Volume 20, Number 1, April 2008

Volume 20, Number 1, April 2008

Advisory and Editorial Boards Advisory Board University of Hawai‘i, USA Richard Day, Co-Editor Thom Hudson, Co-Editor Richard Schmidt, Director Jean Toyama, Associate Dean

Reading in a Foreign Language Reading in a Foreign Language National Foreign Language Resource Center College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature

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Editorial Board Charles Alderson Neil J. Anderson Cindy Brantmeier Andrew D. Cohen Averil Coxhead Julian Edge William Grabe Yukie Horiba Batia Laufer Sandra McKay Setsuko Mori Paul Nation David Qian Françoise Salager-Meyer Sandra Silberstein Fredricka Stoller Cyril Weir Eddie Williams

University of Lancaster, UK Brigham Young University, USA Washington University, USA University of Minnesota, USA Massey University, New Zealand University of Manchester, UK Northern Arizona University, USA Kanda University of International Studies, Japan University of Haifa, Israel San Francisco State University, USA Kinki University, Japan Victoria University, NZ Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Universidad de Los Andes, Venezuela University of Washington, USA Northern Arizona University, USA University of Surrey Roehampton, UK University of Reading, UK

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Editorial Staff Editors: Richard Day and Thom Hudson, University of Hawai’i, [email protected] Reviews Editor: Anne Burns, Macquarie University, [email protected] Readings on L2 Reading Editor: Cindy Brantmeier, Washington University, [email protected] Assistant Editor: Zhijun (David) Wen, University of Hawai’i, [email protected] Web Production Editor: Jun Nomura, University of Hawai’i, [email protected]

Copyright © RFL 2008

About Reading in a Foreign Language The online journal Reading in a Foreign Language (RFL) is a scholarly international refereed journal originally founded as a print journal in 1983 at the University of Aston, Birmingham, England. The journal moved to the University of Hawai‘i in 2002 under the co-editorship of Richard R. Day and Thom Hudson, and Reviews Editor Anne Burns, Macquarie University, Australia. It is supported by the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC), the University of Hawai‘i College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature, and the University of Hawai‘i Department of Second Language Studies. Reading in a Foreign Language has established itself as an excellent source for the latest developments in the field, both theoretical and pedagogic, including improving standards for foreign language reading. This fully-refereed journal is published twice a year, in April and October. The editors seek manuscripts concerning both the practice and theory of learning to read and the teaching of reading in any foreign or second language. Reviews of scholarly books and teaching materials, conference reports, and discussions are also solicited. The language of the journal is English, but lexical citations of languages other than English are acceptable. Additionally, the journal encourages research submissions about reading in languages other than English. From time to time, special issues are published on themes of relevance to our readers. Please see our submission guidelines for more information. Although RFL is a free online journal, we would appreciate your support as a subscriber. This will assist us in continuing to obtain institutional support for the journal, keeping it free of charge. Please take a few minutes to visit our subscription page.

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Information for Contributors Reading in a Foreign Language (RFL) seeks submissions of previously unpublished manuscripts on any topic related to the area of foreign or second language reading. Articles should be written so that they are accessible to a broad audience of language educators, including those individuals who may not be familiar with the particular subject matter addressed in the article. Manuscripts are being solicited in these three major categories: articles, discussion forum, and reviews. Submission guidelines, general publication policies, general guidelines for reporting on both quantitative and qualitative research are provided below. Articles Discussion Forum Reviews Features Submission Guidelines General Publication Policies Guidelines for Reporting on Research

Articles Articles should report original research or present an original framework that links previous research, educational theory, and teaching practices. Full-length articles should be no more than 8,500 words in length, excluding appendices. Additionally, each submission should include an abstract of no more than 150 words, and a list of five to seven keywords for index and search purposes. We encourage articles that take advantage of the electronic format by including hypermedia links to multimedia material both within and outside the article. All article manuscripts submitted to RFL go through a two-step review process. Step 1: Internal review. The editors of the journal first review each manuscript to see if it meets the basic requirements for articles published in the journal (i.e., that it reports on original research or presents an original framework linking previous research, educational theory, and teaching practices), and that it is of sufficient quality to merit external review. Note that RFL follows the guidelines of the fifth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association published by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 2001. Manuscripts submitted to RFL must conform to APA format. Manuscripts that do not meet these requirements are not sent out for further review. This internal review takes about 1–2 weeks.

Copyright © RFL 2008

Step 2: External review. Submissions that meet the requirements above are then sent out for blind peer review from two to three experts in the field, either from the journal’s editorial board or from a larger list of reviewers. This second review process takes 2–3 months. Following the external review, the authors are sent copies of the external reviewers’ comments and are notified as to the decision (accept as it is, accept pending changes, revise and resubmit, or reject).

Discussion Forum Short articles, usually no more than 2,000 words, in the Discussion Forum generally discuss material previously published in RFL and may also present replies by the authors to the issues raised in those comments. The Discussion Forum contents are meant to be constructive and professional exchanges about an area of foreign language reading. Discussions go through the same review process as that for full length articles.

Reviews The journal welcomes reviews of recent publications and resources focusing on a variety of aspects of reading, including research, professional development, classroom approaches, teaching texts, and computer mediated materials. Reviewers should give a clear and succinct description and provide the reader with the means of evaluating the relevance of the material to the targeted field of theory and practice. Reviews should normally include references to published theory and relevant research, and reviews providing a critical/evaluative overview of several publications that have made a distinct contribution to the field of reading research and practice are particularly welcome. Reviews of individual books or reading instructional software are generally 1,200–1,600 words in length. Reviews of multiple texts can be longer. Reviews should include the name, institutional affiliation, e-mail address, URL (if applicable), and a short biographical statement (maximum 50 words) of the reviewer(s). The following information should be included in a table at the beginning of the review: Author(s) Title Publication date Publisher Publisher City and Country Number of pages ISBN Price

Contact Anne Burns if you are interested in having material reviewed or in serving as a reviewer. Anne Burns Department of Linguistics Macquarie University Sydney Australia [email protected] Copyright © RFL 2008

Features RFL has two features, Readings on L2 Reading: Publications in Other Venues, which first appeared in the October 2005 issue, and RFL Revisited: Past Articles Today, which started in the October 2006 issue. Both features appear once a year in the October issue. Readings on L2 Reading: Publications in Other Venues offers an archive of articles published in other venues during the previous year and will serve as a valuable tool to readers of RFL. Articles may treat any topic within the scope of RFL and second language reading. Articles are organized by topic. This feature includes titles of the articles as well as brief summaries. Two additional sections include a list of books, volumes, and dissertations that treat second language reading. For more information, please contact the editor for this feature, Cindy Brantmeier, an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics and Spanish, Washington University in St. Louis. RFL readers are requested to send to Dr. Brantmeier titles of appropriate articles. Please include all relevant information such as author(s), journal, date of publication, and, if possible, a brief summary. Please send to [email protected] RFL Revisited: Past Articles Today brings past RFL articles and reprises them in current issues. In order to find articles that still attract attention, we look at the number of hits that previous articles receive. When we have identified an article, we ask the original author to comment on the article as well as to have others comment on it.

Submission Guidelines Please list the names, institutions, e-mail addresses, and if applicable, World Wide Web addresses (URLs), of all authors. Also include a brief biographical statement (maximum 50 words, in sentence format) for each author. (This information will be removed when the articles are distributed for blind review.) All submissions may be submitted in the following formats: (a) HTML files, (b) Microsoft Word documents, (c) RTF documents, (d) ASCII text. If a different format is required in order to better handle foreign language fonts, please consult with the editors. Submissions can be transmitted in either of the following ways: 1. By electronic mail: Send the main document and any accompanying files (images, etc.) to [email protected] 2. By mail: Send the material on a disk to the following address: RFL NFLRC University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa 1859 East-West Road, #106 Honolulu, HI 96822 USA

Please check the General Publication Policies below for additional guidelines. Copyright © RFL 2008

General Publication Policies The following policies apply to all articles, reviews, and commentaries: 1. All submissions must conform to the requirements of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th edition). Authors are responsible for the accuracy of references and citations, which must be in APA format. Manuscripts may be rejected if they do not meet APA requirements. 2. Manuscripts that have already been published elsewhere or are being considered for publication elsewhere are not eligible to be considered for publication in RFL. It is the responsibility of the author to inform the editor of the existence of any similar work that is already published or under consideration for publication elsewhere. 3. Authors of accepted manuscripts will assign to RFL the permanent right to electronically distribute the article. 4. The editors of RFL reserve the right to make editorial changes in any manuscript accepted for publication for the sake of style or clarity. Authors will be consulted only if the changes are substantial. 5. Articles are copyrighted by their respective authors, but if published after electronic appearance, RFL will be acknowledged as the initial locus of publication. 6. The views expressed in RFL do not necessarily represent the views of the National Foreign Language Resource Center, the University of Hawai‘i College of Language, Linguistics, and Literature, or the University of Hawai‘i Department of Second Language Studies. 7. RFL expects authors to adhere to ethical standards for research involving human subjects. All manuscripts submitted for consideration must meet the human subjects review established by your institution.

RFL Guidelines for Reporting on Research Research should generally include the following sections: An Abstract Five to seven keywords for index and search purposes An Introduction: 1. stating the research issue to be investigated 2. presenting the underlying theoretical framework discussing how the research fits with previous research Copyright © RFL 2008

3. presenting a description of the methodological tradition in which the study was conducted for qualitative research 4. defining the variables 5. stating the research hypotheses

A Method section: 1. 2. 3. 4.

describing the participants or subjects and research site presenting a detailed description of data collection and analysis procedures describing the apparatus or materials used explaining the procedures and summarizing the steps employed in the research

A Results section: 1. presenting graphs and tables that help to explain the results 2. for quantitative research, presenting descriptive and inferential statistics used to analyze the data, including the following: (a) the reliability of the instruments used, (b) the statistic used, (c) statistical significance and effect size indicators of the results obtained, (d) how all statistical assumptions were met 3. for qualitative research, data should reflect prolonged engagement, persistent observation, and triangulation, with “thick description” A Discussion section: 1. presenting an evaluation and interpretation of the results 2. discussing alternative explanations when appropriate 3. causal inferences should be cautiously made, and not based solely on correlational approaches 4. results of the study should not be overly interpreted or generalized 5. linking the results obtained in the study to original hypotheses 6. presenting the implications and any limitations of the study A Conclusion: 1. including a summary and general implications of the study 2. proposing suggestions for further research References in APA format Appendices of instrument(s) used

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Contact RFL Reading in a Foreign Language National Foreign Language Resource Center 1859 East-West Road #106 University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Honolulu, HI 96822 USA [email protected]

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Volume 20, Number 1, April 2008

Editorial Board, About RFL, and Information for Contributors From the Editors pp. i–ii

Articles Research on good and poor reader characteristics: Implications for L2 reading research in China Jixian Pang pp. 1–18

Spelling knowledge and reading development: Insights from Arab ESL learners Michael Fender pp. 19–42

Comparing the vocabulary of different graded-reading schemes Udorn Wan-a-rom pp. 43–69

Developing reading fluency: A study of extensive reading in EFL Yurika Iwahori pp. 70–91

Vocabulary recycling in children’s authentic reading materials: A corpus-based investigation of narrow reading Dee Gardner pp. 92–122

Reviews Cultural Practices of Literacy: Case Studies of Language, Literacy, Social Practice and Power. Victoria Purcell-Gates (Ed.) reviewed by Teresa Castineira pp. 123–128

Reading Work: Literacies in the New Workplace Mary Ellen Belfiore, Tracey A. Defoe, Sue Folinsbee, Judy Hunter, & Nancy S. Jackson (The InSites Research Group) reviewed by Helen de Silva Joyce pp. 129–131

Reading Skills for College Students Ophelia H. Hancock reviewed by Zhijun Wen pp. 132–135

External Reviewers Jo Ann Aebersold, Nobuhiko Akamatsu, Steven Brown, Beatrice Dupuy, Mary Lee Field, Diana Frantzen, Yao Hill, Joy Janzen, Xiangying Jiang, Keiko Koda, Angelia Lu, Marianne, Kouider Mokhtari, Hossein Nassaji, Diana Pulido, Victoria Rodrigo, Norbert Schmitt, Ravi Sheorey, Etsuo Taguchi, Atsuko Takase

Copy Editors Elisabeth L. Chan, Yue Guo, Nathan Johnson, Ann Johnstun, Myeong-hyeon Kim, Treela McKamey, Mar Galindo Merino, Ju Young Min, Samantha Ng, Elizabeth Pfaff, Castle Sinicrope, Caroline Torres

Copyright © RFL 2008

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2008, Volume 20, No. 1 pp. i–ii

From the Editors This issue of Reading in a Foreign Language marks the start of its 7th year as a free scholarly online journal at the University of Hawai‘i. We are able to maintain the journal at no cost to subscribers, thanks to the support of the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC), the University of Hawai‘i College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature, and the University of Hawai‘i Department of Second Language Studies. Their continued funding is deeply appreciated. As usual, we request that readers of RFL become subscribers. All subscribers have the option of being notified through e-mail as soon as each new issue is released. We ask you to subscribe because it will assist us in continuing to obtain institutional support for the journal, keeping it free of charge. We keep all subscriber information confidential. So, please fill out the brief subscription form for Reading in a Foreign Language. We would also like to acknowledge and thank the following external reviewers who have provided valuable comments on submitted manuscripts through March 2008: Jo Ann Aebersold, Nobuhiko Akamatsu, Steven Brown, Beatrice Dupuy, Mary Lee Field, Diana Frantzen, Yao Hill, Joy Janzen, Xiangying Jiang, Keiko Koda, Angelia Lu, Marianne, Kouider Mokhtari, Hossein Nassaji, Diana Pulido, Victoria Rodrigo, Norbert Schmitt, Ravi Sheorey, Etsuo Taguchi, and Atsuko Takase. We would also like to thank the following copy editors: Elisabeth L. Chan, Yue Guo, Nathan Johnson, Ann Johnstun, Myeong-hyeon Kim, Treela McKamey, Mar Galindo Merino, Ju Young Min, Samantha Ng, Elizabeth Pfaff, Castle Sinicrope, and Caroline Torres. We would like to have your feedback to the articles; please feel free to contact us with your reactions, comments and suggestions.

In this issue Articles Jixian Pang reviews research on good and poor reader characteristics and discusses the implications for L2 reading research in China. Michael Fender presents a study investigating the relationship between spelling knowledge and reading development in the light of some insights from Arab ESL learners. http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

From the Editors

Udorn Wan-a-rom compares the vocabulary of different graded-reading schemes. Yurika Iwahori reports on a study examining the effectiveness of extensive reading on reading rates of high school students in Japan. Dee Gardner presents a corpus-based study on narrow reading from the perspective of vocabulary recycling in children’s authentic reading materials. Reviews Teresa Castineira reviews Cultural Practices of Literacy: Case Studies of Language, Literacy, Social Practice and Power, edited by Victoria Purcell-Gates. Helen de Silva Joyce reviews Reading Work: Literacies in the New Workplace, by Mary Ellen Belfiore, Tracey A. Defoe, Sue Folinsbee, Judy Hunter, and Nancy S. Jackson (The In-Sites Research Group). Zhijun Wen reviews Reading Skills for College Students (7th ed.), by Ophelia H. Hancock.

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Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2008, Volume 20, No. 1 pp. 1–18

Research on good and poor reader characteristics: Implications for L2 reading research in China Jixian Pang Zhejiang University China Abstract In reading research, studies on good and poor reader characteristics abound. However, these findings remain largely scattered in applied linguistics and cognitive and educational psychology. This paper attempts to synthesize current theory and research on the topic in the past 20 years along 3 dimensions: language knowledge and processing ability, cognitive ability, and metacognitive strategic competence. A profile of good readers follows a review of the literature. With a special reference to second language (L2) reading research and pedagogy in China, the author argues that a key difference between first language and L2 readers is that L2 readers typically have a gap between their L2 proficiency and their knowledge or conceptual maturation, and this tension determines to some degree the characteristics of good versus poor L2 readers. By examining L2 reading research in the country, the author proposes some areas worth exploring in the Chinese context. Keywords: good and poor readers, L2 reading comprehension, research areas in L2 reading in China

