:
•	an example is about to be given (‘thus’, ‘for the purposes of illustration’, ‘to illustrate this’, ‘for example’, ‘by way of example’, ‘to show what is meant by this’);

•	a sequence is being established (‘subsequently’, ‘then’, ‘after that’);

•	something is being expressed in a different way (‘in other words’, ‘that is to say’);

•	the argument is being more tightly focused (‘We shall first consider…’, ‘Turning to….’, ‘As far as ….. is concerned’);

•	things are being compared (‘similarly’, ‘just as’, ‘in the same way’);

•	more information is about to be provided (‘furthermore’, ‘besides’, ‘moreover’);

•	a cause is being suggested (‘therefore’, ‘hence’, ‘with the consequence that’);

•	the argument is being summarized (‘in short’, ‘all in all’, to sum up’). 

At a simple level this could be practised by giving students pairs of sentences and alternative connectors to choose from. For example: 

Link the following pairs of sentences using one of the words in brackets:

The car’s broken, I’ve got flu and now my CD-player’s been stolen. Everything is going wrong. (in short, furthermore)

I thought Alan was responsible for the broken window. I discovered it was his brother. (subsequently, to start with) 

We had too much work to do. We didn’t have time to visit the theatre. (consequently, nevertheless)

 At an intermediate level, the teacher could provide a text with the coherence markers missing and get students to choose an appropriate one from a selection. For example, consider the following extract adapted from Text 11 (‘Diet’):

In the following text decide which of the three alternative connectors best fits the context: 

These men and women are the victims of their own ignorance and lack of discipline. The story is usually the same. _____  (therefore, thus, however) in their youth they were active and fond of sport; their appetites were good; they ate anything and everything and their stomachs digested whatever they consumed. _____ (however, nevertheless, consequently) with increasing age and prosperity, physical activity diminished and they gave up sport; _____ (moreover, all the same, as a result) they drove instead of walking. Meanwhile the eating went on, bigger and better than ever. The once slim youngsters cooked for their children, tasted as they cooked, cleaned up their children's left-over puddings and cakes. _____ (in other words, furthermore, in the first place) they ate at the cinema and while watching television, and they drank more alcohol. _____ (all the same, besides, consequently) they put on weight, at first with resentment, then with resignation. _____ (on the other hand, to sum up, nevertheless) it is clear that less exercise + more eating = excess weight, with all its attendant maladies.

At a more advanced level, the teacher could place a randomized list of missing coherence markers at the end of the text for students to choose from.

Reflective task 11

Find two discursive texts in your target language, each of about 1,000 words, one suitable for intermediate learners, the other for first-year post-‘A’ level students. Re-read section 7.6.1 and for ONE of these texts devise three exercises to help students understand:
(a)	how the text is structured;
(b)	how the author develops his/her arguments;
(c)	how the paragraphs are organized.

Reflective task 12

Now take the text you did not choose in the previous task and:
(a)	underline all the cohesive devices used by the author;
(b)	box all the coherence markers;
(c)	devise an exercise similar to those presented in 7.6.2.2 to promote students’ awareness of textual coherence.

7.7  Extensive reading

7.7.1  The importance of extensive reading
Research into proficiency gains in university language learning (eg Coleman, 1996) show that the greatest boost to most students’ language development  comes with the period of residence abroad. Extensive  exposure to authentic exemplars of the target language is clearly a major factor here. It is an assumption of this module that for the same reason the next best way to increase one’s L2 proficiency is to read extensively in it. By extensive reading I mean reading longer texts, primarily for pleasure and at a level of difficulty appropriate to the student’s current level of proficiency in the target language.
	The reason why extensive reading is so important and why we should all be promoting it amongst our students is neatly encapsulated by Nuttall in two diagrams that show, first, the vicious circle in which slow L2 readers get stuck, and second the virtuous circle that characterizes the good L2 reader:

Figure 7.2 Two reading circles
(Adapted from Nuttall, 1996: 127)

7.7.2  Challenge and reality of language learning at university

Reflective task 13

(a)	Consider how much reading in L2 a typical post-‘A’ level first-year student of modern languages does in your institution. How do they respond to the volume of L2 reading expected of them? Are they offered any support for this task? 
(b)	How does the volume of L2 reading undertaken by undergraduates today compare with the amount you did as an undergraduate? What are the implications of this for language teaching in HE today?

