The question of difficulty cannot, however, be divorced from the need to present learners with opportunities to interact with authentic language. There has been a lot of work done on this question in the field of applied linguistics, in particular discourse analysis. The consensus is that meaning is not contained in texts, but is a function of discourse, which is the result of the reader's interaction with the product of the writer. Consequently, authenticity does not reside in the text itself but in the interaction of reader and text; a (genuine) text can only ever be authenticated as discourse by a reader (Widdowson, 1980).

However, the reader's reconstitution of the writer's message cannot be complete or perfect, since individual realities never coincide and the writer's assumptions about the reader rarely match exactly the reader's level of information, awareness of conventions of communication or knowledge of linguistic rules. This mismatch of intention and interpretation is what produces 'communicative dysfunction' (Widdowson, 1980: 23). The successful reader, the one who avoids excessive dysfunction, is the one who can reconstitute the writer's interactive discourse from the textual clues provided.

Some writers on L2 teaching insist that communicative reading requires 'authentic texts', by which is normally meant texts not specifically produced for language learners, and that we should grade exercises, not texts, and encourage selective reading strategies.

ACTIVITY 2

With regard to adaptation of texts, Johnson's (1981) research on ESL and native English readers shows that where L2 learners face a text with a foreign cultural background, adapted texts are better understood than unadapted ones, while comprehension of texts with a native cultural background is the same for both adapted and unadapted passages. This suggests L2 readers will only need adaptation on texts for which they have no background knowledge, while unadapted texts are more likely to be accessible to common text attack strategies, provided some cultural background is sketched in (see Module 7, section 7.2).

ACTIVITY 3

It is frequently assumed that syntactical simplicity (short sentences, reduction of multiple-clause sentences) makes texts easier to read. In fact, 'simplification' or adaptation can perversely make texts more difficult to understand, as the inevitable distortion of language and diffusion of information often lead to a lack of cohesion and readability; short, 'choppy' sentences, in particular, cause the relationships and meanings revealed by the formation of complex sentences to be lost. More specifically, in the process of simplification the original network of redundancies, repetitions, cross-references and discourse markers often disappears or is altered. In view of this, if a text is to be simplified, one needs either to rewrite it in such a way as to make its rhetorical structure more obvious to the reader, or else to start afresh with a 'simpler' version of the original content (Widdowson, 1978).

Mindful of these issues, one might therefore offer the following advice to teachers editing L2 texts for their learners:

• simplification should only be attempted where a text is deemed to be too 'dense' for the learner;
• a simple but very effective form of editing is to create sub-divisions with appropriate headings, as in a newspaper article;
• where length is a problem and sections are removed, appropriate links should be written in to ensure continuity;
• attention must be paid to the important role played by redundancy in the original text: a degree of redundancy ought to be retained as it creates a context for informed guessing and helps to develop extensive reading ability;
• it is particularly important to retain such textual features as indicators of contrast (in English: 'but', 'although', 'however'), sequence markers ('first', 'secondly', 'finally') and markers of significance ('most importantly', 'above all');
• the use of the passive should be kept to a minimum and its use in subordinate clauses should be avoided altogether;
• only use negation where it is essential;
• only use pronouns where the referent is obvious, otherwise repeat nouns;
• the use of tenses, especially at lower levels, should be consistent and, where possible, limited to simple forms;
• in languages which use indefinite words and phrases to introduce sentences (eg, in English, 'these', 'that', 'it'), the syntax can be rather opaque: 'The fact that these social conditions are by any standard unacceptable must not be ignored' might be rendered more simply as 'One must not ignore these unacceptable social conditions';
• with lexis that is deemed too difficult, but where rewriting would be too complex or lengthy a process, try using L2 synonyms in a marginal note (see, for example, Text 17, 'Karla'); only when this is not feasible, should an L1 gloss be given;
• when subordinate clauses are used, sentence length is often a major difficulty for L2 learners, so one of the most effective means of simplification is to shorten sentences and to reduce the use of subordination; however, it is important not to remove these difficulties altogether since students need to learn to cope with such typical features of authentic texts;
• final proof-reading for continuity is essential as longer texts often contain internal cross-references and there are frequently issues of sequentiality to consider.

ACTIVITY 4