Proficiency in reading involves many variables, for example, automaticity of word recognition, familiarity with text structure and topic, awareness of various reading strategies, and conscious use and control of these strategies in processing a text. While a substantial body of literature has been accumulated on these issues in both first language (L1) and second language (L2) reading, the findings remain scattered in many diverse pieces of research, mainly within the fields of applied linguistics and cognitive and educational psychology. This paper reviews current theory and research on the topic and then presents a profile that summarizes the characteristics of good readers in both L1 and L2 contexts. The studies identified have been mainly carried out in the past 20 years or so. They reflect some major issues and concerns in reading research. A discussion of research and pedagogical implications follows with special reference to the Chinese L2 context. In the current literature exploring reader behavior either directly or indirectly, a variety of terms have been used to delineate different types of readers. These dichotomous modifiers include proficient versus less-proficient, successful versus unsuccessful, fluent versus non-fluent, skilled http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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versus unskilled, and fast versus slow. While in most cases these terms are used interchangeably by various authors, this paper adopts a more holistic dichotomous pair of good versus poor readers because terms like fluent and non-fluent can refer to some specific attribute of reader behavior. Using a more general term has the advantage of encompassing various specific attributes of the reading comprehension process. The labels of good reader and poor reader as used here are certainly not conclusive terms because good or poor reading behavior is only evoked depending on various factors such as the time of reading and the complexity and the topic of a text. Therefore, readers exhibit characteristics that may be good or poor at different times and to varying degrees on different dimensions. Labeling them as good or poor is only a relative and idealized conceptualization of desirable or undesirable reading behavior. For that reason, the good and poor reader dichotomy is better viewed as being situated on a continuum with extremely good readers at one end and extremely poor readers at the other. The concept of poor readers as used here refers to normal individuals in comparison with other normal readers in their reading proficiency; it does not refer to readers classified as dyslexics. The sections that follow focus on good reader characteristics and discuss poor characteristics only when necessary to clarify the good characteristics. Many variables are related to the topic, such as situational and personal factors; however, this paper is limited to a discussion of readers’ abilities in terms of three dimensions: linguistic, cognitive, and metacognitive. Linguistic knowledge and processing ability refer to readers’ formal knowledge of vocabulary, syntax, and discourse and their abilities to use this knowledge in their interaction with texts. Cognitive ability is concerned with readers’ use of prior knowledge and various strategies in their efforts to construct meaning in the comprehension process. Metacognitive strategic competence reflects readers’ monitoring and control of reading strategies. The boundary between the latter two abilities may not always be clear-cut (Cohen, 1998), and they both represent conscious actions taken by readers to understand and interpret the text. All three layers of ability can be seen as arranged in a hierarchy with linguistic knowledge and processing ability as a foundation layer in which cognitive and metacognitive abilities have important roles to play. They should also be seen as interacting with one another simultaneously when a reader attempts to construct a coherent mental representation of textual input during the comprehension process. Language Knowledge and Processing Ability Good L1 Readers A general consensus in reading research is that linguistic knowledge and ability play a prerequisite role in the comprehension process. In word recognition, a huge body of research, mainly from the fields of cognitive and educational psychology, using sophisticated computer and eye-tracking technologies, has repeatedly indicated that the process at this level is rapid, accurate, and automatic in good readers (Just & Carpenter, 1987; Pressley, 1998; Rayner, 1997; Stanovich, 2000; West, Stanovich, & Cunningham, 1995). For example, research by Just and Carpenter (1987) discovered that good readers process over 80% of content words and 40% of function words on the page. They also found that one factor that distinguishes good from poor readers is the automaticity of word recognition. Booth, Perfetti, and MacWhinney (1999) also claimed that good readers are proficient in word recognition skills. In their study, readers were Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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required to react to non-word primes and target words presented to them for a certain duration of time. They learned that good readers activated letter and phonemic information more efficiently than poor readers and that this activation was achieved automatically without strategic control. Pressley (1998) also noted that when good L1 readers are reading to learn material they read about 200 words per minute. But when they read in a more relaxed manner, they read at a rate between 250 and 300 words per minute, which translates to about four to five words per second. Furthermore, good readers typically do this in an effortless manner without resorting to guessing or making use of context and background knowledge. Thus, the general view is that rapid processing and automaticity in word recognition is a fundamental requirement for fluent reading. This view is consonant with an earlier position expressed by Stanovich (1980) when, after a review of a large number of studies, he questioned hypothesis-testing models (see Goodman, 1967; Smith, 1973): [The hypothesis-testing models] require implausible assumptions about the relative speeds of the processes involved. . . . It seems unlikely that a hypothesis based on complex syntactic and semantic analyses can be formed in less than the few hundred milliseconds that is required for a fluent reader to recognize most words. . . . Fluent readers do not use conscious expectancies to facilitate word recognition. (pp. 34–35) Perfetti (1985) elucidated the importance of automaticity in word recognition by saying that decoding and comprehension compete for available short-term memory capacity. Good readers are able to use less capacity to analyze visual stimuli, allowing for more cognitive processing capacity to be directed to comprehension processes at other levels. In comparison with solid findings at the word recognition level in good L1 readers, research is relatively scarce on other aspects of linguistic knowledge readers have. Research seems to have concentrated on readers’ vocabulary knowledge and the effects of text organization on readers’ comprehension processes. For vocabulary, Alderson (2000) noted that the vocabulary size of good L1 readers ranges from 10,000 to 100,000 words. Readers’ vocabulary knowledge highly correlates with their proficiency level in reading and is “the single best predictor of text comprehension” (p. 35). While not specifically referring to good readers’ vocabulary size, Grabe and Stoller (2002, p. 77), in their review of other studies, also noted that L1 readers finishing secondary school have a large recognition vocabulary in the range of 40,000 words and that good readers can recognize 98–100% of all words in a text at some basic meaning level. For basic linguistic processes, Carver’s rauding theory (1992) claimed that an approximate rate of 300 wpm is most efficient for typical college students across a wide range of difficulty levels of reading materials. Carver argued that it “would not seem appropriate for good readers to adjust their rate as materials decrease in difficulty, because it would be inefficient to do so” (p. 85). Readers maximize their efficiency of reading a prose text by maintaining the optimal rate (Carver, 1993). To sum up, the size of a vocabulary, together with an ability to rapidly and automatically recognize words, is an important predicator of fluent reading comprehension. Knowledge of text type and organization is believed to have a facilitative effect on reading comprehension. Commander and Stanwyck (1997) reported on a study that investigated the comprehension monitoring of expository text in adult L1 readers. One of their findings was Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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concerned with the recall of superordinate and subordinate ideas in short and longer texts. They found that good readers demonstrated more accurate recall of superordinate ideas regardless of text length than poor readers did. For recall of subordinate ideas, however, while good readers did better than poor readers on short texts, poor readers outperformed good readers on longer texts. Commander and Stanwyck suggested that good readers have a good knowledge of structural elements of text and therefore have more accurate recall of the main ideas in the text. Poor readers, on the other hand, focus on details at the expense of missing main ideas. Beck, Mckeown, Sinatra, and Loxterman (1991) investigated the effect of varied text structures on reading comprehension. They revised school history texts based on a cognitive processing perspective (e.g., clarifying, elaborating, making given and new information more explicit). By asking students to answer comprehension questions and do free-recalls of the texts, they found that students understood the revised text much better than the original version. Their result demonstrates the positive role of familiarity with discourse organization in enhancing the reader’s comprehension processing. These findings are in agreement with the results of some earlier studies (e.g., Meyer & Rice, 1982, 1984). Good L2 Readers Much like research findings for good L1 readers, a considerable number of studies in the L2 setting have pointed to the even more important role of language knowledge and processing ability in good L2 readers (Fraser, 2004). In a study of higher-level and lower-level text processing skills in advanced reading comprehension in English as a second language (ESL), Nassaji (2003) found lower-level processes like word recognition, in addition to higher-level syntactic and semantic processes, contributed significantly to the distinction between skilled and less-skilled ESL readers. He concluded that efficient lower-level word recognition processes are integral components of L2 reading comprehension, and these processes must not be neglected even in highly advanced ESL readers. Poor L2 readers are slower in word recognition and generally weak at rapid and automatic syntactic processing because they “develop an overt knowledge of L2 grammatical structures before they become fluent L2 readers” (Grabe & Stoller, 2002, p. 23). Chen (1998), in his proficiency constrained model of Chinese readers of English as a foreign language (EFL) in comprehending ambiguous English sentences, demonstrated that poor L2 readers are particularly weak in processing more complex ambiguous sentences. He held that this weakness resulted from their lack of syntactic knowledge in the target language, which constrained their reading comprehension. Parry (1991) conducted a detailed longitudinal study of four college students learning vocabulary in an academic setting over 2 years. One of her findings was that guessing word meaning from context is not a successful strategy in students’ vocabulary development. Although her study was not initially aimed at discovering characteristics of good readers, Parry’s study did reveal that in respect to vocabulary growth, successful readers guess less but simply read much more, thus exposing themselves to many more words in meaningful contexts. As for vocabulary size for fluent L2 reading in the Dutch context, Hazenburg and Hulstijn (1996) maintained that an L2 Dutch reader needs a minimum of 10,000 headwords to read universitylevel texts successfully. At lexical and syntactic levels, Barnett (1986), by using a recall procedure, examined Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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intermediate-level English-speaking readers’ abilities to comprehend a French text. She found that readers’ recalls increased in accordance with their levels of vocabulary and syntactic proficiency. She pointed out that both syntactic and vocabulary proficiency affect reading comprehension but unduly stressing vocabulary-building or inferencing skills may not help those students who lack adequate syntactic knowledge (p. 346). Chen’s (1998) study of Chinese college EFL readers’ comprehension when processing simple ambiguous sentences revealed little difference in comprehension between good and poor readers. However, good readers performed much better than poor readers in processing more complex ambiguous sentences. An L2 reader’s linguistic proficiency is therefore a key factor that constrains the reader’s text comprehension. The Chinese college EFL readers can be considered to belong to an L2 intermediate proficiency group with a vocabulary size of about 3,000–4,000 words. Liu and Bever (2002) also involved Chinese EFL college students as participants in their experiment to investigate the role of syntactic analysis in reading comprehension. One of their findings was that good readers did not exhibit apparent effort to use syntactic analysis in their comprehension processes. They accounted for this result by claiming that good readers were able to process sentences in a quick and subconscious manner because of their high L2 proficiency. In contrast, poor L2 competence can severely constrain the development of readers’ abilities in cognitive and metacognitive strategy use, thus affecting their reading comprehension. In looking at inference generation during reading comprehension, a number of researchers (e.g., Barry & Lazarte, 1998; Hammadou, 1991; Lu, 1999) have claimed that L2 readers’ language proficiencies have a direct impact on inference generation in L2 reading. For example, Hammadou reported that readers with high L2 proficiencies were much better at making appropriate inferences than readers with low language proficiencies. In addition, only readers with high language proficiency were successful at identifying causal structures in the text. Lu, after studying a group of five Chinese EFL learners’ processes of reading expository texts using think-aloud protocols, also claimed that L2 linguistic proficiency had a decisive effect on inference generation and on the construction and integration of propositional meaning at both the sentential and discoursal levels. As in good L1 readers, a knowledge of discourse organization contributes positively to reading comprehension in the L2 context. According to Carrell (1985, 1987), when the content is kept constant but the rhetorical structure is varied, good L2 readers recognize the discourse structures much better than poor readers, which helps good readers significantly in their understanding of text. In another study by Carrell (1992), 45 high-intermediate ESL students in an American university participated. They were presented with two texts of different discourse organizations; after reading, they were each required to provide a written recall and to explain the discourse pattern of the texts. She observed that the good readers were those who were more aware of the discourse organization of the original texts to recall information and who could also better describe the patterns of the texts. This study further validated the facilitative role that discourse organization plays in L2 learners’ reading comprehension. Good readers are more sensitive to the structural elements of the text, which helps them to remember the main idea of the text and comprehend better (Commander & Stanwyck, 1997).

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Cognitive Ability Good L1 Readers Recent reading research and practice have witnessed a shift of focus from texts to readers and their reading strategies (i.e., a reader-centered approach to reading research). This focus has led to a better appreciation of readers’ reading processes and their uses of strategies in decoding and building mental representations of texts. The two terms skills and strategies can be confusing. However, a skill is generally accepted to be an acquired ability that operates largely subconsciously, whereas a strategy is a conscious procedure carried out to solve problems in the comprehension process. The relationship between skills and strategies has been expounded on by Paris, Wasik, and Turner (1991), who claimed that “an emerging skill can become a strategy when it is used intentionally. Likewise, a strategy can ‘go underground’ and become a skill” (p. 611). Carrell, Gajdusek, and Wise (1998) provided a summary of strategies proposed by some of the major studies in the area (e.g., Block, 1986; Carrell, 1985, 1992; Hosenfeld, 1977; Zvetina, 1987). In a study involving high and low achievers, and by implication, good and poor readers, Hopkins and Mackay (1997) found that good readers often have more ready access to a variety of purposeful reading strategies to undertake reading tasks successfully and that they use them with greater frequency and flexibility. They are active in making inferences and using dictionaries to resolve uncertainty about the meanings of words or larger units of discourse. Long, Seely, Oppy, and Golding (1996) conducted an experiment to examine the relationship between reading ability and inferential processing. Their results indicated that good readers encode knowledge-based inferences that poor readers fail to encode and that good readers are able to construct representations that are consistent with the topic of a text. Good readers appear to learn and recall more important text information using a selective attention strategy. Reynolds, Shepard, Lepan, Cynthia, and Goetz (1990) reported two experiments that investigated the reasons for the good readers’ recalling and learning advantage. Their results showed that good readers are able to learn and recall more important information because they are more aware of how and when to use this selective attention strategy. They are also able to use significantly more conceptual attention in relation to perceptual attention while reading.1 In examining the roles of reading processes and prior knowledge in college students’ reprocessing of expository text, Haenggi and Perfetti (1992) found that while text reprocessing helped average readers to compensate for language shortfalls in answering text-implicit questions, good readers combined more text information with their prior knowledge bases. Prior knowledge was found to be relatively more important than working memory for explicit and implicit information. In a strategy training study that focused on guiding learners to become strategic readers rather than users of individual strategies, Brown, Pressley, van Meter, and Schuder (1996) were able to show that the greater strategy awareness and use by readers, the better their performance in reading comprehension. They demonstrated that good readers, by orchestrating strategies in a flexible manner as strategic readers, were able to provide more elaborate interpretations of a text. Grabe and Stoller (2002) made a convincing observation regarding autonomous processing in readers: Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Using strategies effectively does not typically involve conscious decisions on the part of the fluent reader. Strategic readers are able to verbalize consciously the strategies that they use when asked to reflect, but they usually do not think consciously of these strategic choices because they have used them effectively so often. (p. 82) Good L2 Readers Interest in reading strategy studies is mainly derived from instructional research, and this is particularly true of the fields of ESL and EFL. Researchers and teachers recognize that strategy training is an effective way of improving reading and that good readers are strategic readers. Since the late 1970s, many researchers have studied strategies in L2 contexts (e.g., Anderson, 1991; Block, 1986, 1992; Carrell et al., 1998; Hosenfeld, 1977, 1984; Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001). As one of the pioneering researchers in L2 reading strategies, Hosenfeld used the thinkaloud protocol and attempted to create inventories of good versus poor reading strategies based on a series of studies (1977, 1984). Some examples of her good reading strategies are (a) keeping the meaning of the text in mind, (b) reading in broad phrases, (c) skipping inessential words, (d) guessing from context the meaning of unknown words, (e) having a good self-concept as a reader, (f) reading the title and making inferences from it, and (g) continuing if unsuccessful at decoding a word or phrase (Hosenfeld, pp. 233–234). In a much quoted study on comprehension strategies of L2 readers, Block (1986) found that four characteristics differentiated good from poor readers. They are (a) integration; (b) recognition of aspects of text structure; (c) use of general knowledge, personal experiences, and associations; and (d) response in extensive versus reflexive modes. When in a reflexive mode, readers tend to shift their attention away from text information towards themselves in an affective and personal way. When readers focus on the author’s ideas expressed in the text instead of relating the text to themselves personally and affectively, they are said to be in an extensive mode. Good L2 readers react to a text in an extensive mode by integrating information and monitoring their understanding consistently and effectively. Other good L2 reader characteristics in terms of strategy use include the use of meaning-based cues to evaluate what they have understood, a focus on intersentential consistency, and the maintenance of an evaluative and critical attitude towards the text (Block, 1992). The use of prior knowledge to aid reading comprehension in good readers is also recognized as a factor in comprehension (Bernhardt, 1991; Brantmeier, 2004; Haenggi & Perfetti, 1992; Spires & Donley, 1998). Alderson and Urquhart (1985) found that a discipline-specific text on content knowledge affects the measure of reading comprehension. Chen and Graves (1995), in a study on the effect of providing background knowledge before reading with university students (N = 243) in Taiwan, also provided evidence of the positive effect of background knowledge on EFL learners’ reading comprehension. However, some studies have also documented cases where poor L2 readers often wrongly used their prior knowledge to compensate for their target language deficiencies (e.g., Lu, 1999). Strategy use does not differ much across L1 and L2 reading, and both good L1 and L2 readers Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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report using more strategies than poor readers (Block, 1986; Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001). This observation was echoed by Anderson (1991) in his claim that good L2 readers use many more total strategies than poor readers. If anything is special and unique in L2 reading strategy use, it is the use of the L1, a strategy that is often considered undesirable in L2 reading comprehension. Reading in the L2 is certainly not a monolingual matter. Upton and Lee-Thompson (2001) asserted that L2 readers, more than doing mental translation, actively tap their mother tongue resources to help them “wrestle with and reflect on meaning as they read an L2 text” (p. 471). They posited that “as L2 proficiency increases, the supportive (i.e., beneficial) use of the L1 increases, while at the same time the cognitive reliance on these strategies (i.e., the need to think about the text in the L1) declines” (p. 488). By the “supportive use of L1,” the authors meant that when the L2 reading comprehension process is generally automatic, reliance on the L1 only occurs when processing shifts from automatic to controlled, that is, when a reader encounters difficulties in understanding. Kern (1994) made a similar observation after he studied mental translation as a reading strategy in the L2. While admitting that mental translation could be a strategy of poor L2 readers, he observed that this strategy helps L2 readers to simplify processing demands, better solve comprehension problems, and gain accurate comprehension of the text. L1 and L2 reading performance significantly correlate. Pichette, Segalowitz, and Connors (2004) reported on a study on the impact of maintaining L1 reading skills on L2 reading skill development in adult speakers of Serbo-Croatian learning French. Their study shows that maintaining L1 reading enhances the transfer of reading skills. From the above discussion, good L2 readers may also be said to be skillful users of their L1s in that they are well aware of when and how to turn to an L1 for help to maximize text comprehension. Thinking in an L2 while reading is not impossible and is even desirable; nonetheless, it would be unusual for good readers not to use their mother tongues to aid comprehension if a need exists. Metacognitive Strategic Competence Good L1 Readers Flavell (1978), the first to propose the concept of metacognition, viewed it as consisting of two dimensions: knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition. Carrell et al. (1998) elaborated on this: In reading, the two key metacognitive factors, knowledge and control, are concerned respectively with what readers know about their cognitive resources and their regulation. Regulation in reading includes the awareness of and ability to detect contradictions in a text, knowledge of different strategies to use with different text types, and the ability to separate important from unimportant information. (p. 101) Examples of specific metacognitive strategies may include (a) establishing objectives in reading, (b) evaluating reading materials, (c) repairing miscomprehension, (d) evaluating the developing understanding of text, (e) analyzing the text and paragraph structure to clarify the author’s intention, (f) adjusting reading speed and selecting cognitive strategies accordingly, and (g) Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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engaging in self-questioning to determine if the objectives have been reached (Carrell et al., 1998, pp. 100–101). Thus reading is a metacognitive process as well as a cognitive process. While cognitive strategies refer to deliberate actions that readers take in their efforts to understand texts, metacognitive strategies emphasize the monitoring and regulative mechanisms that readers consciously use to enhance comprehension. In a study that investigated whether knowledge of cognition affected regulation of cognition, Gregory (1994) asked a group of college students to complete a reading comprehension test and at the same time to monitor their local (i.e., during testing) and global (i.e., after testing) performance. He found that good readers (self-appraised high monitors, in the author’s term) performed much better on the comprehension test and were more confident and accurate when evaluating their test performance both locally and globally, indicating a positive effect of knowledge of cognition on reading performance. Gregory concluded by claiming that most college students possessed metacognitive knowledge but a large proportion failed to use this knowledge to improve their on-line regulation of performance. In another study, Karen and Evans (1993) investigated the use of the selective rereading strategy to regulate understanding. Students were presented with texts containing referential and factual coherence problems, and their reading time and text memory were examined. The authors found that all students detected textual problems and reread sentences with coherence problems longer. However, in contrast to poor readers who reread more than good readers, good readers were better able to selectively direct their rereading to text coherence problems and had better text memory than poor readers. Long and Chong (2001) investigated good and poor readers’ maintenance of global coherence during reading. They disconfirmed the hypothesis that poor readers fail to maintain global coherence because they fail to activate prior text information. Instead, their result showed that poor readers activated relevant knowledge during reading but failed to integrate it into their developing representations of the input text. Current research findings on good readers seem to converge on the belief that good readers are strategic. Strategic readers are able not only to use various strategies skillfully but also to monitor and regulate their strategy use with reference to the on-going comprehension process. Good L2 Readers Comprehension monitoring competence is particularly crucial in the L2 context. With limited linguistic knowledge, L2 readers often have to use more cognitive strategies to decode the meaning of text, and at the same time, comprehension monitoring is critical to ensure effective and efficient use of strategies. Yang and Zhang (2002) reported on a study that investigated the correlation between metacognition and EFL reading comprehension of Chinese college students. Third-year college students (N = 125) participated in the study that examined metacognition, EFL reading comprehension, and EFL proficiency. The authors found that the readers’ general EFL proficiency correlated with their reading comprehension ability at .50 (p < .01) and that their metacognitive knowledge correlated with their reading comprehension ability at .42 (p < .01), indicating a positive correlation between metacognitive knowledge and reading comprehension proficiency. Their study also revealed that good readers displayed more monitoring ability than Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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poor readers during their on-going reading processes. For example, good readers tended to monitor their reading processes all the time to compensate for words that had not been previously decoded. They also appeared to be more sensitive to inconsistencies in the text than poor readers and responded to them appropriately. The authors concluded that English language proficiency and metacognitive awareness affect reading comprehension ability in Chinese college EFL readers. Also, readers’ metacognition has an impact on both EFL proficiency and EFL reading performance. When discussing the relationship between vocabulary and metacognitive knowledge in the L2 context, Schoonen, Hulstijn, and Bossers (1998) asserted that vocabulary knowledge has a greater influence on L2 reading than on L1 reading. This is especially the case at the lower level of processing. However, when L2 readers reach higher proficiency levels, metacognitive knowledge begins to play a greater role in comprehension. A reasonable conclusion is that good L2 readers, apart from a sound L2 language base, need a high degree of metacognitive awareness to make their comprehension processing more efficient and effective. A Profile of Good Readers The above discussion indicates that many good reader characteristics are common to both L1 and L2 readers. Although L1 and L2 reading have differences, which Grabe and Stoller (2002) have convincingly identified, the fact that many more characteristics are shared than not between the two types of good readers is reasonable: Good L2 readers seem to make every effort to approximate the linguistic proficiency and repertoire of skills and strategies found in good L1 readers. A profile of good readers based on the interpretation of the previous literature on three dimensions is presented in Table 1. When proposing a profile of good readers, I acknowledge the similarity of characteristics between good L1 and L2 readers. However, I argue that the demands placed on them to reach the goal of being good readers are different. To begin with, a good L2 reader must have a sound target language base that often takes much more time and effort to form than it does for L1 readers. In other words, L2 readers need to cross the so-called language threshold to be able to develop and apply cognitive and metacognitive strategies in the L2 reading context. At this point, they will also be able to take advantage of being conceptually well-developed adults and make full use of the cognitive and metacognitive strategies already acquired in their L1 to compensate for the possible deficiencies in their L2 and to achieve maximum comprehension in their reading. This view is consonant with Berhnhardt’s (2005) compensatory model of L2 reading, in which knowledge sources assist other sources that are deficient or non-existent (cf. the interactive compensatory model of reading proposed by Stanovich, 1980). Commenting on the differences between L1 and L2 reading, Grabe and Stoller (2002, p. 63) outlined 14 broad differences, which they placed into three categories: (a) linguistic and processing differences, (b) individual and experiential differences, and (c) social, cultural, and institutional differences. However, if one major variable seems to have influence over other variables in distinguishing L1 readers from L2 readers, and if that in turn determines to some degree characteristics of good versus poor L2 readers, then that variable is the tension between Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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the L2 readers’ target language proficiency and their general knowledge or conceptual maturation. In L1 readers, language proficiency and knowledge maturation develop naturally and concurrently, whereas in L2 readers, the target language proficiency lags far behind their knowledge or conceptual maturation, and the gap between the two could be immense. This tension will inevitably make a huge impact on overall L2 reading ability development, giving rise to problems or characteristics that make it different from L1 reading. Table 1. A profile of good readers Dimensions Characteristics Automatic and rapid word recognition (e.g., Booth et al., 1999; Just & Language Carpenter, 1987; Nassaji, 2003; Perfetti,1985; Pressley, 1998) knowledge and Automatic syntactic parsing and semantic proposition formation (e.g., processing ability Chen, 1998; Fraser, 2004; Liu & Bever, 2002; Lu, 1999) Reasonable size of vocabulary ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 (e.g., Alderson, 2000; Barnett, 1986; Carver, 1993; Grabe & Stoller, 2002) Awareness of text type and discourse organization (e.g., Beck et al., 1991; Brantmeier, 2004; Carrell, 1992; Commander & Stanwyck, 1997) Cognitive ability