The greatest challenge facing students of modern languages is how to cope with the substantial amount of L2 reading they are expected to get through. Sadly, the failure to prepare students adequately for this task by teaching them text-attack strategies and approaches to extensive reading, means many of them simply cannot cope, and they consequently seek support and solace in English translations of key texts, whether literary, historical or socio-political. It is one of the weaknesses of foreign language  teaching in much of British higher education that it does not do enough to build students’ confidence in tackling longer texts by introducing practice in extensive reading on subjects students are familiar with and are interested in. The result is that increasing numbers of modern language undergraduates, especially the weaker ones, fail to do much extensive reading in L2 at all. The situation is made still worse by the modular structure of many degrees, which means that students, including almost all ‘non-specialists’ on institution-wide language programmes, are often not even enrolled on courses that require any substantial reading in L2.

7.7.3  Motivated and flexible readers
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

Think for a moment about the texts you usually employ in class. How long are they? How active are students during work on the text? What is your role?

	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. 

7.7.4  Research findings
For a long while now, work on reading in L1 has supported the notion that we learn to read by reading. In the L2 context, the benefits of reading, especially extensively, are even more pronounced. Research evidence to support this and a range of other positive effects of extensive L2 reading are summarized by Day and Bamford (1998: 34–8). Of the 12 studies discussed here, seven looked at the impact of extensive reading on L2 reading and all reported gains. There were also significant gains in affect, general language proficiency, vocabulary and writing. The findings relating to affect are especially important as they show the strong motivational benefits of extensive L2 reading programmes, with successful and enjoyable experiences motivating learners to read still further and more extensively. 
In summary, these studies suggest the most effective way to produce fluent, flexible and linguistically proficient L2 readers is to provide a great deal of varied material, in the belief that it is better to read two texts once each rather than one text twice.
	
7.7.5  Extensive reading and vocabulary

Reflective task 15

Consider how you learned the words you know in your principal target language (or English, if it is not your L1). How did you learn them? What role did reading play in this? And what does ‘learn’ mean in this context? (for receptive or productive purposes?) What proportion of these words would you say you learned by looking them up in a dictionary? 

Language teachers need to remind their students that they did not acquire the meanings of all their L1 vocabulary through checking the words in a dictionary or being taught them formally. The vast majority of our L1 words are learnt gradually through repeated encounters in context, with each encounter adding a shade to the meaning. L2 learners cannot hope to assimilate vocabulary as naturally as this, but extensive reading can go a long way towards improving the amount of exposure to L2 words a learner receives.
	Students must be made aware, however, that not all words need to become part of their active vocabulary and that the key is to build up a sight vocabulary (see 7.1.3) for receptive purposes. If the word is important and is therefore encountered frequently enough in context, it will gradually become more readily available to use actively. Similarly, as already discussed (see 7.5.1), students need to learn that some words can be ignored as they are not crucial to understanding the overall meaning of a sentence.
	Although graded readers are no longer as popular as they once were, it has been demonstrated statistically (Wodinsky and Nation, 1988) that they are particularly good at re-using a clearly delineated body of lexis; indeed the very requirement of ‘simplifying’ or composing a simple version of a text using a limited vocabulary forces writers to repeat words in a way which other, authentic texts do not.
	It is in this sense that Day and Bamford (1998) use the term ‘i minus 1’. With its conscious reformulation of Krashen’s (1981) well-known definition of second language comprehensible input, this term denotes texts at an (idealized) level of difficulty just below learners’ current linguistic competence. The idea is to develop a large sight vocabulary from context and thus to improve automatic word recognition. To promote learning of vocabulary from context, L2 reading materials must have a low proportion of unknown to known words and of difficult to accessible syntactic structures. Similarly, reading of such texts must be extensive so that learners can gradually become familiar with the full semantic implications of a word by meeting it repeatedly in different contexts.