Good store of cognitive strategies (e.g., Block, 1986; Carrell, 1985, 1992; Grabe, 1999) Ready access to variety of purposeful strategies (Hopkins & Mackay, 1997; Long et al., 1996; Yang & Zhang, 2002) Higher and proficient use of strategies (Anderson, 1991; Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Haenggi & Perfetti, 1992; Reynolds et al., 1990) Effective use of prior knowledge (e.g., Bernhardt, 1991; Chen & Groves, 1995; Haenggi & Perfetti, 1992) Supportive use of mother tongue in L2 (e.g., Kern, 1994; Upton & LeeThompson, 2001)

Metacognitive strategic competence

Good knowledge of cognition (e.g., Carrell et al., 1998; Gregory, 1994) Competence in monitoring comprehension process (e.g., Karen & Evans, 1993; Yang & Zhang, 2002) Competence in evaluating and regulating strategy use to achieve maximum comprehension (e.g., Gregory, 1994; Karen & Evans, 1993; Long & Chong, 2001)

New Research Directions in L2 Reading in China Before research and pedagogical implications are drawn from the previous discussion, L2 reading research reported in the past 10 years in five relevant scholarly journals in China will be reviewed. Journals that are specifically devoted to reading research are still lacking, and the five journals examined consist of four journals in foreign language teaching and research and one in educational psychology. According to the nature of the work completed, the papers fall roughly into three categories: theoretical explorations, empirical investigations, and literature reviews. The number of published papers of these three types is shown in Table 2. The topics explored in those papers are described in Table 3.

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Table 2. Number of papers in L2 reading research published in five journals in China (January 1997–June 2007) Journals Theoretical Empirical Literature Total explorations studies reviews 0 11 2 13 Foreign Language Teaching and Research 2 10 0 12 Modern Foreign Languages 18 22 6 46 Foreign Language World 7 4 0 11 Studies in Foreign Languages 3 80 8 91 Psychological Science Subtotal 30 127 16 173 Table 3. Topics explored in L2 reading research in five journals in China (January 1997–June 2007) Number of published papers Topics explored Word-level issues in reading development 20 Discourse organization and text comprehension 32 Transfer of reading ability from L1 to L2 6 Reading development and instructional routines 43 Strategies, metacognition, and text comprehension 41 Extensive reading and motivation 15 Social and cultural context influences on reading 16 Total 173

Although the information in the above two tables is derived from a sample of five journals, it reflects the status quo of L2 reading research in the country and thus suggests new research directions that are worthy of exploration in the Chinese L2 context. The total number of studies carried out on L2 reading research is relatively small, considering the span of 10 years. Nevertheless, 127 (about 73%) of the 173 papers reported on empirical studies, which is an encouraging sign. Thirty papers (about 17%) are devoted to theoretical explorations. Theorizing is certainly important for disciplinary development. However, quite a number of papers in this category are devoted to sharing personal and anecdotal experiences rather than dealing with theoretical issues. As for the research topic explored, an imbalance and lack of research is clear in certain areas. Although the research issues range widely, four general areas seem particularly worth exploring in the present L2 reading research in China: (a) word-level issues in L2 reading development, (b) exposure to print in L2 reading development, (c) training of a strategic reader, and (d) the relationship between instruction and testing. 1. Word-Level Issues in L2 Reading Development The review of previous studies and the analysis of the tension between the L2 readers’ target language proficiency and their conceptual maturation have repeatedly indicated the utmost importance of L2 readers’ target language proficiency. However, studies on these topics are seriously lacking (only 11% of the papers have dealt with these issues). Studies on L2 readers’ lexical access, syntactic parsing, and the effect of automaticity training are therefore urgently needed. Another important area of research is readers’ vocabulary development. According to the newly issued National English Curriculum Standards for General Education (Ministry of Education, 2001), the vocabulary requirement for high school graduates has risen from about 2,000 to 3,300 words. 2 In the current national college entrance examination in English (of which the reading comprehension section makes up 40% of the total score), however, the required Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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English vocabulary is about 2,000 words, which is specified in accordance with the old “National English Syllabus.” Testing the reading ability of a conceptually well-developed high-school graduate with texts of about 2,000 word coverage certainly seems out of place. In the Chinese EFL context, poor readers are often accused of being word-bound, and as a training strategy, they are encouraged to guess from the context to aid comprehension. As is discussed elsewhere in this paper, this is somewhat misleading. Poor readers are word-bound not because they lack top-down skills, but instead because they lack sufficient large vocabularies and lack automaticity in word recognition skills. All these issues need empirical investigation so as to inform policymaking and pedagogy. 2. Exposure to Print in L2 Reading Development Related to the first topic are the studies on the amount of exposure to print and the roles of extensive reading in L2 reading development. These issues are important to L2 reading settings. From the standpoint of second language acquisition, reading provides a readily available and most important input of the language for learners in a context like China, where the environmental support is poor (Pang, Zhou, & Fu, 2002). As for the difficulty level of reading materials, Laufer (1989) proposed a 95% coverage of known words for fluent reading. I have observed that Chinese EFL readers read few but difficult materials in terms of known vocabulary coverage (a quick glance at some EFL course books and the popular English learning newspaper 21st Century will soon validate this claim of a high incidence of new words in reading materials).3 L2 readers should be encouraged to read extensively, and appropriate materials should be selected according to their language proficiency and interest (Brantmeier, 2006). The whens and hows constitute good research topics. 3. Training of a Strategic Reader Although some cognitive and metacognitive strategies are common to all good readers, some strategies are unique to good Chinese L2 readers such as the use of the L1 in L2 reading. What role does the use of the L1 play in L2 reading development? In pedagogical terms, what can be done in the training of a strategic reader? Some major English reading course books used in China often have strategy training parts; however, they are mostly used without the support of empirical research. Research effort directed to these topics would certainly be useful. 4. Relationship Between Instruction and Testing The current prevailing practice of using the multiple choice format to test reading comprehension in both test and instructional settings reinforces conformity at the cost of variability of understanding a text. If multiple choice is useful in testing a reader’s text model (i.e., a close representation of text information), whether it is capable of testing a reader’s situation model (i.e., a reader’s interpretation of text information) is doubtful. Extensive use of the multiple choice format especially in teaching and learning severely hinders the development of critical and creative thinking in readers, destroying learners’ interest in reading in the long run. From a research perspective, topics in this area will clarify confusion between instruction and testing, generating insights for better practices in reading instruction.

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Conclusion The review of previous research on reading comprehension and the subsequent profile of good readers presented in this paper may offer a new perspective for our understanding of reading in a second language. In the Chinese EFL context, reading provides rich and abundant samples of L2 input, which is needed to improve learners’ overall language proficiency. From a utilitarian point of view, reading is just what Chinese EFL learners need most both in their academic studies and in their future work. China, reputed to have the biggest population learning English as a foreign language in the world, offers a wide range of issues in L2 reading to be explored. The four areas identified in this paper may provide a stimulus for Chinese scholars and others to carry out research that will not only help China to catch up with international research development but also help to explore theories applicable to EFL reading. Acknowledgements This study is partly supported by a research fellowship from the United College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). I am indebted to Professor Joseph H. W. Hung from the English Department, CUHK, for his time in discussing issues of interest regarding L2 reading research. I am also grateful to Dr. Carol A. Fraser from the Department of English, Glendon College, York University in Canada, for her insightful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. Thanks also go to Tao Fengyun and Guan Jingyuan from Zhejiang University, China, who helped in checking relevant data reported in this study. Finally, many thanks go to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable advice on the revision of the manuscript. Notes 1. Perceptual attention and conceptual attention are two qualitatively different types of attention. Perceptual attention is used to accurately decode words whereas conceptual attention is used to get meaning from the text. 2. The National English Curriculum Standards for General Education (from primary to senior high schools) was formally implemented in 2005. It stipulates that English instruction begins from the third grade of primary school (generally pupils aged 9). It has nine levels or bands, with the ninth band on the top (vocabulary requirement: 4,500 words). Band 9 is for schools with an emphasis on English learning like foreign language schools. The vocabulary size for graduates from ordinary high schools is set at the Band 8 level with 3,300 words. The previous vocabulary size was 1,940 words, as specified in the national English syllabus before the new English curriculum standard was issued. 3. 21st Century is a popular national English newspaper in China, its target audience being students and others who are learning English as a foreign language.

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Liu, Z., & Bever, T. G. (2002). Jufa fenxi zai waiyu yueduzhong de zuoyong [An experimental study of the function of syntactic analysis in reading comprehension]. Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 34, 219–224. Long, D. L., Seely, M. R., Oppy, B. J., & Golding, J. M. (1996). The role of inferential processing in reading ability. In B. K. Britton & A. C. Graesser (Eds.), Models of understanding text (pp. 189–214). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Long, D. L., & Chong, J. L. (2001). Comprehension skill and global coherence: A paradoxical picture of poor comprehenders’ abilities. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27, 1424–1429. Lu, S. (1999). An investigation into EFL reading processes: Reading effectiveness, inference construction, metacognitive strategy. Unpublished MA dissertation, Zhejiang University, China. Meyer, B. J. F., & Rice, G. E. (1982). The interaction of reader strategies and the organization of text. Text, 2, 155–92. Meyer, B. J. F., & Rice, G. E. (1984). The structure of text. In P. D. Pearson, R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, & P. Mosenthal (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (pp. 319–352). New York: Longman. Ministry of Education. (2001). Yingyu kecheng biaozhun [National English curriculum standards for general education]. Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press. Nassaji, H. (2003). Higher-level and lower-level text processing skills in advanced ESL reading comprehension. The Modern Language Journal, 87, 261–276. Pang, J., Zhou, X., & Fu, Z. (2002). English for international trade: China enters the WTO. World Englishes, 21, 201–216. Paris, S. G., Wasik, B. A., & Turner, J. C. (1991). The development of strategic readers. In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research, (Vol. 2, pp. 609–640). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Parry, K. (1991). Building a vocabulary through academic reading. TESOL Quarterly, 25, 629– 653. Perfetti, C. (1985). Reading ability. New York: Oxford University Press. Pichette, F., Segalowitz, N., & Connors, K. (2004). Impact of maintaining L1 reading skills on L2 reading skill development in adults: Evidence from speakers of Serbo-Croatian learning French. The Modern Language Journal, 87, 391–403. Pressley, M. (1998). Reading instruction that really works. New York: Guilford Press. Rayner, K. (1997). Understanding eye movements in reading. Scientific Studies of Reading, 1, 317–339. Reynolds, R. E., Shepard, C., Lapan, R., Cynthia K., & Goetz, E. T. (1990). Differences in the use of selective attention by more successful and less successful tenth-grade readers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 749–759. Schoonen, R., Hulstijn, J., & Bossers, B. (1998). Metacognitive and language-specific knowledge in native and foreign language reading comprehension: An empirical study among Dutch students in grades 6, 8 and 10. Language Learning, 48, 71–106. Sheorey, R., & Mokhtari, K. (2001). Differences in the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies among native and non-native readers. System, 29, 431–449. Smith, F. (1973). Psycholinguistics and reading. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Spires, H. A., & Donley, J. D. (1998). Prior knowledge activation: Inducing engagement with informational texts. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 249–260. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Stanovich, K. E. (1980). Towards an interactive-compensatory model of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 16, 32–71. Stanovich, K. E. (2000). Progress in understanding reading: Scientific foundations and new frontiers. New York: Guilford Press. Upton, T. A., & Lee-Thompson, L. (2001). The role of the first language in second language reading. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 23, 469–495. West, R. F., Stanovich, K., & Cunningham, A. (1995). Compensatory progresses in reading. In R. Dixon & L. Backman (Eds.), Compensating for psychological deficits and declines: Managing losses and promoting gain (pp. 275–296). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Yang, X., & Zhang, W. (2002). Yuanrenzhi yu Zhongguo daxuesheng Yingyu yuedu lijie xiangguan yanjiu [The correlation between metacognition and EFL reading comprehension of Chinese college students]. Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 34, 213–218. Zvetina, M. (1987). From research to pedagogy: What do L2 reading studies suggest? Foreign Language Annals, 20, 233–238. About the Author Pang Jixian is a professor of English and Applied Linguistics at the School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China. His research interests include L2 reading, discourse analysis, research methods in applied linguistics, and English for specific purposes. He supervises postgraduate students in linguistics and applied linguistics at both MA and PhD levels. E-mail: [email protected]

Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2008, Volume 20, No. 1 pp. 19–42

Spelling knowledge and reading development: Insights from Arab ESL learners Michael Fender California State University, Long Beach United States Abstract The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between spelling knowledge and reading skills among a group of 16 intermediate-level Arab learners of English as a second language (ESL) and a corresponding comparison group of 21 intermediate-level ESL learners in an English for academic purposes (EAP) program. A spelling task was used to assess the English orthographic or spelling knowledge, and standardized reading and listening tests were used to assess the general language processing and comprehension skills of the two groups. The results of the tests indicated that the Arab and non-Arab ESL students were not significantly different in listening (or auding) comprehension, but that the Arab students scored significantly lower on the spelling test and the reading comprehension test. This study discusses possible reasons why Arab ESL learners may exhibit difficulties with English spelling and then discusses the link between spelling knowledge and the development of reading fluency. Keywords: ESL, word recognition, reading fluency, orthographic knowledge, spelling development