7.7.6  What to read

Reflective task 16

Apart from complexity of language, what is it that makes it difficult for first-year undergraduates to read course material in L2? How important do you think personal interest is in L2 reading? What types of text do L2 learners find most accessible?

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. 

7.7.7  Using dictionaries
All students benefit from work on dictionary skills. Some can be very slow at looking up words, and finding a single lexical item can take them away from the text for anything up to three minutes – a clear deterrent to fluent reading. Preliminary work on using headwords and speed search activities in pairs are probably a good idea in such cases.
Practice at getting at the most appropriate meaning of a word from listings in the dictionary is also vital. Whole-group work on this is advisable with any group of first-year students, as it familiarizes learners with typical conventions of layout, labelling and exemplification.
	However, students also need to learn that dictionaries should be used sparingly. Constant recourse to a dictionary is the greatest enemy of  extensive reading, in particular. Notwithstanding Day and Bamford’s formula of ‘i minus 1’ (see section 7.7.5 above), one of the goals must be for students to be able to read effectively while ignoring unknown items of vocabulary or using guesses or ‘word-attack’ strategies (see section 7.5.2) to get at their meaning. It is clearly better for fluency and motivation if dictionaries can be avoided; and where graded readers with accompanying vocabulary lists are being used, it may well be possible to banish dictionaries entirely. This is highly desirable as it helps to establish in students’ minds extensive reading as a very different activity from the intensive work on L2 texts that most will be familiar with from the foreign language classroom. It is especially important that those students who feel they must look up unfamiliar words even when the meaning is not essential to understanding the immediate context, accept that this almost instinctive reaction is an inappropriate approach to extensive reading and is one they must suppress. 
One technique to develop the greater discipline needed is to limit learners to, say, two ‘look-ups’ per page. Alternatively, so as to avoid disrupting fluent reading, students might mark unknown words in pencil and then, at the end of the section or chapter, go back and look up some of them (and possibly make a note of a few key ones in a reading vocabulary book). With experience, students will soon learn which words are central to understanding and which can be passed over, thus reducing the number of items they need to look up.

7.7.8  Implementing a reading programme
A major issue is how an extensive reading scheme can be introduced into higher education language learning. Unlike in ESL programmes in the United States, it is very unusual indeed to find anything resembling a stand-alone extensive reading course in British universities (with the possible exception of isolated courses in ‘French/German, etc, for reading purposes’). The time constraints of modularized programmes, in which typically half or less of a student’s time is devoted to language study, mean extensive reading can at best become a non-accredited adjunct to a core language module. Reading here would be an optional extra, not formally assessed but maybe an element that could be taken positively into account in the case of borderline end-of-year marks. Alternatively, and less satisfactorily, extensive reading might be organized completely outside the undergraduate curriculum as an optional extra reading club, possibly linked to a departmental cultural association, that meets once or twice a week.
	There is no shortage of other ideas on how extensive reading programmes could be organized (Bright and McGregor, 1970: 65–8; Broughton et al, 1978:110–14; Bamford, 1984; Hafiz and Tudor, 1990; Day and Bamford, 1998: 83–116). Whatever form it takes, learners will more likely respond to reading books of their own choice at their own speed, rather than being compelled to conform to some uniform programme. Some system of feedback is probably a good idea, but it should be as informal as possible – perhaps an oral report in English to the rest of the group or the teacher. Or, in a free-standing reading programme, students could be asked to post short reviews of texts they have read on the department website; this could act both as feedback on reading and as a useful collection of informal blurbs to help other students select future items of interest for reading.
	An important source of information on the organization and development of programmes of L2 reading is the Edinburgh Project on Extensive Reading at the University of Edinburgh. A vast amount of work has been done here to promote extensive reading in EFL/ESL and to categorize all available reading material. Sadly, there is nothing comparable for foreign languages but much sound advice and many readily adaptable ideas can be found in Hill (1992).