Over the past several years, English as a second language (ESL) practitioners in English for academic purposes (EAP) programs along with ESL researchers have noted a discrepancy in the emergence of oral and aural English language skills and the emergence of English literacy skills among Arab ESL students (Fender, 2003; Milton & Hopkins, 2006; Ryan, 1997; Ryan & Meara, 1991). The anecdotal evidence from general observations seems to indicate that Arab ESL learners exhibit more difficulties in developing ESL reading and literacy skills relative to other ESL learner populations; in contrast, Arab ESL learners seem to perform relatively well in the development of listening and speaking skills. This discrepancy suggests that Arab ESL learners may experience difficulties acquiring aspects of English literacy, namely, orthographic or spelling representations of English words. Difficulties acquiring English spelling knowledge not only affect word recognition skills but also constrain ESL reading skills. The present study examines the spelling, reading comprehension, and listening comprehension skills of a group of intermediate-level ESL Arab learners and a comparison group of non-Arab ESL learners to examine whether Arab ESL learners exhibit more significant difficulties in spelling and reading skills than other ESL learners. The study is aimed not only at examining the particular needs and http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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challenges that Arab ESL students seem to face in acquiring English literacy skills but also to better understand the nature of spelling development and how it relates to reading fluency. The study will also explore and discuss reasons for the spelling difficulties that Arab ESL learners exhibit, as well as the implications for pedagogical interventions. Word Recognition and Reading Fluency: The Spelling Connection First Language (L1) English Word Recognition Fluency and Reading Skill There has been a considerable amount of research that has established the importance of word recognition skills in reading. L1 reading research has shown that fluent reading involves direct eye-fixations on most words in a text, and in particular, a vast majority of semantic content words; consequently, the predominant reocurring process in fluent reading involves word recognition and identification (Ehri, 2005; Perfetti, 1984; Rayner, 1998). L1 reading researchers have also established that proficient readers have significantly faster and more accurate word recognition skills than age-matched poor readers (Juel, 1988; Perfetti, 1985; Stanovich, 1980). Due to these and other research findings, reading researchers have concluded that word recognition processes must function rapidly and efficiently so that attention and resources can be utilized for higher-level reading comprehension processes beyond the word-level which are necessary to extract semantic propositions, generate inferences, and build a coherent situation model or text base (Ehri, 2005; Perfetti, 1985; Perfetti & Hart, 2001; Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989). ESL Word Recognition Fluency and ESL Reading Skills Much like the L1 reading research, second language (L2) in general and ESL reading research in particular have also found that word recognition efficiency is essential for the development of L2 and ESL reading proficiency and comprehension (Koda, 1996, 2005). Research conducted with children and adults at all levels of ESL reading proficiency shows that the emergence of ESL word recognition abilities involving phonological and orthographic decoding skills plays a major role in ESL reading development, and that is in part independent of ESL oral language proficiency and general vocabulary knowledge (Chiappe, Glaeser, & Ferko, 2007; Geva & Zadeh, 2006; Koda, 2005; Nassaji, 2003). For example, skills like phonemic awareness and word naming speed account for nearly all of the variance of reading skills among young beginninglevel ESL readers (Chiappe et al., 2007; Geva & Zadeh, 2006). Even at higher levels of ESL reading proficiency, word recognition skills are a primary predictor of reading development. Nassaji and Geva (1999) conducted an ESL reading study with advanced ESL learners that had an L1 Farsi background. They found that word recognition measures such as homophone judgment and orthographic legality judgment tasks explained a significant portion of reading comprehension variance beyond ESL syntactic knowledge, ESL vocabulary, and working memory capacity. Another study conducted by Nassaji (2003) with a group of 60 advanced-level ESL readers also found that orthographic and phonological processing skills reliably differentiated the more skilled from the less skilled readers. Crucially, Nassaji found that an orthographic processing task accounted for more variance in the reading comprehension scores than a phonological processing task did, which suggests that more proficient ESL readers, like proficient L1 English readers, rely more on the use of visual orthographic information (i.e., Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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spelling representations or orthographic codes) than phonological decoding processes and phonetic codes during word recognition. There is a general consensus that L2 and ESL reading skills are constrained by the ability to rapidly and efficiently recognize words (Birch, 2002; Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Koda, 1996, 2005; Paran, 1996; Segalowitz & Segalowitz, 1993). Thus, it is now widely acknowledged by both L1 and L2 reading researchers that reading fluency is determined to a substantial extent by the ability to rapidly and efficiently recognize words. Slow or inefficient word recognition processes constrain the flow of information to text interpretation and comprehension processes and limit the amount of text information that can be taken in and processed in a limited-capacity comprehension system (Perfetti, 1985). L1 English Word Recognition and Spelling Skills To account for how word recognition skills develop, some L1 researchers (Ehri, 2005; Ehri & Snowling, 2004; Perfetti, 1992, 1997) have made theoretical claims that word recognition skills develop as the quality of the orthographic or spelling knowledge in the orthographic lexicon develops, and these claims have been supported by recent L1 research (Berninger, Abbot, & Abbot, 2002; Katzir, Kim, & Wolf, 2006; Mehta, Foorman, Branum-Martin, & Taylor, 2005; Perfetti & Hart, 2001). Essentially, English orthographic or spelling knowledge emerges in two ways: (a) through the ability to recognize and map spelling patterns to corresponding sound patterns at the phoneme, syllable, and word levels; and (b) through repeated exposures to the words (Caravolas, Hulme, & Snowling, 2001; Ehri, 1997, 2005; Templeton & Morris, 2000). According to Ehri (2005), word recognition fluency emerges as well-formed spelling representations become tightly connected or bonded to corresponding phonological and semantic forms. Once a word’s orthographic form or spelling becomes highly familiar, the orthographic form or spelling begins to function much like a graphic unit that can be recognized as a whole without attention to constituent letters. In other words, well-learned word spellings (i.e., sight vocabulary) are established in memory in graphic form and automatically recalled when they are encountered during reading. According to Perfetti (1992), well-learned orthographic words have fully specified spellings that are tightly connected to corresponding phonological forms, and it is these words that make up what he calls an autonomous lexicon (i.e., sight vocabulary). It is important to note that orthographic word forms or spellings can be linked to corresponding phonological forms at the phoneme, syllable, and whole word levels, and that well-learned orthographic forms may have tight connections to phonological forms at multiple levels (Ehri & Snowling, 2004; Perfetti, 1992). Perfetti and Hart (2001) emphasize the importance of spelling knowledge or orthographic representation in what they call the lexical quality hypothesis, which claims that spelling precision or specificity underpins the ability to rapidly recognize and identify words during reading. The lexical quality hypothesis postulates that words are composed of an orthographic constituent, a phonological constituent, and a semantic constituent. Once the orthographic constituent or spelling representation becomes fully specified and linked to phonological and semantic constituents, the word’s graphic display and visual input during reading rapidly activates not only the word’s orthographic constituent but also its corresponding phonological and semantic constituents. Regardless of the particular theoretical framework, many working in L1 psycholinguistic and literacy development research subscribe to the notion that English word recognition fluency is a function of spelling knowledge (Berninger et al., 2002; Bruck & Waters, 1990; Caravolas et al., 2001; Ehri, 1997; Perfetti, 1992; Perfetti & Hart, 2001; Templeton & Morris, 2000). Incomplete or inaccurate spelling representations or knowledge will Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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result in less efficient, and in some cases, less accurate word recognition skills (Burt & Tate, 2002; Ehri, 1997; Perfetti, 1992). ESL Word Recognition and Spelling Skills Unfortunately, very little or no research has been conducted on the effect of ESL spelling knowledge on ESL reading skills among adult ESL learners, though research with young ESL learners has shown that English spelling knowledge and English word reading skills are also closely related (Chiappe et al., 2007; Geva & Zadeh, 2006; Wade-Woolley & Siegel, 1997). Moreover, ESL children have exhibited moderate to strong correlations between English word recognition, spelling, and reading comprehension, which mirrors the research findings with L1 English children acquiring English literacy skills (e.g., Berninger et al., 2002; Mehta et al., 2005; Vellutino, Tunmer, & Jaccard, 2007). Spelling as a Measure of the Orthographic Lexicon In L1 English and ESL literacy research, word recognition skills have typically been examined through orthographic processing and phonological decoding tasks (Brown & Haynes, 1985; Katzir, et al., 2006; Nassaji, 2003; Perfetti, 1985; Wade-Woolley, 1999), and to a much lesser extent through English spelling production. However, L1 researchers have argued that English spelling production provides a clear and insightful measure of the underlying orthographic knowledge that facilitates English word recognition skills (Ehri, 1997, 2005; Perfetti, 1992; Worthy & Viise, 1996). In fact, there is good reason to believe that the same orthographic lexical representations underlie both word recognition skills on one hand and spelling production skills on the other (Ehri, 1997; Ehri & Snowling, 2004; Perfetti, 1992, 1997). L1 research has not only found close correlations between English word recognition skills and spelling skills (Berninger et al., 2002; Caravolas et al., 2001; Gough, Juel, & Griffith, 1992; Ehri, 1997; Katzir et al., 2006; Mehta et al., 2005), but L1 research has also found direct evidence of connections between word reading and word spelling (Burt & Tate, 2002; Holmes & Carruthers, 1998). Holmes and Carruthers (1998) examined the English word reading skills and word spelling skills of native English speaking college students. They examined the words that their participants knew but could not accurately spell, and they found that the words their participants misspelled were not read as rapidly as words that their participants could accurately spell. Similarly, Burt and Tate (2002) found that L1 English speakers who were university students were slower at making lexical decisions on low-frequency English words that they could not spell compared to lowfrequency words that they could spell. Taken together, all of these studies support the notion that a single orthographic lexicon serves both English word recognition and spelling production, and that words that have incomplete or inaccurate spelling representations can be visually recognized during reading through partial spelling knowledge, though again, this results in less efficient and accurate word recognition skills. Development of L1 English Spelling Skills Because of the relationship between spelling knowledge and word reading skills, spelling development has become an area of interest among L1 reading researchers and psycholinguists (Caravolas et al., 2001; Ehri, 1997; Perfetti, 1997; Templeton & Morris, 2000). In general, the Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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L1 research on English spelling development shows that spelling skills emerge in stages or phases characterized by an early reliance on phonological codes to map sounds to letters and a later reliance on orthographic and phonological codes that map sounds and spelling patterns to words (Ehri & Snowling, 2004; Ganske, 1999; Henderson & Templeton, 1986; Templeton & Morris, 2000). Early alphabetic spelling abilities at around the first grade generally involve basic letter-to-sound mapping skills in what can be referred to as the early alphabetic stage (Ehri, 2005) or the letter-name stage (Templeton & Morris, 2000). At this stage, each sound is typically mapped to a letter in a one-to-one fashion and in a simple left-to-right linear order (e.g., the word bed has three sounds that map onto three corresponding letters in one-to-one linear fashion). Gradually, spelling patterns beyond simple one-to-one, letter-sound mappings are acquired. These spelling patterns primarily involve the emergence of common spelling patterns with long vowels (e.g., /i/, /e/, /ai/, /o/, /u/), such as the consonant-vowel-consonant-e (CVCe) pattern as in made and bite and the consonant-vowel-vowel-consonant patterns (CVVC) as in boat, sleep, and read, but also with complex vowel digraphs such as sound, chew, and taught (Ganske, 1999; Henderson & Templeton, 1986). The latter complex vowel digraphs involve multiple-lettervowel-spelling patterns that are less common and productive than simple short- and long-vowelspelling patterns. The next general phase of English spelling development involves the ability to discover and acquire syllable-level-spelling patterns (Ehri & Snowling, 2004; Freeman & Freeman, 2004; Templeton & Morris, 2000). For example, the consonant doubling rule is acquired when spellers learn to add the suffixes -ing or -ed to words like hop as opposed to words like hope. Words with so-called short vowels like hop, quit, clap, and bet require consonant doubling at the syllable juncture of the root word and suffix to form hopping, quitting, clapping or betting, whereas words with long vowels like hope, write, and ride drop the e and have no consonant doubling at the syllable juncture (e.g., hoping). Notice that the above doubled consonant spelling involves a syllable break between the consonants in the vowel-consonant/consonant-vowel spelling sequence (i.e., VC/CV sequence). In contrast, words like hope and write involve a different syllable juncture pattern with a CV/C sequence (e.g., ho/ping, wri/ting) that typically encodes long vowels. Once the constraint of consonant doubling is acquired (i.e., VC/CV with the first vowel short), it can facilitate the spelling patterns of words such as hap/pen and kit/ten and extend to words like nap/kin and win/ter. Once the CV/C pattern is acquired, it can facilitate the acquisition of long-vowel-syllable-spelling patterns in words like hu/mid, to/tal, fe/ver, and ri/val. The final spelling phase in English incorporates derivational morphology into spelling patterns of multisyllable words composed of root morphemes and derivational affixes (Ganske, 1999; Henderson & Templeton, 1986; Templeton & Morris, 2000). There are several difficulties involved in acquiring words with derivational spellings. For one, derivational affixation changes the stress patterns and hence the pronunciation of the vowels in root words like compete to derive morphologically complex words like competition or competitive, and this often induces spelling errors (Ehri, 1997; Henderson & Templeton, 1986). In addition, certain consonant letters, such as the final letter c in electric or clinic also involve a pronunciation change to derive electricity and clinician. Yet another difficulty at this stage involves the spelling of some derivational morphemes, such as knowing when to employ the spelling –ible or –able in words like audible, credible, passable, and dependable.

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In short, the number of fully specified word spellings in the orthographic lexicon increases as knowledge of alphabetic, syllabic, and derivational spelling patterns is acquired (Ehri, 2005; Perfetti, 1992, 1997; Templeton & Morris, 2000). Importantly, research indicates that ESL children go through the same general phases of English spelling development as native English speakers (Chiappe et al., 2007; Geva & Zadeh, 2006; Wade-Woolley & Siegel, 1997). Finally, it is important to reiterate that as spelling development emerges, so do more accurate and efficient word recognition skills in reading (Ehri, 2005; Perfetti, 1992, 1997; Perfetti & Hart, 2001; Worthy & Viise, 1996). L1 Transfer Effects on ESL Word Recognition and Spelling Though there are similarities in the development of L1 English and ESL word recognition and spelling skills, the ESL research indicates that previously acquired L1 literacy skills (i.e., L1 word recognition and spelling) interact with and shape the emergence of ESL word recognition (Akamatsu, 2003; Koda, 2005) and spelling skills (Figueredo, 2006). Thus, ESL learners from different L1 backgrounds may have distinctly different problems and consequently different needs in developing ESL word recognition and spelling skills. ESL Word Recognition and L1 Transfer Effects There is a considerable amount of ESL research that indicates L1 word perception and processing skills influence the development of ESL word recognition skills of both children and adults (Akamatsu, 1999; Brown & Haynes, 1985; Chiappe et al., 2007; Wade-Woolley, 1999; Wade-Woolley & Siegel, 1997; Wang, Koda, & Perfetti, 2003). ESL learners with L1 alphabetic skills (e.g., L1 Farsi or Russian) have been shown to utilize more efficient phonemic awareness skills and discrete phonological processing skills than ESL learners with non-alphabetic L1 skills, such as L1 logographic reading skills developed through Chinese and Kanji characters (Akamatsu, 1999, 2003; Brown & Haynes, 1985; Wade-Woolley, 1999). Similarly, ESL learners with logographic L1 backgrounds (i.e., non-alphabetic) have been shown to do better in detecting visual-orthographic spelling patterns and retrieving visual-orthographic information from memory (Brown & Haynes, 1985; Koda, 2005; Wade-Woolley, 1999). Thus, there is evidence that L1 word perception and processing skills shape and influence the emergence of ESL word perception and processing skills. In other words, ESL learners with an L1 alphabetic literacy background develop and utilize more efficient ESL phonological decoding skills, whereas ESL learners with a logographic literacy background develop and utilize more efficient ESL visualorthographic processing skills (Akamatsu, 1999, 2003; Brown & Haynes, 1985; Wade-Woolley, 1999; Wang & Koda, 2005). ESL Spelling and L1 Transfer Effects The ESL spelling research conducted with children and adults also indicates that the emergence of ESL spelling skills are influenced by the L1. These influences on ESL spelling development have been found in two ways. One involves the manner in which orthographic word forms are processed and subsequently acquired. For example, Wang and Geva (2003) found that L1 Chinese children acquiring English performed as well or better than native English speaking Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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children when spelling English words, but they were significantly worse than native English speakers in spelling pseudo words. This suggests that the native Chinese speakers had acquired English word spellings as whole lexical or visual-orthographic forms and had relied less on phoneme-level decoding and mapping skills, the latter of which are necessary to sound out and spell unfamiliar English words and pseudo words. Similarly, Holm and Dodd (1996) examined the English word recognition and word spelling skills of a group of adult ESL learners from Hong Kong. The ESL learners from Hong Kong did not differ from the other ESL groups in the study when reading and spelling English words, but they were significantly worse in a pseudo word spelling task, again indicating difficulty in using phonological codes and processing skills to sound out and spell unfamiliar orthographic forms. These studies indicate that many ESL learners with an L1 logographic literacy experience tend to rely on visual-orthographic information to process and acquire English spellings, and they underutilize phonological processing skills that characterize L1 alphabetic reading and spelling skills, which mirrors the findings in the ESL word recognition research (Akamatsu, 1999, 2003; Brown & Haynes, 1985; Wade-Woolley, 1999). Another way that the L1 influences ESL spelling is in the transfer of phonological knowledge, or the transfer of grapheme-phoneme correspondence skills. Several studies show that ESL learners with an L1 Roman alphabetic literacy experience (e.g., German or Spanish) transfer not only a familiarity of letters but also corresponding letter-sound mapping patterns (i.e., graphemephoneme correspondences) when they acquire ESL reading and spelling skills (Figueredo, 2006; Muljani, Koda, & Moates, 1998). Another transfer issue pertains to the acquisition of ESL phonemic segments and patterns that do not exist in the Ll, and this may hinder the acquisition of some ESL spellings, particularly at the earlier stages of English acquisition. For example, some of the short- and long-vowel-spelling patterns may be difficult for some native Spanish speakers to acquire, partly because Spanish has a smaller set of vowels, and in particular, short vowels (Zutell & Allen, 1988). However, the spelling research indicates that as ESL learners develop proficiency with English literacy skills, they exhibit less L1 effects in their spelling (Chiappe et al., 2007; Figueredo, 2006). L1 Arabic Literacy Experience and ESL Literacy Development Among ESL Arab Learners L1 Arabic Literacy Development In order to better understand possible L1 literacy effects among ESL Arab learners acquiring English literacy skills, it is important to look at L1 Arabic literacy education and the Arabic orthography. L1 Arabic-speaking children learn to speak a colloquial dialect of Arabic as their L1 but then learn to read and write using Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is the formal or literary form of Arabic used for all written texts. MSA is quite distinct from colloquial Arabic in vocabulary, and in some aspects of phonology and grammar as well; consequently, children learn to read in what some consider an L2 (Ayari, 1996; Saigh-Hadad, 2003). MSA utilizes an alphabetic orthography comprised of 28 letters. These primarily represent consonants but also include three letters that correspond to long-vowel phonemes. In addition, Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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there are three short-vowel forms that are written as diacritics placed above or below the consonant letters. There are also diacritics that indicate no vowel and consonant and vowel lengthening (Bauer, 1996; Fischer, 1998). Arabic is written from right to left in cursive form, and letters within words must be combined when possible. Children initially learn to read and write Arabic through use of a fully-vowelized orthography in which all the consonants and vowels are represented in the script, including the short-vowel diacritics. Thus, beginning readers and writers learn to use a fully-specified, phonologically transparent writing system in which every phoneme is represented in the spelling. These texts are easy to phonologically decode or sound out since the letters and diacritics have highly consistent and reliable grapheme-to-phoneme (letter-to-sound) correspondences. The fully-vowelized orthography is used for children’s books, the Koran, and poetry. In contrast, all print materials in the mass media, including newspapers, magazines, books, and textbooks, do not encode vowel diacritic information and thus are less phonologically transparent. At about the fourth grade, children generally transition from reading a fully-vowelized orthography to reading an orthography without the diacritics that encode short vowels, and this requires a different set of literacy skills (Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2006; Taouk & Coltheart, 2004). In other words, children move from reading a phonologically transparent orthography to an opaque orthography that lacks some phonological information in the word spellings. The latter opaque or deep orthography requires readers to utilize extra-lexical information such as morphological knowledge and sentence context to infer the missing phonological information. In MSA, all words are based on a root morpheme that is typically composed of three or four consonants (e.g., k-t-b is the root morpheme for the general concept to write). However, as with other root morphemes, k-t-b is not a word and has no pronunciation. Therefore the root morpheme must be mounted on an affix pattern to generate a word, and these affix patterns include short vowels (e.g., kataba he wrote, yaktub he writes, kitaab a book, maktab office). Even though letters and diacritics are added to the root morpheme, the root morpheme consonants always appear in the same order. An example of this in English would involve the words sing, song, and sang, all of which would be represented in the same way if the short vowels were removed (i.e., as the consonant form sng; Shimron, 1999). Thus, when reading in Arabic without diacritics (i.e., unvowelized Arabic), a reader must not only utilize the consonant spelling and phonological information in the graphic display, but they must rely on extra-lexical information such as morphological knowledge, syntactic knowledge, and sentence and discourse context (Abu-Rabia, 2002). Though children primarily read unvowlized texts by the end of elementary school, they continue to write in fully-vowelized spellings throughout primary school. Azzam (1993) states that children can learn to read in the vowelized, transparent script using basic phonological decoding skills, but that learning to spell Arabic effectively takes many years since spelling requires MSA language skills (i.e., acquisition of MSA lexical items and MSA morphosyntax, which take many years to acquire and master). In fact, a study by Abu-Rabia and Taha (2006) found that native Arabic speakers in the 1st year of high school are still acquiring the MSA language skills necessary to spell accurately.