7.7.9  Reading and language teaching in higher education 
Pressures of time and resources in HE foreign language teaching usually mean there is little or no scope for developing the type of L2 reading course suggested here. However, we ignore at our peril insights gained from second language acquisition research concerning the need for extensive exposure to L2. While more communicative approaches have done much to enhance the student experience of L2 learning, such gains threaten to turn out to be rather hollow if as a side effect of these practices we convey to the average classroom learner that a foreign language can be learned without massive and consistent exposure to the written word. The reluctance (and inability) of very many ‘A’-level and HE students to spend time reading extensively in the target language is not merely part of society’s general drift away from literary culture in the broadest sense, but also a direct consequence of perceptions about foreign language learning acquired during early experiences in French, German, Spanish, etc. This represents a challenge to all language teachers. With the exception of special academic reading knowledge courses, there is precious little time devoted in higher education to L2 reading, but this needs to change. We now pay considerable attention to the academic preparation of students’ period of residence abroad and quite rightly stress the importance of this element of the programme for students’ language acquisition. Why then do we not do the same to encourage and develop in a conscious way the ability to read in L2 and promote, in particular, the other side of the L2 exposure coin, extensive reading?

Reflective task 17

Complete the following chart summarising the features of intensive and extensive reading:

	Intensive	Extensive	
Class goal	Read accurately		
Reading purpose	Answer questions
Translate

	
Focus		Meaning	
Output	Often leads to written exercise (eg essay) 		
Material	Often difficult
Related to course work
Teacher chooses		
Amount		A lot	
Frequency	Once or twice a week		
Speed	Slow, deliberate		
Method	Must finish
Use dictionary		

(Based on Day and Bamford, 1998: 123)

Once you have completed the chart, you might consider using it as a means of explaining to your students the purpose and focus of extensive reading. In this way it can act as a further support to them in developing more varied text-attack strategies. (You can check your responses by clicking on ‘Commentary’.) 

Reflective task 18

Having completed task 17, consider in a little greater detail the distinguishing features of extensive reading. In what ways does it differ from the approach to L2 texts typically adopted in the classroom? Focus on at least FIVE features and try to write a sentence on each. You might like to compare your list with the one provided in the ‘Commentary’. 

Reflective task 19

Give some thought to how you might introduce an extensive reading library in your Department or School. Consider, in particular, the following issues carefully:
•	location and accessibility;
•	role of university language or resources centre;
•	materials acquisition, budget;
•	security of stock;
•	monitoring of students’ use;
•	relationship between reading programme and language curriculum;
•	involvement of other colleagues;
•	evaluation of the programme.

7.8  Conclusions
1.	We have seen that comprehension in reading occurs through the learner making predictions about meaning, finding confirmation of these predictions or altering/modifying them. The predictions are based on the schemata, the background knowledge, the reader brings to the text and on what she/he has already read of the text. It can be concluded that providing more knowledge about the subject matter of the text will improve the reader’s ability to predict more accurately. A balanced, interactive view of the reading process would require that we add to this not only knowledge of the formal features of the L2 but also the ability to decode automatically the physical representation of the language on the page. This model of L2 reading implies that as a person reads and seeks to interpret a piece of text, what the piece means depends both on an analysis of the printed words and on hypotheses in the reader’s mind. When a reader is more proficient or more familiar with the language or content of a text, reliance on text cues diminishes and the construction of meaning becomes more ‘hypothesis-driven’. However, when, as a result of difficult language or content, this higher-level processing breaks down, attention reverts to smaller units of language. Thus, it is not a question of either bottom-up or top-down processing, but rather of an alternating process. The latter may dominate as the L2 reader becomes more proficient, but at no time is the relationship anything other than symbiotic.