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Research on L1 Effects Among Arab ESL Learners Aside from anecdotal evidence, there have been a few isolated studies that have examined the development of English visual orthographic and word recognition skills among native-Arabic ESL learners. Ryan and Meara (1991) conducted a small study using a same-different matching judgment task with a native Arabic speaking group and a proficiency-matched ESL comparison group. The task involved a 1-second presentation of relatively long words consisting of 10 letters (e.g., department, experiment, revolution, photograph), followed by a 2-second blank screen, and then the presentation of the word in either its correct spelling, or incorrect spelling with a vowel missing in one of four positions. Some of the words had a vowel missing in the second letter position (e.g., dpartment), some had a vowel missing in the fourth letter position (e.g., expriment), some had a vowel missing in the sixth letter position (e.g., revoltion), and some with a vowel missing in the eighth letter position (e.g., photogrph). The ESL participants were instructed to decide whether the second presentation of the word was the same (i.e., correct spelling) or different (i.e., incorrect spelling with missing vowel). This task depends crucially on the ability to use spelling knowledge to detect spelling errors (cf. Perfetti, 1997). Ryan and Meara found that the Arab ESL participants made significantly more errors in all conditions compared to the non-Arab ESL group, but also took significantly longer to make the samedifferent judgments. Consequently, Ryan and colleagues (Ryan & Meara, 1991; Ryan, 1997) argue that L1 Arabic literacy affects and shapes the ability of Arab ESL learners to extract and process some of the vowel information encoded in the graphic display. They argue that since the Arabic orthography used in mass media materials like magazines and newspapers does not encode short vowels, native Arabic readers learn to focus on the consonant forms of Arabic words, especially since the consonant structure encodes the root morpheme with general semantic information. In fact, Abu-Rabia (2002) argues that Arabic word recognition and identification processes rely on identifying the root morpheme and utilize the syntactic and semantic context to infer missing vowel information (cf. Shimron, 1999, for a similar proposal in Hebrew). Ryan and Meara further argue that native Arab ESL learners transfer their L1 word recognition skills to English and thereby rely more extensively on consonant graphemes (i.e., letters corresponding to sounds) in word spellings than the vowel graphemes, and for that reason they seem to develop lexical spelling representations that specify consonants and lack accurate vowel spellings. The fact that English vowel spellings are irregular and inconsistent (e.g., the o in phone, gone, done), especially in unstressed syllables, may also make them less reliable as letter-sound spelling cues and hence less salient spelling patterns. However, as Ryan and Meara’s (1991) study suggests, many Arab ESL students appear to struggle more with word recognition and word reading skills than their proficiency-matched ESL peers. A study conducted by Fender (2003) found that native Arabic ESL speakers were significantly slower than a group of proficiency-matched Japanese ESL speakers in a lexical decision task (i.e., an isolated word recognition task), though there were no significant differences in reading words in sentence contexts. These results suggest that Arabic speakers have slower and less efficient context-free word recognition skills, which again suggests underdeveloped orthographic knowledge or spelling representations. However, in the sentence contexts there are syntactic and semantic features (i.e., extra-linguistic cues) that may have helped facilitate word recognition and identification processes for the Arab speakers (cf. AbuRabia, 2002; Shimron, 1999). Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Thus, the Fender (2003) and Ryan and Meara (1991) studies indicate that Arab ESL learners have more difficulties recognizing English words in isolated context-free environments relative to other proficiency-matched ESL speakers, and this may be due to difficulties in perceiving and acquiring precise English orthographic forms or word spellings as a result of the transfer of L1 word recognition tendencies. Part of the difficulty may be due to the fact that L1 Arabic literacy skills develop in the fully-vowelized (i.e., transparent) script with reliable and consistent grapheme-phoneme mappings, and though the more opaque script has missing short-vowel information which results in underspecified word spellings, it nonetheless has fairly reliable phoneme-grapheme information. In contrast, English has some variable grapheme-phoneme spellings, even for consonants, such as the phoneme /k/ being spelled as c as in picnic, k as in kitchen, ck as in stuck, ch as in schedule, and the grapheme gh being pronounced as /g/ in ghost, /f/ as in laugh, or as part of a complex vowel digraph as in through or caught, which arguably have no straightforward phoneme-grapheme mapping. Therefore, native-Arabic ESL learners may initially experience some difficulty acquiring English orthographic spelling patterns that deviate from consistent and reliable grapheme-phoneme mappings. However, as Ryan and Meara claim (Ryan & Meara, 1991; Ryan, 1997), native Arabic ESL learners may also transfer some of their L1 word recognition skills developed to read the opaque, unvowelized script. As a consequence, L1 Arabic readers learn to rely on partial spelling information to identify the root Arabic morpheme, as well as the sentence context to help fully identify the word (Abu-Rabia, 2001, 2002; Ryan, 1997). If Arab ESL learners utilize these same processing skills to help them read or decode English words in text, then this may hinder the acquisition of spelling knowledge precision in general. Since spelling knowledge is closely linked to word recognition skills (Berninger et al., 2002; Burt & Tate, 2002; Holmes & Carruthers, 1998; Ehri, 1997; Mehta et al., 2005; Perfetti, 1992), deficiencies in spelling knowledge would lead to problems in word recognition and reading comprehension, but not necessarily in listening comprehension. Theoretically and empirically, spelling knowledge is not directly connected to listening (or auding) comprehension, and this is best illustrated from a component skill approach to reading. The most prevalent component skill approach to reading postulates that reading comprehension is the product of word recognition skills (including spelling knowledge) on one hand and listening or auding comprehension skills on the other (Ehri, 2005; Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Koda, 2005). In fact, an extensive amount of L1 English research shows that word recognition skills and listening or auding comprehension skills not only account for much of the variance of reading comprehension among children and adults, but that they are dissociable skills (Gough, Hoover, & Peterson, 1996; Juel, 1988; Sticht & James, 1979; Vellutino et al., 2007). Some poor L1 readers have problems with word recognition but not listening or auding (dyslexics), and some poor readers exhibit good word recognition skills but have poor listening or auding skills (hyperlexics), though it is more typical to find poor L1 readers who have problems with both component skills (Gough et al., 1996; Leach, Scarborough, & Rescorla, 2003). From a component skills approach, spelling knowledge directly impacts word recognition and reading comprehension; however, spelling knowledge does not directly affect listening or auding comprehension because spelling and listening are unrelated skills. If acquiring English orthographic or spelling knowledge is particularly problematic for Arab ESL Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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learners relative to other ESL populations, then it is plausible that Arab ESL learners at an intermediate level of proficiency may perform as well as a comparison ESL group in listening, but because of difficulties with spelling, the Arab ESL group may exhibit lower reading comprehension. The current study examines this question by looking at the spelling, reading, and listening skills of a group of Arab ESL students and a non-Arab ESL comparison group. Only a small number of studies have closely examined the word spelling and reading skills of ESL speakers (Chiappe et al., 2007; Holm & Dodd, 1996; Wade-Woolley & Segal, 1997), and to date, very little or no research has been done to examine the spelling production skills and reading skills of Arab and non-Arab ESL learners that are matched on a listening comprehension measure. This is a significant gap in the literature, especially because anecdotal evidence suggests that Arab ESL learners struggle with both ESL spelling development and reading fluency relative to listening and speaking skills (cf. Milton & Hopkins, 2006) and because there is very little research that has examined both the spelling knowledge and reading skills of Arab ESL learners in an EAP context. If Arab ESL learners do have difficulty acquiring English spellings, then we might expect differences between Arab and a comparison group of ESL learners in spelling and reading comprehension, but not necessarily in listening comprehension. Consequently, the following research questions were motivated by the present study: 1. If intermediate Arab and non-Arab ESL learners are matched on a listening proficiency measure, will there be differences in the ESL reading comprehension skills of the Arab and non-Arab learners? 2. Are there differences in the spelling knowledge of the Arab and non-Arab ESL learners? Method Participants There were a total of 37 ESL participants. All the participants were enrolled in the same highintermediate level ESL classes at the same time (i.e., same semester) in the same EAP program. The EAP program is located in a large university in North America. Of the 20 Arab students enrolled in the high intermediate classes at the time of the study, 16 took the paper and pencil TOEFL reading test, TOEFL listening test, and a spelling test, and thus were included in the study. The comparison group consisted of ESL participants (L1 Chinese, L1 Korean, and L1 Japanese) whose native language literacy skills did not include the Latin alphabet; thus, the Arab and comparison ESL groups had minimal grapheme-phoneme correspondence skills and spelling knowledge that could transfer from their L1 (cf. Figueredo, 2006; Muljani et al., 1998). Overall, 21 out of 26 (= 81%) of the students who were native speakers of Chinese (n = 9), Korean (n = 5), and Japanese (n = 7) took all three tests and were included in the study. All the participants reported that their first formal study of English began upon entry into secondary school in their home countries. All of the Arab ESL participants were enrolled in English classes in order to enter an academic program in the United Sates in either the graduate or undergraduate level, Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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whereas fewer than half of the (non-Arab) comparison group participants planned on entering an academic program at the university level. Finally, the participants in the non-Arab ESL comparison group were nearly 2 years older (mean age = 24.35 years) than the Arab ESL participants (mean age = 22.43 years), and though the mean age difference between the two groups was not significant, t(34) = 2.04, p = .052, it approached significance. Procedure The listening and reading subsections of a paper and pencil TOEFL test were used to assess the students’ general listening skills and reading comprehension skills. The tests were administered using standard procedures during the first week of a semester term, which was also the time all the participants were beginning to study at the high-intermediate level in the same EAP program. The 58-item spelling diagnostic was administered in the following week (Week 2) of the semester. The participants received response sheets on which to write their spelling words. The administrator read the target word (e.g., bottle), used the word in a sentence (e.g., I bring a bottle of water to class everyday), and then read the target word again. Two example spelling words were given at the beginning. After going over the two examples, the administrator then gave the spelling test. The spelling test took 20–25 minutes to administer. Materials There were two primary criteria used to select the words for the spelling test. One was to select words that would be familiar and known by students at an intermediate level of ESL proficiency. The second was to select words that corresponded to levels of spelling difficulty so that the two groups could be compared with regard to within-word spelling skills, basic syllable pattern spelling skills, and multiple-syllable spelling pattern skills with unstressed syllables and derivational spellings. The spelling test was composed of relatively common everyday words (e.g., train, shout, bridge) and common long words often used in academic and non-academic contexts (e.g., information, necessary, knowledge) that were expected to be familiar to intermediate ESL learners in an EAP program according to the Words for Students of English Vocabulary series (Rogerson, Hershelman, & Jasnow, 1992). The spelling word list consisted of items taken from the elementary spelling inventory (McKenna & Stahl, 2003), and from the elementary level (K-6th) items from the Wide Range Achievement Test 3 spelling assessment (Jastak & Wilkerson, 1993). Four of the high-intermediate ESL reading teachers in the EAP program were asked to judge how familiar the words were for the majority of the intermediate ESL learners entering the highintermediate course in Week 1 (i.e., at the time of testing). Of the 58 words on the spelling test, the teachers judged 54 words as highly familiar and part of the productive vocabulary knowledge of most of the students entering the high-intermediate level course. Four words on the spelling test (recognize, personal, confusion, preparation) were judged by two of the teachers as words that were known and part of the receptive knowledge of the ESL learners entering the highintermediate level, whereas two teachers judged the same four words as highly familiar and part Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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of the productive vocabulary of the ESL learners (see Appendix A for the words used on the spelling test). The spelling test was designed to examine the acquisition of the English spelling rules and constraints used by L1 English literacy researchers (Ganske, 1999; Henderson & Templeton, 1986; Templeton & Morris, 2000). Thus, the spelling test examined the within-word spelling skills involving short vowels (e.g., cut, dress, catch), long vowels (e.g., train, reach, strange), and complex vowels (e.g., flew, mouth, found) in single-syllable words. There were a total of 22 within-word spelling items. In addition, the spelling test assessed basic syllable-juncture-patternspelling skills with words that had two or more syllables, and included syllable juncture spelling skills with consonant doubling (e.g., written, swimming), long-vowel spellings skills with open syllables (e.g., first syllable in music and babies), and short-vowel spelling skills with closed syllables (e.g., first syllable in kitchen and dollar). There was a total of 18 words that assessed basic syllable-juncture-pattern-spelling skills. Finally, the spelling test examined more complex spelling skills, involving derivational spellings (e.g., suggestion, electrical, decision) that also included multisyllabic words with unstressed syllables (e.g., necessary, interesting). The Cronbach alpha reliability estimate was .91 for the spelling test. The TOEFL listening subsection was used to assess listening comprehension or auding skills. The listening subsection measures receptive language skills in three formats: short conversational exchanges, minitalks, and lectures. The listening section tests auditory receptive language skills such as receptive vocabulary knowledge, sentence parsing and processing skills, various types of inferencing skills (e.g., with anaphora and pronoun resolution, generating inferences from background knowledge), and integration skills (e.g., detecting key information such as main ideas and integrating that information into a coherent text representation). There are a total of 50 questions (i.e., maximum raw score of 50), all of which are multiple-choice items. The TOEFL reading subsection was used to assess reading comprehension skills. There are six passages with 7 to 10 comprehension questions for each, all of which are multiple-choice items. There are a total of 50 test items in the reading section (i.e., maximum raw score of 50). The reading test measures the same language comprehension skills as the listening comprehension test (i.e., receptive vocabulary, sentence processing, inferencing skills, and information integration), though the reading test includes a larger range of vocabulary and sentence structures that are more indicative of expository discourse. According to the TOEFL Score User Guide (2001), the paper-based reading and listening test scores yield a correlation of .70, which indicates that many of the same receptive language processing skills are tested across the two tests (also see Freedle & Kostin, 1999; Hale, Rock, & Jirele, 1989). Nonetheless, the correlation is not perfect, and this is likely due to some of the linguistic and topic content differences in the two sections (e.g., roughly half the mini talks or long conversations in the listening section have academic topics, whereas all the reading passages cover academic topics; Freedle & Kostin, 1999). Results Table 1 summarizes the results of the TOEFL tests, which are based on a maximum raw score of Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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50 for both the listening and reading tests. The Arab ESL group scored higher on the TOEFL listening test (mean of 28.13 for the Arab ESL group, mean of 25.33 for the non-Arab ESL group) than the comparison ESL group, but the difference was not significant t(34) = 1.31, p = .20. Thus, both groups exhibited comparable listening (auding) comprehension. In contrast, the Arab ESL group scored significantly lower on the TOEFL reading test (mean of 20.91 for the Arab ESL group, mean of 29.71 for the non-Arab ESL group) than the non-Arab comparison ESL group, t(35) = 3.27, p = .002. Table 1. TOEFL listening and reading scores (out of 50 maximum) Listening Reading Language group Group means M SD M SD Arab group 28.13 6.33 20.91 7.61 49.04 Non-Arab group 25.33 6.51 29.71 8.56 55.04 Condition means 53.46 50.62

Correct items on the spelling test were tabulated as follows. Any word spelled with any incorrect letters (e.g., desigion for decision), incorrect sequences of letters (e.g., trian for train), missing letters (e.g., fund for found), or extra letters (e.g., shouet for shout) was incorrect. Table 2 presents the group mean results of the correctly spelled words for the Arab and non-Arab ESL groups across the within-word spellings (n = 22), basic syllable-spelling patterns (n = 18), and multiple-syllable and derivational spelling patterns (n = 18). Figure 1 presents the mean scores as percentages correct for the two groups across the three sets of words in the spelling task. A 2 × 3 (Language Group × Word Condition) repeated measures ANOVA was conducted with the two language groups as the between-subjects factor and the three word conditions as the withinsubjects factor. The ANOVA revealed a main effect for group, F(1, 35) = 38.76, p < .001. The mean scores indicated that the Arab ESL group scored significantly lower on the spelling test than the non-Arab ESL group. Not surprisingly, there was a main effect for word condition as well, F(2, 70) = 197.23, p < .001. There was also an interaction between language group and word condition, F(2, 70) = 8.61, p < .001. A post hoc analysis indicated that the non-Arab ESL comparison group was more accurate than the Arab ESL group with the within-word spellings, t(35) = 3.57, p = .001, the syllable juncture spellings, t(35) = 5.01, p < .001, and the derivational spellings, t(35) = 6.27, p < .001. Table 2. Means of within-word spellings, syllable juncture spellings, and derivational spellings Arab ESL group Non-Arab group M

SD

M

SD

Within-word

18.19

2.88

20.71

1.31

Syllable juncture

10.00

3.27

14.52

2.23

Derivational

8.38

2.85

14.57

3.06

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Percentage Correct

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Non-Arab Group Arab Group Within Word

Syllable Juncture

Derivational

Figure 1. Accuracy (in percentages) for both Arab and Non-Arab ESL groups across the within-word, syllable juncture, and derivational word conditions.

Discussion The results show that the two groups were comparable in listening (auding) comprehension skills, yet the Arab ESL group scored significantly lower on the spelling and reading comprehension test. These results make sense from the component skills approach when we consider two points. First, spelling is a measure of the orthographic knowledge that underpins word recognition skills in reading, which is supported by strong correlations between spelling knowledge and word recognition skills (Berninger et al., 2002; Geva & Zadeh, 2006; Katzir et al., 2006; Mehta et al., 2005) and the direct relationships between spelling performance and word recognition performance (Burt & Tate, 2002; Holmes & Carruthers, 1998) indicating that the same knowledge source (i.e., orthographic representations in the orthographic lexicon) informs spelling and word recognition (Ehri & Snowling, 2004; Perfetti, 1992). Secondly, orthographic or spelling knowledge is an important aspect of the word recognition component that supports reading comprehension but is not directly related to listening or auding comprehension skills (Berninger et al., 2002; Chiappe et al., 2007; Gough et al., 1996; Mehta et al., 2005). Thus, two groups of ESL learners can have comparable listening (auding) skills, as in this study, and yet have significantly different reading abilities if there are significant differences in orthographic or spelling knowledge. The results of this study help to explain the discrepancy between the listening comprehension skills and the reading comprehension skills of some Arab ESL learners and indicate how spelling knowledge can affect the emergence of reading skills relative to listening or auding skills. In examining the spelling scores across the three spelling conditions, it is generally the case that the Arab ESL participants exhibited more difficulty than the comparison ESL participants when spelling involves orthographic or spelling pattern information that is independent of basic (i.e., the most common) grapheme-phoneme correspondences. For example, the Arab ESL learners had relatively little problem in spelling most of the mono-syllabic words with relatively common Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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sound-letter spellings with short and long vowels (e.g., cut, dress, train); yet some spelling problems tended to emerge with digraphs that did not involve common short- and long-vowelspelling patterns (e.g., flew, shout) or consonants with complex digraph spellings (e.g., bridge) or less common grapheme-phoneme mappings (e.g., the /s/ spelled c in choice). Though both groups had more spelling difficulties with syllable-spelling patterns (e.g., open and closed syllable-spelling patterns in hotel and bottle) and derivational spelling patterns (e.g., spelling unstressed vowels in words like decision or distance or furniture), the Arab speakers experienced more drastic problems with these spellings, as is apparent in results in Figure 1. In other words, it is natural that words with more orthographic and spelling pattern complexity will be more difficult for both L1 and ESL learners to spell. Nonetheless, the problem is especially acute among the Arab ESL participants who seem to struggle with orthographic complexity, especially with the basic syllable-spelling patterns and derivational spellings. It should be added that although the Arab participants on the whole missed around half of the multiple syllable words (i.e., basic syllable-spelling patterns and derivational spellings), they were clearly able to spell half of these words correctly and misspelled many words by one or two letters, indicating that they had substantial spelling knowledge of many of the words. Nonetheless, incomplete or partial spelling knowledge of even one letter can result in less efficient and accurate word recognition processes (Perfetti, 1992; Perfetti & Hart, 2001), processes which are crucial to word recognition fluency and reading comprehension. Though the study found differences between the Arab and comparison ESL groups in spelling, the reasons for the differences are less clear. One possibility involves L1 literacy experience and how that experience influences or shapes the development of ESL literacy skills, and in particular ESL spelling and orthographic skills. There is now a considerable amount of research in the past 20 years showing that L1 word recognition skills interact with and influence the emergence of L2 word recognition skills (e.g., Akamatsu, 1999, 2003; Koda, 2005; WadeWoolley, 1999). Recent work done in L1 Arabic and Hebrew literacy development indicates native readers of Arabic and Hebrew focus on the consonant structure of printed words to identify root word forms but then must also rely on extra-linguistic sources of knowledge (sentence context, morphological knowledge) to identify the word since short-vowel information is missing (Abu-Rabia, 2002; Shimron, 1999). If Arab ESL learners transfer some of these L1 word recognition tendencies to English, then this may result in ESL word recognition processes that rely on partial spelling information (e.g., consonants and consonant structure) and extralexical sentence context information to identify words during reading. Though L1 influences are difficult to determine from paper and pencil tests, there is some indication of this when we look at correlations between the spelling scores and reading comprehension scores. Typically, there is a moderate to strong correlation between spelling knowledge and reading comprehension because spelling knowledge and word recognition skills crucial to reading are closely linked to the same orthographic representations (Berninger, et al., 2002; Chiappe et al., 2007; Katzir, et al., 2006; Mehta et al., 2005), and this is consistent with the spelling and reading comprehension scores for the ESL comparison group (r = .57, p < .01). However, there is no correlation between the spelling and reading comprehension scores of the Arab ESL group (r = -.15, ns), though a note of caution is in order when examining correlations on relatively small numbers of subjects (cf. Wade-Woolley, 1999). With that being said, detailed or precise orthographic or spelling knowledge as measured by the spelling test appears to have Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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little relationship to the reading scores for the Arab ESL participants in this study, and this seems quite unusual when we consider the close relationship that has been found between spelling knowledge and word recognition skills among L1 English and ESL populations (e.g., Chiappe et al., 2007; Geva & Zadeh, 2006; Katzir et al., 2006; Mehta et al., 2005). However, if the Arab ESL learners relied on partial spelling information and extra-lexical information (e.g., sentence and discourse context) to identify English words during reading, then we should expect to find a lower correlation between spelling knowledge and reading comprehension measures. This also suggests the Arab ESL learners were relying on extra-lexical context information to help them identify English words in a way that parallels L1 Arabic word recognition skills. The use of extra-lexical information in L1 Arabic is essential in identifying Arabic words with incomplete or partial spelling information in the less transparent orthography that lacks short-vowel diacritics (Abu-Rabia, 2001, 2002). At the very least, the spelling score and reading score correlations suggest that spelling knowledge played less of a role in the reading outcomes for Arab ESL participants than the non-Arab ESL participants. Furthermore, word recognition tendencies that rely on extra-lexical information to identify English words would also be less likely to extract and encode detailed spelling information in the graphic display during ESL reading, which would inhibit the development of ESL spelling skills. The results of the present study are also consistent with previous research showing that Arab ESL learners experience more difficulty than other ESL populations in processing English word forms (Fender, 2003; Ryan, 1997; Ryan & Meara, 1991). Recall that Ryan and Meara (1991) found that a group of Arab ESL learners was significantly less accurate and efficient than an ESL control group in making same-different judgments in a matching task. That is, they were less likely to detect spelling discrepancies (i.e., words with a missing vowel) and thereby made more errors in matching up incorrectly and correctly spelled word forms. This suggests that the Arab ESL learners had less specified spelling knowledge of the words than the control group did. Likewise, Fender (2003) found that a group of advanced ESL proficiency Arab learners were significantly slower than a proficiency-matched ESL group on word recognition skills in a lexical decision task. These results, along with the present study, suggest that the learners have less detailed spelling information in the orthographic lexicon, and this is reflected in a range of tasks that utilize spelling or orthographic knowledge. However, it is also plausible and likely that the Arab ESL learners in this study had less experience processing English print materials than the other ESL learners. Recall that the participants in the non-Arab ESL group were nearly 2 years older on average than the Arab ESL participants, and this was close to being a significant difference. Such an age difference could mean that the non-Arab ESL group had an additional 2 years of potential exposure to English texts. It should be mentioned that the previous studies examining Arab ESL learners had not conducted a thorough analysis to examine the different print processing experiences that the Arab and non-Arab ESL learners have had in their home countries. Though it seems likely that some of the difficulties Arab ESL learners have with English spellings can be attributed to previous L1 print processing experiences, it also seems possible that English print processing experience in their home country, or possibly lack thereof, is a significant factor as well. Thus, one of the major limitations of this study is the lack of background survey data that would help more closely examine the ESL print processing experiences and English language learning practices of the Arab participants. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Another limitation to the present study involved the language proficiency measures. For one, there was no direct measure of vocabulary knowledge. Though the two groups were comparable in listening (auding) comprehension, this does not ensure that both groups of learners had the same receptive vocabulary knowledge, which is a crucial factor in determining reading comprehension. However, the TOEFL listening test is sensitive to general receptive vocabulary skills and sentence processing skills, and if there were significant differences in these two areas then this should be reflected in the listening test results. Nonetheless, future work examining the ESL spelling and reading skills of Arab ESL learners should assess vocabulary knowledge more directly (cf. Milton & Hopkins, 2006). Finally, it is possible that the comparison ESL group utilized a more effective set of reading strategies than the Arab ESL group, and this could potentially account for some of the difference between the listening and reading scores (i.e., lack of reading strategy skill could potentially suppress the Arab ESL participants’ reading comprehension scores). Interestingly, this latter consideration is not typically discussed in research examining component skills (e.g., Gough et al., 1992). Another limitation to this study pertains to the population sample and size. Though the students were entering high-intermediate level ESL courses, many of them were at a general intermediate level of English proficiency in the EAP program. These results would pertain to students at this general proficiency level, which appears to be the same level as the students in the Ryan and Meara (1991) study. Therefore, Arab ESL learners may require more time to develop English spelling and orthographic knowledge at lower-levels of English proficiency that are not as pronounced at more advanced levels of English proficiency. Finally, the Arab ESL group had a smaller sample size, and this is less than ideal. Nonetheless, this study along with other research suggests that the quality of spelling knowledge may be a problem for many Arab ESL learners, at least at an intermediate level of English proficiency, and that this potentially impacts the development of reading skills relative to the development of listening comprehension skills. The results from the spelling, listening, and reading comprehension tests in the present study are generally consistent with previous research showing that Arab ESL learners are less efficient and accurate in English word recognition skills. Since orthographic or spelling knowledge informs both spelling and word recognition skills, then less developed English orthographic knowledge would result in less efficient and accurate word recognition skills, as found by the Arab ESL participants in the Ryan and Meara (1991) and Fender (2003) studies. Furthermore, the lack of a correlation between spelling precision and reading comprehension suggests that the Arab ESL learners may be relying on extra-lexical sentence and discourse context to identify words, a strategy that would work much better for narrative texts than expository texts such as those encountered on the TOEFL reading test. Implications Most of the Arab ESL learners in this study demonstrated spelling knowledge of within-wordspelling patterns with long and short vowels (e.g., train, reach, catch, dress) but exhibited more spelling difficulty with multisyllabic words that included spelling patterns across syllables (e.g., customer, bottle, success) and derivational spellings (e.g., decision, knowledge, responsible). Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Thus, being able to segment words into syllables and acquiring an understanding of syllablelevel-spelling patterns with open and closed syllables could be particularly helpful in being able to both acquire syllable-level-spelling patterns and to map vowels to spellings (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2004). This understanding may be crucial in helping learners understand and acquire how English spelling patterns at the phoneme, syllable, and morpheme or word levels correspond to pronunciations. Then, when readers see and pronounce a word, an enriched awareness of spelling-sound relationships can be utilized, which then may potentially secure a word’s spelling in memory. In this way, ESL learners who struggle with English spelling would be able to acquire detailed orthographic or spelling forms more quickly and thoroughly. References Abu-Rabia, S. (2001). The role of vowels in reading Semitic scripts: Data from Arabic and Hebrew. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 14, 39–59. Abu-Rabia, S. (2002). Reading in a root-based-morphology language: The case of Arabic. Journal of Research in Reading, 25, 299–309. Abu-Rabia, S., & Taha, H. (2006). Phonological errors predominate in Arabic spelling across grades 1–9. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 35, 167–188. Akamatsu, N. (1999). The effects of first language orthographic features on word recognition processing in English as a second language. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 11, 381–403. Akamatsu, N. (2003). The effects of first language orthographic features on second language reading in text. Language Learning, 53, 207–231. Ayari, S. (1996). Diglossia and illiteracy in the Arab world. Language Culture and Curriculum, 9, 243–253. Azzam, R. (1993). The nature of Arabic reading and spelling errors of young children: A descriptive study. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 5, 355– 385. Bauer, T. (1996). Arabic writing. In P. T. Daniels & W. Bright (Eds.), The world’s writing systems (pp. 559–564). New York: Oxford University Press. Bear, D., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2004). Words their way: Word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction. New York: Pearson Education. Berninger, V., Abbott, R., & Abbott, S. (2002). Writing and reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 35, 39–56. Birch, B. (2002). English L2 reading: Getting to the bottom. Mahweh, NJ: Erlbaum. Brown, T. L., & Haynes, M. (1985). Literacy background and reading development in a second language. In T. H. Carr (Ed.), The development of reading skills (pp. 19–34). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Bruck, M., & Waters, G. (1990). An analysis of the component spelling and reading skills of good readers-good spellers, good readers-poor spellers, and poor readers-poor spellers. In T. Carr & B. Levy (Eds.), Reading and its development: Component skills approaches (pp. 161–206). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Burt, J., & Tate, H. (2002). Does a reading lexicon provide orthographic representations for spelling? Journal of Memory and Language, 46, 518–543. Caravolas, M., Hulme, C., Snowling, M. (2001). The foundations of spelling ability: Evidence from a 3-year longitudinal study. Journal of Memory and Language, 45, 751–774. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Chiappe, P., Glaeser, B., & Ferko, D. (2007). Speech perception, vocabulary, and the development of reading skills in English among Korean- and English-speaking children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99, 154–166. Ehri, L. (1997). Learning to read and learning to spell are one and the same, almost. In C. Perfetti, L. Rieben, & M. Fayol (Eds.), Learning to spell: Research, theory, and practice across languages (pp. 237–269). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Ehri, L. (2005). Learning to read words: Theory, findings, and issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9, 167–188. Ehri, L., & Snowling, M. (2004). Developmental variation in word recognition. In C. Stone, E. Silliman, B. Ehren, & K. Apel (Eds.), Handbook of language and literacy (pp. 433–460). New York: Guilford Press. Fender, M. (2003). English word recognition and word integration skills of native Arabic- and Japanese-speaking learners of English as a second language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 289–315. Figueredo, L. (2006). Using the known to chart the unknown: A review of first-language influence on the development of English-as-a-second-language spelling skill. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 19, 873–905. Fischer, W. (1998). Classical Arabic. In R. Hetzron (Ed.), The Semitic languages (pp. 187–219). New York: Routledge. Freedle, R., & Kostin, I. (1999). Does the text matter in a multiple-choice test of comprehension? The case for the construct validity of TOEFL’s minitalks. Language Testing, 16, 2–32. Freeman, D., & Freeman, Y. (2004). Essential linguistics: What you need to know to teach reading, ESL, spelling, phonics, and grammar. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Ganske, K. (1999). The developmental spelling analysis: A measure of orthographic knowledge. Educational Assessment, 6, 41–70. Geva, E., & Zadeh, Z. (2006). Reading efficiency in native English-speaking and English-as-asecond-language children: The role of oral proficiency and underlying cognitivelinguistic processes. Scientific Studies of Reading, 10, 31–57. Gough, P., Hoover, W., & Peterson, C. (1996). Some observations on a simple view of reading. In C. Cornoldi & J. Oakhill (Eds.), Reading comprehension difficulties: Processes and interventions (pp. 1–13). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Gough, P., Juel, C., & Griffith, P. (1992). Reading, spelling, and the orthographic cipher. In P. Gough, L. Ehri, & R. Treiman (Eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 35–48). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Grabe, W., Stoller, F. (2002). Teaching and researching reading. New York: Pearson Education. Hale, G., Rock, D., & Jirele, T. (1989). Confirmatory factor analysis of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL Research Reports, Report 32). Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service. Henderson, E., & Templeton, S. (1986). A developmental perspective of formal spelling instruction through alphabet, pattern, and meaning. The Elementary School Journal, 86, 305–316. Holm, A., & Dodd, B. (1996). The effect of first written language on the acquisition of English literacy. Cognition, 59, 119–147. Holmes, V., & Carruthers, J. (1998). The relation between reading and spelling in skilled adult readers. Journal of Memory and Language, 39, 264–289. Jastak, J., & Wilkenson, G. (1993). Wide ranging achievement test 3. Wide Range. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Juel, C. (1988). Learning to read and write: A longitudinal study of 54 children from first through fourth grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 437–447. Katzir, T., Kim, Y., & Wolf, M. (2006). The relationship of spelling recognition, RAN, and phonological awareness to reading skills in older poor readers and younger readingmatched controls. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 19, 845–872. Koda, K. (1996). L2 word recognition research: A critical review. The Modern Language Journal, 80, 450–460. Koda, K. (2005). Insights into second language reading. New York: Cambridge University Press. Leach, J., Scarborough, H., & Rescorla, L. (2003). Late-emerging reading difficulties. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 211–224. McKenna, M., & Stahl, S. (2003). Assessment for reading instruction. New York: Guilford Press. Mehta, P., Foorman, B., Branum-Martin, L., & Taylor, W. P. (2005). Literacy as a unidimensional multilevel construct: Validation, sources of influence, and implications in a longitudinal study in Grades 1 to 4. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9, 85–116. Milton, J., & Hopkins, N. (2006). Comparing phonological and orthographic vocabulary size: Do vocabulary tests underestimate the knowledge of some learners. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 63, 127–147. Muljani, D., Koda, K., & Moates, D. (1998). The development of word recognition in a second language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 19, 99–113. Nassaji, H. (2003). Higher-level and lower-level text processing skills in advanced ESL reading comprehension. The Modern Language Journal, 87, 261– 276. Nassaji, H., & Geva, E. (1999). The contribution of phonological and orthographic processing skills to adult ESL reading: Evidence from native speakers of Farsi. Applied Psycholinguistics, 20, 241–267. Paran, A. (1996). Reading in EFL: Facts and fiction. ELT Journal, 50, 25–34. Perfetti, C. A. (1984). Reading acquisition and beyond: Decoding includes cognition. American Journal of Education, 93, 40–60. Perfetti, C. A. (1985). Reading ability. New York: Oxford University Press. Perfetti, C. A. (1992). The representation problem in reading acquisition. In P. Gough, L. Ehri, & R. Treiman (Eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 145–174). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Perfetti, C. (1997). The psycholinguistics of spelling and reading. In C. Perfetti, L. Rieben, & F. Michel (Eds.), Learning to spell: Research, theory, and practice across languages (pp. 21–38). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Perfetti, C., & Hart, L. (2001). The lexical basis of comprehension skill. In D. Gorein (Ed.), On the consequences of meaning selection: Perspectives on resolving lexical ambiguity (pp. 67–86). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Rayner, K. (1998). Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 372–422. Rayner, K., & Pollatsek, A. (1989). The psychology of reading. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall. Rogerson, H., Hershelman, S., & Jasnow, C. (1992). A vocabulary series for ESL (Vol. 5). Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Ryan, A., & Meara, P. (1991). The case of the invisible vowels: Arabic speakers reading English words. Reading in a Foreign Language, 7, 531–540. Ryan, A. (1997). Learning the orthographical form of L2 vocabulary: A receptive and productive Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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process. In N. Schmitt & M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary: Description, acquisition and pedagogy (pp. 181–198). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2003). Linguistic distance and initial reading acquisition: The case of Arabic diglossia. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 431–51. Segalowitz, N., & Segalowitz, S. (1993). Skilled performance, practice, and the differentiation of speed-up from automatization effects: Evidence from second language word recognition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 14, 369–385. Shimron, J. (1999). The role of vowel signs in Hebrew: Beyond word recognition. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 11, 301–319. Stanovich, K. (1980). Toward an interactive-compensatory model of individual differences in the development of reading fluency. Reading Research Quarterly, 16, 32–67. Sticht, T., & James, J. (1979). Listening and reading. In P. Pearson (Ed.), Handbook of reading research (pp. 293–317). New York: Longman. Taouk, M., & Coltheart, M. (2004). The cognitive processes involved in learning to read in Arabic. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 17, 27–57. Templeton, S., & Morris, D. (2000). Spelling. In M. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, P. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 3, pp. 525–544). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. TOEFL score user guide (2000–2001 ed.). (2001). Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service. Vellutino, F., Tunmer, W., Jaccard, J. (2007). Components of reading ability: Multivariate evidence for a convergent skills model of reading development. Scientific Studies of Reading, 11, 3–32. Wade-Woolley, L. (1999). First language influences on second language word reading: All roads lead to Rome. Language Learning, 49, 447–471. Wade-Woolley, L., & Siegel, L. (1997). The spelling performance of ESL and native speakers of English as a function of reading skill. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 9, 387–406. Wang, G., & Geva, E. (2003). Spelling performance of Chinese children using English as a second language: Lexical and visual-orthographic processes. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 1–25. Wang, M., & Koda, K. (2005). Commonalities and differences in word identification skills among learners of English as a second language. Language Learning, 55, 71–98. Wang, M., Koda, K., & Perfetti, C. (2003). Alphabetic and nonalphabetic L1 effects in English word identification: A comparison of Korean and Chinese English L2 learners. Cognition, 87, 129–149. Worthy, J., & Viise, N. (1996). Morphological, phonological, and orthographic differences between the spelling of normally achieving children and basic literacy adults. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 8, 139–159. Zutell, J., & Allen, V. (1988). The English spelling strategies of Spanish-speaking bilingual children. TESOL Quarterly, 22, 333–340. Appendix A Spelling Test Directions: Say the word once, then say the word in a sentence, and then repeat the word again. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Instruct the students to spell the words as best they can if they are not sure how to spell the word. Example: bed I got out of bed at 7 a.m. this morning. hand I write with my right hand. Within-word spellings (1–22, 22 items) 1. run Billy can run fast. 2. cook My mother will cook dinner soon. 3. cut My mother will cut the cake with a knife. 4. arm John fell and broke his right arm. 5. dress She is wearing an expensive dress. 6. train The train was on time. 7. shout If you shout, everyone will hear you. 8. watch I usually watch TV on Monday night. 9. share The boy will share his food with the children. 10. choice You have the choice of taking the vocabulary class or the TOFL class. 11. catch I will catch a bus tomorrow morning. 12. found The boy finally found his ball. 13. reach The little boy cannot reach the light switch. 14. bird There is a bird in the tree. 15. strange I watched a very strange and unusual movie last night. 16. burn The food will burn if it stays in the oven. 17. cold It is cold outside. 18. bridge The bridge was built in 1989. 19. throw The child will throw the ball. 20. mouth His mouth is full of food. 21. flew The plane flew from Los Angeles to New York. 22. grown Bill’s children have grown up and are in high school. Syllable juncture spellings (23–40, 18 items) 23. kitchen Our kitchen is small. 24. result His TOEFL test result was good. 25. advice The teacher usually gives good advice to the students. 26. surprise The students will surprise their teacher. 27. purchase The student purchased all his books at the bookstore. 28. package John received a package in the mail. 29. music I like to listen to music when I drive. 30. customer The restaurant serves the customers with good food. 31. separate We must separate the spoons and forks. 32. babies My brother and his wife have two babies. 33. written Many of the level 5 students have written research papers. 34. napkin I need a napkin to wipe my mouth. 35. swimming We like to go swimming in the ocean. 36. market My father goes to the market to get fresh fruit. 37. dollar A bottle of water costs one dollar. 38. bottle I bring a bottle of water to class everyday. 39. thirsty The thirsty boy drank all the water. 40. success The boy worked hard and had great success in his classes. Derivational spellings (41–58, 18 items) 41. insurance You must have care insurance to drive in California. 42. suggestion Mary made a good suggestion. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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43. distance 44. decision 45. recognize 46. necessary 47. carefully 48. personal 49. confusion 50. electrical 51. attendance 52. responsible 53. information 54. furniture 55. preparation 56. interesting 57. education 58. knowledge