2.	A difficult task faces language teachers seeking to integrate these theoretical insights into their language programmes. The one thing that can be asserted with confidence is that far more extensive reading needs to take place outside our language classes, with learners reading what is relevant to their interests and needs. In class the teacher needs to exploit intensive work on L2 texts in order to develop appropriate reading strategies in the learner; he/she has to balance development of the ability to sample, predict, guess and take chances with acquisition of the basic language skills needed to carry out these higher-level activities; all with the aim of gradually weaning the learner off word-by-word processing. This is what Carrell (1988:120) means when she talks of teachers emphasizing both the ‘psycho’ and the ‘linguistic’, a neat way of summing up teachers’ dilemma vis-a-vis reading.

3.	Two of the least appreciated facts about L2 reading are: firstly, some learners are more motivated to read in L2 than in L1, since they see the former as a challenge which, if they are up to it, marks them out as different; secondly, for many learners, especially the increasing numbers enrolling on institution-wide programmes that may not offer a period of residence abroad, it is a more achievable goal to read fluently in L2 than to become a near-native speaker of the language. In promoting and justifying foreign languages for all in our colleges and universities in terms of lifelong language learning, we would do well to remember these two observations.

4.	To become a proficient performer in a second language, a learner needs varied, repeated and extensive exposure to the language. It has been calculated that one year in the secondary foreign language classroom is the equivalent of three weeks’ contact in a true language-acquisition set-up (Wilkins, 1974: 31); one ‘year’ (often, in effect, no more than 22–24 weeks) spent learning a language at university is therefore probably the equivalent of a week and a half in the target country. Classroom-based language learning is thus an input-poor environment and teachers need to do all they can to maximize exposure to L2. While teacher talk and audio and video input all have a role to play here, extensive reading is equally crucial. At lower levels of language learning there needs to be a good mix of intensive and extensive reading; then, as learners progress, sustained extensive reading should take over, not only for reasons of ‘comprehensible input’ (Krashen, 1981), but also because it improves overall language ability, it develops writing ability and it increases vocabulary. 

5.	The ultimate aim of all formal L2 reading instruction, of course, must be to shift the focus away from the (linguistic) act of reading onto the meaning of what is being read. This can take a long time to achieve, but teachers should take comfort from the fact that no reading is wasted time: the more learners read, the more they will learn to read.

7.9  Assessment task 

Consider a language module that you teach, preferably one which you convene or for which you are mainly responsible. Look through all the target language texts you use on this module (they may be textbook passages or elements of a resource pack) and write a 3,000-word review in which you consider/reflect on the following:

•	rationale for using these texts;

•	what students are supposed to learn from using them (with links to the intended learning outcomes of the module);

•	how appropriate these texts are for the level of students' proficiency in the target language, bearing in mind particularly the difficulty level of the vocabulary featured in the texts;

•	to what extent the texts offer opportunities to practise flexible approaches to reading (skimming, scanning, etc) and how the module might be re-organized to encourage this still further;

•	what opportunities exist within the constraints of the existing module to help students develop strategies to process the following more effectively: a) syntax; b) vocabulary; c) organizational features at paragraph- and text-level.

Attach to your review,copies of all the texts discussed.

7.10  Commentary on reflective tasks 

Task 2
Examples include:
•	The morning newspaper: we might just have time to glance at the headlines or check the weather.
•	The minutes of a meeting: we might read through them quickly to find what was said about a certain issue.
•	An article on, for example, the housing market in which we concentrate on the section dealing with our own region. 
•	Theatre or cinema listings when we are looking for somewhere to go for the evening.
•	Television listings when we are looking for something to watch for the next hour or so.
•	A menu to see what vegetarian options are available, etc, etc.

Task 3
On a micro level, the principle that a new point about the island is mentioned in each sentence is quickly established and we read on expecting a further descriptive element each time. On a macro level, the text deliberately encourages guesses about the identity of the country and deliberately misleads the reader, first conjuring up the image of an island in the midddle of, say, the Pacific Ocean, then suggesting a reasonably affluent place, then a violent, possibly third-world country with a high level of poverty, then telling us it is in Europe and finally revealing it to be hostile to children. With each new fact we alter our image of the unnamed island until, of course, the intended impact of the third paragraph is felt: ‘The country is the United Kingdom’.
	This text demonstrates very well what we do with almost every text we read, usually without being aware of it: we constantly anticipate, hypothesize, amend our hypotheses in the light of evidence from the text and then make further, more refined hypotheses. 