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The distance between Los Angeles and San Diego is 100 miles. The students must make a decision about their elective class. The woman did not recognize her childhood friend. It is necessary to do all your homework. The little girl carefully crossed the busy street. Every employee has their own personal computer. There was a lot of confusion about the new rules. I want to study electrical engineering. Jill had very good classroom attendance this year. Parents are responsible for taking care of their children. The lady at the library gave me useful information. My roommate and I need to buy some new furniture. There are some good TOEFL preparation books. We read an interesting story in class yesterday. Many people don’t have a college education. The old man has lots of knowledge.

About the Author Michael Fender is currently an assistant professor at California State University, Long Beach. His primary research interests include first and second language reading development, particularly the emergence of lower-level reading skills involving word recognition and sentence processing. He has published articles on these topics in Language Learning and Applied Psycholinguistics. E-mail: [email protected]

Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2008, Volume 20, No. 1 pp. 43–69

Comparing the vocabulary of different graded-reading schemes Udorn Wan-a-rom Mahasarakham University Thailand Abstract This study compared graded-reader wordlists with the General Service List (GSL; West, 1953) and investigated the words in those lists and the words actually used in gradedreader books. The wordlists from the 2 major graded-reader series, the GSL, and the words actually used in the graded readers were examined using the Range program. The comparisons showed that the lists are different from each other largely because of the different sizes of the lists and because of the words they contain and do not contain. In addition, the words actually used in the books do not stick closely to the words in the lists on which they are based, especially at Level 1. Conclusions and implications are drawn for practice in extensive reading programs. Keywords: graded levels, graded-reading schemes, graded readers, wordlists, extensive reading

A graded-reader scheme usually has word and structure lists that are divided into levels to guide writers and editors in designing graded-reading books. The findings of Nation and Wang’s (1999) research show that most graded-reader schemes set up conditions that will enhance vocabulary learning. The limited vocabulary at each level will be repeated in books of the same level. Words from earlier levels will be repeated very often at subsequent levels, and this will provide learners with more opportunities to encounter the words. These repetitions are believed to be crucial for establishing word knowledge. According to Nation and Wang, about 10 repetitions are desirable, but the more the better. Nation and Wang (1999) also found that 84.7% of the words in the General Service List (GSL; West, 1953) appeared in the Oxford Bookworms’ (OBW) lists,1 showing that the classic list of the 2,000 GSL words is of practical use to writers of graded readers. A general-service vocabulary is essential for all learners, no matter the modes in which and purposes for which they are using English as a foreign or second language. This claim is supported by the finding that the GSL provides around 82% average coverage of various kinds of written texts (Hirsh & Nation, 1992; Hwang & Nation, 1989; Sutarsyah, Nation, & Kennedy, 1994),2 with higher coverage for more informal text. However, learners need vocabulary sizes that will cover at least 98% of the texts they read (Hu & Nation, 2000). According to Nation (2006), for unsimplified texts, this would require a vocabulary size of approximately 7,000–9,000 word families (i.e., headwords together with their other common forms). The notion of vocabulary size has been taken as a guideline for devising a scheme for graded readers. Ideally, graded-reading schemes http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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would take learners step by step with 98% coverage at each step until they can read unsimplified text with the same coverage. Unfortunately, as Nation and Wang (1999) showed, most schemes of graded readers are not well designed in terms of vocabulary size. Frequency counts of English substantially agree on the high-frequency words (Nation, 2004). Because the levels of graded readers make use of these high-frequency words, the various wordlists of graded readers are likely to be composed of substantially the same words. Designed as readable texts for second language learners, graded readers use a controlled vocabulary and structural features that are arranged in stages or levels of increasing difficulty. These stages or levels form graded-reading schemes. The primary purpose of the wordlists in these schemes is to provide guidelines for writers and editors of graded readers. Publishers usually set the different levels for graded readers according to the number of headwords, and writers can use a wide range of words in the lists, depending on the story or topic. Presumably, vocabulary is selected chiefly on the basis of frequency, but the wordlist may be modified for a particular title based on the requirements of the story. Different publishers cannot be guaranteed to make lists with the same words and with the same number of headwords at the same level. Because of this, no systematic comparison of the levels of the various schemes has been made beyond reviews every few years, which have dealt with content, features, and the number of headwords appearing in the catalogues to compare different schemes, as in Hill’s (1997, 2001) reviews of graded readers. However, these reviews did not examine the wordlists in detail in terms of the words in the wordlists and the actual words used in the books. Although many of the graded-reader series on the world market probably depend on West’s (1953) GSL as a basis for the choice of words used in the books, for commercial purposes, the publishers have produced wordlists of their own, which are likely to be confidential and unique. Various wordlists have resulted, and the words included and the number of levels vary with the grading scheme. Little is known about the similarities of the wordlists. One way to check this is to compare the wordlists of the series to determine the amount of overlap between the lists. The purpose of this study was to examine the wordlists of graded readers in detail. This should answer the question of whether the lists from the various series are similar enough to use as a basis for setting up reading schemes for an extensive reading program or reading across series, which pertains to language learning in general and vocabulary in particular. The study compared sets of wordlists of two major series: those of the OBW by the Oxford University Press and the Cambridge English Readers (CER) by the Cambridge University Press. It also looked at the amount of overlap between the words in the two series and the GSL words. The results of this study are discussed to answer three questions: 1. How similar are the lists? 2. How is the GSL related to the lists? 3. Do the books at specific grade levels follow the lists designed for these levels?

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The Range program and manual methods were used to compare the lists. Method The Computer Program The Range program is a Windows-based program developed by Paul Nation and Alex Heatley (2002) of the Victoria University of Wellington and is freely downloadable. It can be used with three distinct word lists, called baseword lists, on any text. The baseword lists contain word families. For example, the headword ABLE is grouped with its family members abler, ablest, and ably. Thus, the three family members are counted as the same word, ABLE (see Appendix A). The Range program can sort a text's vocabulary into three categories of word families from each list and a category of words outside all the three lists, making four categories altogether (see Appendix B). The program can do this either by range across several texts or by frequency within a text. It can also mark each word according to the category in which it falls. The baseword lists can be altered depending on specific requirements. The ones that come with the program are the first and second thousand words from the GSL and Averil Coxhead’s (2000) Academic Word List (AWL).3 The program has self-checking routines to ensure that a word form does not occur in more than one of the baseword lists. This program has been used with the text-based studies of Hirsh and Nation (1992), Laufer and Nation (1995), Coxhead (2000), Chung and Nation (2004), and Nation (2006). Graded-Reader Schemes Although Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Pearson Education, and Macmillan Education are four of the largest internationally recognized publishers of graded readers on the world market, this study only used the wordlists of the two series (i.e., OBW and CER) by the first two publishers because they were willing to provide the wordlists for the graded-reader schemes. For commercial reasons, the wordlists for the Penguin and Macmillan readers are not released to the public. Procedure The two series both contain six levels. Because the study involved comparing words in the wordlists, the six original wordlists from each series, which are in lemmas, had to contain the same kinds of word families. To obtain good matches between the word families in the lists of the two series, a standard set of word families had to be made. Step I: Investigation and modification of the words in the original lists. The words in the original publishers’ lists of the two series are marked with parts of speech, and each word is marked with a number to indicate the level where it occurs. For example, “1 slow (adj.)” means the word slow occurs at Level 1 as an adjective. The original publishers’ lists did not include numbers, days of the week, and months of the year. When the actual books were checked, these words were found to be used, and some letters of the alphabet and abbreviations were used as well. Nation and Wang (1999) also noted that such words were freely used in graded readers at all levels. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Therefore, they were added to the original publishers’ wordlists. The numbers included both the cardinal and ordinal numbers, their plural forms (threes, thirds), and the abbreviations rd, st, and th of the ordinal numbers. Step II: Construction of the baseword lists. In this study, a word family is defined according to the idea put forward by Bauer and Nation (1993). A word family consists of a baseword and all the derived and inflected forms that can be understood by a learner without having to learn each form separately. Bauer and Nation used frequency, productivity, and regularity as the criteria for establishing the various levels of a word family. Level 3 of the Bauer and Nation scheme was used because this includes all the inflected forms and a small group of high-frequency, regular, and productive derived forms. This level seemed most suitable for the proficiency of the learners who would be reading the graded readers. The inflectional categories are plural, third person singular present tense, past tense, past participle, -ing, comparative, superlative, and possessive. The derivational affixes allowed at Level 3 are -able, -er, -ish, -less, -ly, -ness, -th, -y, non-, and un-, all with restricted uses. The following examples are of families at Level 3: ACTOR: ACTORS CLEAR: CLEARED, CLEARS, CLEARING, CLEARINGS, CLEARER, CLEAREST, CLEARLY, CLEARNESS BREAK: BREAKS, BROKE, BROKEN, BREAKABLE, UNBREAKABLE, UNBROKEN, BREAKING NINETY: NINETY, NINETIETH, NINETIETHS, NINETIES

Abbreviations such as the following are located under their word families. ROAD: RD STREET: ST MOUNTAIN: MT FEBRUARY: FEB VOLUME: VOL The Oxford and Cambridge wordlists were modified according to the following criteria: (a) The same words in both lists must have the same family members; (b) a family member in one list cannot be a headword in another list; and (c) a compound word in both lists is treated in a similar manner, that is, a hyphen is taken out to let the basewords stand alone or the word is used without a space or a hyphen in both lists. A major weakness of the Range program is that it deals with word forms. Thus, it was not able to distinguish words' parts of speech and meanings, namely, words that had the same written forms but different meanings; for example, march (n.) and march (v.) were recognized as the same word by the program. This problem also occurred with most words that do not change their written forms to indicate tense such as put and shut. However, the latter problem does not matter much because whether such verbs are in present or past, they do not change meaning and are members of the same families. The same problems were found in both the wordlists compared. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Step III: Comparison of the wordlists. Before the wordlists of the two series were compared, the baseword lists of the two series were carefully checked to make sure that all the words in the lists were included at the levels intended by the publisher and that they all had the same family members: 1. The baseword lists of the two series were run against the publishers’ lists to check accurate matching of the headwords and the words in the publishers’ lists. 2. The baseword lists of each series were then combined, and that combined list was used to make sure that the same family members were included under the same headwords. This was to check that all family members under the same headwords in the two sets of baseword lists were the same. 3. The six new baseword lists for each series were constructed from the combined lists. Reestablishing the six new baseword lists after rechecking all headwords and their family members in the combined lists avoided some errors that might happen with some headwords in either lists.

Six CER baseword lists

Six OBW baseword lists

A combined OBW baseword list

Check against each other RANGE program

A combined CER baseword list

Composite baseword list Six CER publishers’ lists

Six OBW publishers’ lists

Six new OBW baseword lists

Run and marked by the RANGE program Completion of six new baseword lists

Six new CER baseword lists

Figure 1. A flowchart of how the six comparable baseword lists for each series were constructed.

The result was two sets of six levels of baseword lists (one set each for Oxford and Cambridge) that included all the words at the right levels with the same family members for each word family (see Appendix C). This procedure is shown in Figure 1. Then, the OBW and CER baseword lists were used to compare and check words both in the original wordlists and in books of the two series. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Results Comparing the Number of Levels and the Numbers of Words at Each Level Three findings about the two lists are shown in Table 1: (a) the number of levels, (b) the number of word families at each level, and (c) the total number of word families used in the two series. Each series has six levels, and this makes the wordlists easier to compare. In total, the OBW list includes 2,257 word families, and the CER, 3,055. Thus, the CER list contains about 800 more word families than the OBW list. However, the numbers of new and total word families at the lower levels (1–3) are very similar between the two lists, with only small differences in the numbers of families. At Level 3, the difference is only six families. At Levels 4–6, the CER lists introduce many more families than the OBW lists, and the differences between the two lists are much larger. Table 1. Number of word families at each level and cumulative totals for the OBW and CER lists New word families Cumulative word families Difference in new word Level families (OBW-CER) OBW CER OBW CER 1 2 3 4 5 6

496 328 306 273 423 431

477 320 339 502 670 747

496 824 1,130 1,403 1,826 2,257

477 797 1,136 1,638 2,308 3,055

19 27 -6 -235 -482 -798

Although the numbers of word families are very similar in Levels 1–3, the families at these lower levels may not in fact be the same in both lists. This question is addressed next. Comparing the Overlap Between the Two Lists The data resulting from comparing the two sets of lists and the overlap between the OBW and CER lists as a whole is shown in Table 2. The data can be divided into three categories: (a) overlap at the same level, (b) overlap across the levels (with the preceding and succeeding levels), and (c) families that do not overlap, that is, those that occur in only one series. For example, the OBW Level 1 column shows that the 496 OBW word families at Level 1 occur at various levels of the CER lists. Sixteen OBW families at Level 1 do not overlap with the CER words at any level. The rows show the same kinds of data from a CER perspective. To provide a clearer picture of each kind of overlap, the data shown in Table 2 will be broken down into separate tables in the following sections. However, the reader will find it useful to keep referring back to Table 2 to see where the figures in the following tables came from. The data in Table 2 was used to calculate the overlap of the two lists as a whole. The two series share 2,122 word families. All except 135 of the 2,257 families in the OBW list are in the CER list. From the OBW perspective, this is a 94.01% overlap, which is very large (see Figure 2).

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Table 2. Overlap between the OBW and CER wordlists for the new word families at each level OBW level CER level 1 2 3 4 5 6 Not in any of the CER levels Total

1

2

3

4

5

6

Not in any of the OBW levels

377 80 17 4 1 1

67 144 77 19 2 1

13 44 110 83 36 7

5 18 41 109 73 19

1 14 32 92 171 82

1 7 5 56 124 189

13 13 57 139 263 448

16

18

13

8

31

49

496

328

306

273

423

431

Total

477 320 339 502 670 747

From the CER perspective, the overlap is 69.46%. This smaller overlap results from the differing sizes of the two lists. 135 OBW families

CER (3,055 families) 2,122 families

933 CER families

OBW (2,257 families)

Figure 2. Overlap of the total new word families between the two series from the OBW perspective.

Comparing the Overlap of Total Word Families at Each Level Overlap of word families at preceding levels plus current level families. The following analyses deal with the overlap of the actual word families occurring at each level of the OBW and CER schemes. First, the overlap of the families at each level is examined, for example, Level 1 of OBW with Level 1 of CER. This is one of the toughest tests of overlap: Level 2 includes the families at Level 1 plus those introduced at Level 2, Level 3 includes the families introduced at Level 3 plus all those of Levels 1 and 2, and so on. Next, the overlap between the families at each level of a series is looked at with the addition of the subsequent level. This is done because even if the overlap of families is not perfect at each level, the overlap may still be good because some of the overlapping families are at the next level of the series. Finally, the overlap of each level is compared with the current level and two subsequent levels. The data in Table 3 is based on the cumulative overlap at and across the levels of the data in Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Table 2. The figures were calculated in terms of total word families at the level. For example, the 668 families at Level 2 in Table 3 are the addition of the overlap at the preceding levels and overlap of Level 2 families. That is, 524 families (377 + 67 + 80) from the preceding levels (see Table 2) are added to 144 families as Level 2 overlap. This makes 668 families, which is the total overlap of OBW and CER at Level 2. The 929 families at Level 3 result from an addition of the overlap at the preceding levels (668 + 17 + 77 + 44 + 13 families) and the overlap at Level 3 (110 families), making a total of 929 families. The overlap of succeeding levels was calculated in the same way. Table 3. Overlap of families at preceding levels plus current level families from the OBW perspective OBW level 1 2 3 4 5 6 CER level 1 2 3 4 5 6 Number and percentage 377 668 929 1,208 1,630 2,122 of families overlapping 76.00% 81.06% 82.21% 86.10% 89.27% 94.01%

The percentage of the total number of word families shared by the two lists at each level from the OBW perspective is also shown in Table 3. To calculate the proportion, the total number of overlapping families at the level is divided by the total number of OBW families at that level. For example, 377 families are shared by OBW and CER at Level 1. From the OBW perspective, the 377 families are 76% of the 496 Level 1 OBW families (see Table 2) overlapping with Level 1 CER families. In a similar manner, from the OBW perspective, the 668 families at Level 2 are 81.06% of the Level 2 OBW families overlapping with Level 2 CER families. The 929 Level 3 OBW families are 82.21%, and so on. From the OBW perspective, the figures indicating overlap at each level consistently increase, from 76% at Level 1 to 94.01% at Level 6. These figures show a sizable, but by no means perfect, cumulative overlap at each level. Overlap of families at preceding levels plus current level families and families at the next level. The overlaps at the current level plus the next level are shown in Table 4, while the overlaps at the current level combined with the next two levels are shown in Table 5. To calculate these overlaps, the same steps of adding the overlapping families were taken as used for Table 3. Based on the data in Table 2, for example, the 457 families at Level 1 of Table 4 are the sum of 377 families (the previous overlap) and 80 families from the next level of CER. Then, 457 is divided by 496, which makes 92.14% at Level 1. The 1,320 families for Level 4 of Table 4 are the sum of 1,208 (the previous overlap) and 112 (1 + 2 + 36 + 73 as overlap at the next level of CER), which is then divided by 1,403, making 94.08% for Level 4. The proportions of the total overlap at the other levels were calculated in the same way. For Table 5, the overlap of the next two levels of CER was added to the total overlap at the level when proportions were calculated. In Tables 4 and 5, we can see that the proportions of total overlap at every level are very high— well over 90% and close to 95%. A comparison of Tables 3 and 4 shows that most overlapping families are at the same level or the one following.