Task 4
Although most of us will understand all the words used in the text, even after we have read it a couple of times we probably will not know what it is about. If we knew what the first sentence was the consequence of, if we knew what ‘it’ referred to and if we were familiar with the hypothesis mentioned, we would have some grasp of context. It would then be a lot easier to follow the rest of the short text and we could more readily construct the meaning of the whole.  

Task 6
Clearly, the first text is likely to be more difficult to read as it features one long sentence, a number of unusual proper names, a context which is not very clear to the general reader, use of technical terms (eg ‘stroke’) whose meaning may not be obvious, and it is not easy to predict how the sentence is going to develop. The second text, by contrast, provides a clearly predictable structure and story line; it employs short, simple sentences with much repetition and a predominantly simple vocabulary.

Task 17

	Intensive	Extensive	
Class goal	Read accurately	Read fluently	
Reading purpose	Answer questions
Translate
	Get information
Enjoy
	
Focus	Words and pronunciation	Meaning	
Output	Often leads to written exercise (eg essay) 	Maybe brief oral or written feedback, but not essential	
Material	Often difficult
Related to course work
Teacher chooses	Easy
Free-standing
You choose	
Amount	Not much, usually one side A4 maximum	A lot	
Frequency	Once or twice a week	Every day if possible	
Speed	Slow, deliberate	Faster	
Method	Must finish
Use dictionary	Stop if you don’t like it
No dictionary or limited use	

Task 18
1.	Students read as much as possible, perhaps in and definitely out of the classroom.
2.	A variety of materials on a wide range of topics is available so as to encourage reading for different reasons and in different ways.
3.	Students select what they want to read and have the freedom to stop reading material that fails to interest them.
4.	Reading is usually for pleasure, information, and general understanding. These purposes are determined by the nature of the material and the interests of the student.
5.	Reading is its own reward. There are few or no follow-up exercises after reading. Perhaps at best a brief expression of how the student enjoyed the text.
6.	Reading materials are well within the linguistic competence of the students in terms of vocabulary and grammar. This may well imply the use of graded readers; but again students must have a free choice of which texts they read. 
7.	Dictionaries are rarely used while reading because the constant stopping to look up words makes fluent reading difficult.
8.	Reading is individual and silent, at the student’s own pace, and done when and where the student chooses.
9.	Reading speed is therefore as fast as the student can manage and still enjoy the text. Students should be encouraged to measure their reading speed (eg number of pages per minute) and gradually to increase their rate.
10.	Teachers explain the goals of the programme and the methodology to students, they keep track of what each student reads, and guide students in getting the most out of the programme.
11.	The teacher is a role model of a reader for students – an active member of the classroom reading community, demonstrating what it means to be a reader and the rewards of being a reader.
(Day and Bamford, 1998: 7–8, slightly adapted)

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Hafiz, F M and Tudor, I (1990) Graded readers as an input medium in L2 learning, System, 18, 31–42.
Harrison, C (1992) The reading process and learning to read, in The Reading for Real Handbook, ed  C Harrison and M Coles, pp 3–28, Routledge, London. 
Hill, D R (1992) The EPER Guide to Organising Programmes of Extensive Reading, Institute for Applied Language Studies, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh.
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Krashen, S D (1981) Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning, Pergamon, Oxford.
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Recommended further reading
Aebersold, J A and Field, M L (1997) From Reader to Reading Teacher. Issues and Strategies for Second Language Classrooms, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
This book is aimed primarily at novice teachers of a second language and focuses on teaching approaches on the type of dedicated reading courses found in many ESL programmes in the USA. Nevertheless it is of relevance to the very different British foreign language teaching context too, linking reading theory to classroom practice most effectively. It extends the approach used in Module 1 of the DELPHI programme by encouraging readers to explore their own assumptions about reading. It then shows how to select appropriate reading activities and plan reading lessons. 

Alderson, C J (1984) Reading in a foreign language: a reading problem or a language problem?, in Reading in a Foreign Language, ed C J Alderson and A H Urquhart, pp 1–27, Longman, London.
Although it obviously does not cover reading research carried out over the past two decades, this is nevertheless a very helpful introduction to the question of what makes a good L2 reader, in particular the role played by general reading strategies, on the one hand, and foreign language proficiency on the other. This accessible paper is central to the task set in section 7.1.2 above  and is well worth reading in full. 

Alderson, C J and Urquhart, A H (eds) (1984) Reading in a Foreign Language, Longman, London.
This volume of collected essays remains one of the most interesting and informative on the topic. It presents insights from experimental research and reading theory on the role of the reader, the text and interaction between reader and text. The Introduction (‘What is reading?’) and Chapter 1 (see previous item) are essential texts but there is much of interest elsewhere in the volume. The ‘Postscripts’ on each chapter seek to draw out pedagogical concerns and make especially interesting reading. 

Carrell, P L, Devine, J and Eskey, D E (eds) (1988) Interactive Approaches to Second Language Reading, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
A collection of papers on theory, research and classroom applications in L2 reading which promotes reading as an interaction of ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ processes. Some of the papers are rather specialized in their focus but well over half are of relevance to the teaching of L2 reading.

Day, R R and Bamford, J (1998) Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
The most comprehensive survey available of the topic which makes out an effective case for reading large amounts of material as a way of helping students learn to read and improve their overall foreign language proficiency. It provides ideas on how to integrate extensive reading into the L2 curriculum, select suitable materials and record and evaluate students’ progress. 

Dubin, F and Olshtain, E (1990) Reading By All Means. Reading Improvement Strategies for English-Language Learners, new edition, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.
A collection of thematically related readings including examples of different writing styles. Although aimed at ESL students, the exercises bracketing each reading provide a number of useful ideas for supporting students’ reading which will be of interest to all L2 teachers. 

Grabe, W and Stoller, F (2002) Teaching and  Researching Reading, Longman, London.
This volume, one of an interesting ‘Applied Linguistics in Action’ series,  provides an overview of the main ideas and issues in reading theory, both L1 and L2, and summarises key research studies. The book will be of particular interest to those keen to explore reading theory in greater depth and to conduct reading-related action research projects. It includes an excellent resources section.

Grellet, Françoise (1981) Developing Reading Skills: A Practical Guide to Reading Comprehension Exercises, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Even after more than 20 years this handbook, aimed at language teachers who want to develop their own L2 reading materials, remains a classic of its kind. The greater part of the book (over 220 pages) provides authentic texts and accompanying activities and exercises (all in English). However, there is also a succinct and readable introductory section on ways of reading and reading strategies, in which the author provides a very useful classification of reading comprehension exercises. If you want a quick, accessible overview, this Introduction is a must.

Hoey, M (1991) Patterns of Lexis in Text, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Those interested in finding out more about cohesion and coherence are recommended to read Chapter 1 of this book which provides a handy review of the basic work done on cohesion in English by Hasan and others. However, be warned: the rest of the book presents a (convincing) theory of lexical cohesion which becomes very detailed in places.

Nuttall, C (1996) Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language, 2nd edn, Heinemann, London.
Still the most useful and accessible book-length study of all aspects of foreign language reading. For the purposes of the present module, the first two parts of the book are the most relevant, providing well-written sections on L2 reading theory, word-attack skills and understanding discourse, although some readers may find the latter two slightly heavy going. A particular strength is the way texts in the Appendix are used to illustrate the strategies discussed in the body of the text. Also includes a full bibliography. 

The journal Reading in a Foreign Language contains numerous articles directly related to the practice of L2 reading and several key theoretical studies into such issues as extensive reading, the use of graded L2 readers, the role of vocabulary in L2 reading, etc.