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Table 4. Overlap of word families at the preceding levels plus those at the current level and the next level from the OBW perspective OBW level 1 2 3 4 5 6 CER level Number and percentage of families overlapping

2 457 92.14%

3 762 92.48%

4 1,035 91.59%

5 1,320 94.08%

6 1,740 95.29%

6 2,122 94.01%

Table 5. Overlap of families at the preceding levels plus those at the current level and the next two levels from the OBW perspective OBW level 1 2 3 4 5 6 CER level Number and percentage of families overlapping

3 474 95.56%

4 785 95.27%

5 1,074 95.04%

6 1,348 96.08%

6 1,740 95.29%

6 2,122 94.01%

The following tables contain the figures calculated from data in Table 2, but from the CER perspective. The same steps for calculating the number of families were applied to the CER lists. The results in terms of the overlap at the preceding levels and current level families are shown in Table 6, while more detail about the overlap at each level plus families at the next levels is given in Tables 7 and 8. Table 6. Overlap of word families at preceding levels plus current level families from the CER perspective CER level 1 2 3 4 5 6 OBW level Number and percentage of families overlapping

1 377 79.03%

2 668 83.81%

3 929 81.78%

4 1,208 73.74%

5 1,630 70.62%

6 2,122 69.46%

The overlap of families at the preceding levels plus the current level families from the CER perspective is considerable at the three lower levels of the CER series and is less at the three higher levels, as shown in Table 6. This is because of the greater numbers of word families at these levels compared with OBW. The overlap ranges from 69.46 to 83.81%. When added to the overlap at the next level, as seen in Table 7, the overlap at most levels increases, particularly at the three lower levels, to around 90%. The same pattern is seen in Table 8, where the current level plus the next two levels are considered. Particularly from an OBW perspective, but to a large degree also from the CER perspective, the two lists have a considerable degree of overlap. The differences are largely the results of differences in the sizes of the two lists, rather than in the actual families in the lists or the sequencing of these families into levels. This is reassuring for users of graded readers, indicating that the two series of readers have similarities in vocabulary grading. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Table 7. Overlap of word families at the preceding levels plus those at the current level and at the next level from the CER perspective CER level 1 2 3 4 5 6 OBW level Number and percentage of families overlapping

2 444 93.08%

3 725 90.97%

4 993 87.41%

5 1,347 82.23%

6 1,823 78.99%

6 2,122 69.46%

Table 8. Overlap of word families at the preceding levels plus those at the current level and at the next two levels from the CER perspective CER level 1 2 3 4 5 6 OBW level Number and percentage of families overlapping

3 457 95.80%

4 748 93.85%

5 1,040 91.55%

6 1,416 86.45%

6 1,823 78.99%

6 2,122 69.46%

Overlap Between the GSL Words and the OBW and CER Lists The most well-known general-service-vocabulary list is the GSL, and it has been the basis for many series of graded readers. How similar are the lists used in graded readers and the GSL? Table 9 shows that 360 word families of Level 1 in the OBW series are in the 1,000-word level of the GSL. Level 2 has 182 families in 1,000-word level. A total of 921 out of the 990 families in the 1,000-word level are in the OBW. Table 9. The 1,000- and 2,000-word levels of the GSL in the OBW lists OBW level GSL families in GSL families not the OBW lists in the OBW lists 1 2 3 4 5 6 GSL families 921 1st 1,000 360 182 131 87 90 71 69 93.03% 741 233 2nd 1,000 77 105 110 121 164 164 76.07% 1,662 Total 437 287 241 208 254 235 302 84.62%

Total GSL families

990 974 1,964

Sixty-nine word families are in the 1,000-word level of the GSL but not in the OBW lists. These include words like arise, affair, base, entire, and favour. The overlap with the second 1,000 of the GSL is not as good, and the total overlap of the GSL and OBW is 84.62%, with 302 families in the GSL but not in OBW. The overlap between the GSL and CER is higher than that between the GSL and OBW, but this is largely because the CER list contains over 1,000 more families than the GSL. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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As shown in Tables 9 and 10, the proportions of the first 1,000 GSL families included in the two lists are high: 93.03% in the OBW list and 96.16% in the CER list. For the second 1,000 families, between the two series, the degree of overlap is lower: 741 families in the OBW list and 802 families in the CER list. Table 10. The 1,000- and 2,000-word levels of the GSL in the CER lists CER level GSL families GSL families not in the CER lists in the CER lists 1 2 3 4 5 6 GSL families 952 1st 1,000 324 191 146 116 118 57 38 96.16% 802 172 2nd 1,000 94 84 89 149 185 201 82.34% 1,754 Total 418 275 235 265 303 258 210 89.31%

Total GSL families

990 974 1,964

Tables 9 and 10 show that 69 of the first 1,000 GSL families are not in the OBW list and that 38 of the first 1,000 GSL families do not appear in the CER list. However, 20 of these families overlap, so 87 of the families from the 1,000-word level of the GSL are not in the two publishers’ lists. These 20 families were association, English, forth, form, hurrah, mass, mere, ounce, regard, scale, stock, base, difference, honour, native, production, poverty, standard, subject, and upon. The same pattern occurred with the second 1,000 GSL families in the two lists. The total number of GSL families that are not in the OBW and the CER lists is shown in Figures 3 and 4. We can see in Figures 3 and 4 that the number of GSL families not occurring in the two lists is not large. For the first 1,000 GSL words, the total number is 87, which is 8.79% of 990 families, while for the second 1,000 GSL words, the total is 280, or 28.74% of 974 families. In total, 367 of the 1,964 families (18.85%) in the GSL do not occur in two series of readers. From the GSL perspective, the difference is not large between the two lists and the GSL. This perspective is preferable because the GSL (1,964 families) is smaller than the OBW lists (2,257 families) and the CER lists (3,055 families). 87 GSL 1,000-word-level families

OBW 49 families

20 families

CER 18 families

Figure 3. The families of the GSL 1,000-word level that do not occur in the OBW and the CER

lists.

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280 GSL 2,000-word-level families

OBW 108 families

125 families

CER 47 families

Figure 4. The families of the GSL 2,000-word level that do not occur in the OBW and the CER lists.

The numbers of OBW and CER families not in the GSL are shown in Tables 11 and 12. This is a less preferable perspective to see the overlap of the OBW and CER lists. Because both lists are larger than the GSL, the number of families not occurring in the GSL is large. The number of families not in the GSL increases in both series from the lower to upper levels. The number of OBW and CER families not in the GSL is small at the three lower levels. That is, from 41 to 65 families not in the GSL are found in the four lower levels of the OBW, and the three lower levels of the CER range from 45 to 104 families not in the GSL. At the two upper levels of the OBW and the three upper levels of CER, the numbers of families in the two lists increase. Because the CER introduces more families in the lists (3,055 families), this results in a large number of families not in the GSL. In total, the CER includes 1,301 families not in the GSL, while the OBW (2,257 families) includes 595 families not in the GSL. Table 11. Number of OBW families not in the GSL GSL OBW level 1st 1,000 2nd 1,000 Total 1 360 77 437 2 182 105 287 3 131 110 241 4 87 121 208 5 90 164 254 6 71 164 235 Total 921 741 1,662 Table 12. Number of CER families not in the GSL GSL CER level st nd 1 1,000 2 1,000 Total 1 324 94 418 2 191 84 275 3 146 89 235 4 116 149 265 5 118 185 303 6 57 201 258 Total 952 802 1,754

OBW subtotal 496 328 306 273 423 431 2,257

CER subtotal 477 320 339 502 670 747 3,055

Families not in the GSL 59 41 65 65 169 196 595

Families not in the GSL 59 45 104 237 367 489 1,301

A comparison of the families not in the GSL in the two lists showed that 399 families occurred in Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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both series. The overlap between the two series in terms of the total number of the families not in the GSL is illustrated in Figure 5. Overall, the data suggests that because of the size differences between the GSL and the two graded-reader series, particularly the CER list, none of them could representatively cover the families in the two graded-reader series, particularly at the higher levels of the series. 1,497 families in the two series not occurring in the GSL

OBW 196 families

399 families

CER 902 families

Figure 5. Number of the OBW and CER families not occurring in the GSL.

Do the Books Follow the Publishers’ Lists? The available lists have been compared to see how similar they are. If the actual books do not follow these lists, then the comparison is meaningless. The next step in the study, therefore, was to see how closely the vocabulary in the books resembled that in the lists. Two books were chosen to represent the books at each of three levels: Levels 1, 3, and 5. The books were scanned and used as input texts to be analyzed by the Range program using the OBW and CER baseword lists. The overlap at each level is the number of families that occur in both the books and the publishers’ lists. Then, from the OBW perspective, books at Levels 1, 3, and 5 from three series, CER, Penguin Readers (PR), and Macmillan Guided Readers (MGR), were analyzed to see what coverage the OBW list gave of these books. Families actually used in the books from the OBW perspective. The books from the three levels of OBW are White Death (Book 1of Level 1), The Lottery Winner (Book 2 of Level 1), The Picture of Dorian Gray (Book 1 of Level 3), Ethan Frome (Book 2 of Level 3), The Dead of Jericho (Book 1 of Level 5), and The Garden Party (Book 2 of Level 5). They were all examined in the same way. Data detailing the word families actually used at each level are shown in Table 13. This first section looks at the actual word families used. The next section looks at the coverage. In the first book of OBW Level 1 (i.e., White Death), 303 Level 1 word families are used, and the book contains a total of 361 word families, as shown in Table 13. Therefore, the proportion of Level 1 word families actually used in White Death is 83.93% (303 divided by 361). When the number of the proper nouns is added to this proportion (83.93% + 4.70%), it equals 88.63% (see the “Families and proper nouns” column). The book also uses 22 word families from Level 2 of the OBW scheme, 6 from Level 3, and so on. The book uses 6 families that are not on the OBW list. Another Level 1 OBW book, The Lottery Winner, uses 84.63% Level 1 families and proper Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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nouns. The overlap between the list and the vocabulary in the text is not nearly as high as it should be in both books. A larger amount of overlap is found in the two upper levels. At Level 3, the two OBW books, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Ethan Frome, have overlaps of 94.54 and 90.46% when proper nouns are included. The two Level 5 OBW books also provide a rather high overlap of the families at Level 5, that is, 92.26 and 92.88%. The details are given in Table 13. In terms of actual families used in a book, the bigger the overlap, the better the book. Table 13. Overlap of the word families actually used in the OBW books at each level from the OBW perspective OBW book B1-1 B1-2

1 303 (83.93) 334 (76.61)

OBW level 2 3 4 22 6 4

5 2

6 1

36

7

1

1

6

Proper nouns 17 (4.70) 35 (8.02)

Families and proper nouns 320 (88.63) 369 (84.63)

Total word families 361

Words not in any levels 6

436

16

B3-1

342 178 118 638 (89.23)

9

4

4

38 (5.31)

676 (94.54)

715

22

B3-2

343 210 136 689 (82.12)

13

11

4

70 (8.34)

759 (90.46)

839

52

B5-1

409

128

13

139

23

1,266 (92.26) 1,148

93

390

140 (10.20) 69

1,372

B5-2

261 199 129 1,126 (82.06) 241 175 134

1,236

69

(5.58)

(92.88)

1,079 (87.30)

Note. The values in parentheses are percentages. B1-1 = Book 1 of Level 1; B1-2 = Book 2 of Level 1; B3-1 = Book 1 of Level 3; B3-2 = Book 2 of Level 3; B5-1 = Book 1 of Level 5; B5-2 = Book 2 of Level 5.

In White Death, 303 Level 1 families were used from the available 400 headwords in the Level 1 OBW list. This is 75.75%. The Lottery Winner used 83.5% of the 400 Level 1 families in the list. Because 95 or 98% coverage is needed, more Level 1 words should be used in the two Level 1 books to reduce the heavy vocabulary load of unknown words. White Death uses 6 words not in any OBW levels: bedroom, courtroom, jury, toothpaste, tube, and tubes, most of which were related to the story and made the story real to its audience when the storyline was presented. The word courtroom occurred 13 times, and the word jury appeared 19 times in the book. Such occurrences may help the readers increase their knowledge of the two words and decrease the burden of unknown words when the readers work through the book. In a similar manner, readers would encounter the word tubes 22 times in the book, and may thus be able to get the meaning during reading. As for bedroom (1 occurrence) and toothpaste (34 occurrences), single stems like bed, room, and tooth can help the reader guess their meanings more easily. The second major group of words used in White Death is 22 Level 2 words. Among those words are police (30 occurrences), inspector (24 occurrences), and prison (12 occurrences). Each word is essential for the story. Although these words are beyond the current level, they are repeated Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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often and do not continue to be burdens. The Lottery Winner contains 16 words not in any levels. They are cell (3 occurrences), champagne (5 occurrences), charity (4 occurrences), footballer (1 occurrence), lotteries (10 occurrences), lottery (44 occurrences), interestingly (1 occurrence), snatched (6 occurrences), snatcher (3 occurrences), snatching (1 occurrence), stage (1 occurrence), sunshine (10 occurrences), huh (1 occurrence), eh (1 occurrence), mmm (1 occurrence), and ah (1 occurrence). The word lottery, the topic word, clearly occurs the most throughout the book, and the word snatched is also clearly important in the story. The 36 words of Level 2, including policeman (24 occurrences), winning (17 occurrences), and stole (11 occurrences), relate to the topic presented in the story. The words that occur only once are the ones that indicate poor vocabulary control, and the words occurring more than once or twice are unlikely to detract from the accessibility of the text. In addition, a high number of repetitions of unknown words can help the learner guess their meanings in the story. Words actually used in the books from the CER perspective. The same method as used with the OBW books was applied to six CER books: Inspector Logan (Book 1of Level 1), Parallel (Book 2 of Level 1), The House by the Sea (Book 1 of Level 3), The Ironing Man (Book 2 of Level 3), All I Want (Book 1 of Level 5), and The Emergency Murder (Book 2 of Level 5). The overlap of the CER lists and the six CER books from the CER perspective is shown in Table 14. At Level 1, in Inspector Logan, 280 of the 372 families are Level 1 CER families. When added to the proper nouns (20), they provide 80.65% coverage (see the “Families and proper nouns” column), while the other Level 1 CER book gives 77.74% coverage. The two Level 3 CER books overlap with the lists 88.39 and 86.91%, and the two Level 5 CER books overlap 88.76 and 91.73%. Table 14. Overlap of word families actually used in the CER books at each level from the CER perspective CER book B1-1 B1-2

1 280 (75.27) 249 (71.96)

CER level 2 3 4 39 10 9

5 2

6 2

58

5

4

1

6

Proper nouns 20 (5.38) 20 (5.78)

Families and proper nouns 300 (80.65) 267 (77.74)

Total word families 372

Words not in any levels 10

346

3

B3-1

342 197 109 648 (84.48)

43

15

4

30 (3.91)

678 (88.39)

767

27

B3-2

365 218 144 727 (81.32)

48

15

8

50 (5.59)

777 (86.91)

894

46

B5-1

361

107

31

162

13

1,082 (88.76) 1,310 (91.73)

106

399

92 (7.55) 90 (6.30)

1,219

B5-2

221 159 142 990 (81.21) 254 187 208 1,210 (85.43)

1,428

115

Note. The values in parentheses are percentages. B1-1 = Book 1 of Level 1; B1-2 = Book 2 of Level 1; B3-1 = Book 1 of Level 3; B3-2 = Book 2 of Level 3; B5-1 = Book 1 of Level 5; B5-2 = Book 2 of Level 5.

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A comparison of the words actually used in the two Level 1 CER books with the families in the Level 1 CER list showed that the first book uses 70% of the 400 headwords of the Level 1 CER list and that the other Level 1 book uses 64% of the Level 1 words. Inspector Logan and Parallel do not provide learners with a large proportion of the current level words. Many of the words used in the two Level 1 CER books are Level 2 words, that is, 39 and 58 words. In Inspector Logan, the 10 words not in any levels include lunchtime (1 occurrence), questioningly (1 occurrence), rental (2 occurrences), teabags (1 occurrence), tomorrows (1 occurrence), scientists (2 occurrences), sergeants (9 occurrences), sergeant (1 occurrence), somethings (1 occurrence), and terrace (7 occurrences). Most of the off-list words occur once except for the words sergeants and terrace, which are important in the story. Repetitions of the two words may help learners recall their meanings when working through the story. In the other Level 1 book, Parallel, the 3 words not in any levels are chin (1 occurrence), knees (2 occurrences), and prologue (1 occurrence). The word prologue is used to introduce the book before the story was presented. With very few occurrences, these words are unlikely to affect an overall understanding of the story. Level 2 words are the second major group of words used in the two Level 1 CER books as in the two Level 1 OBW books. Among the 39 Level 2 words in Inspector Logan, the word killed, which is related to the topic, occurs 9 times throughout the book. Several of the Level 2 CER words in Parallel, such as different (25 occurrences) and around (10 occurrences), are not obviously topic related. The data indicates the overlap in terms of word families. A look at the number of tokens in a whole book will reveal a clearer picture of the coverage of texts, which is expected to assist learners in coping with reading. Here, token refers to each occurrence of a word that is counted each time it occurs in the text, and coverage refers to the percentage of the tokens in a text or corpus covered by a particular word list. A high coverage indicates that vocabulary may not be a problem in reading the text because the unknown words are few within a largely known context. A 95% coverage is a good start (Laufer, 1989; Liu and Nation, 1985), but a 98–100% coverage is preferable for graded readers (Nation, 2001). Text coverage of the OBW books at each level from the OBW perspective. The six OBW books provide a reasonable coverage from the OBW perspective, as shown in Table 15. For example, in White Death, 303 OBW Level 1 word families occurred in the book as 6,035 tokens. Then, 6,035 divided by 6,869 running words in the book makes 87.86% coverage of the text. When the occurrences of proper nouns (6.39%) in the book are added, the coverage of the text at Level 1 is 94.25% (see the “Tokens and proper nouns” column). This proportion is close to 95% coverage, which is expected to enhance guessing from context when some difficult words are introduced. As we can see in Table 15, the four books at Levels 3 and 5 give good coverage at their levels. They cover 97.07 and 97.34% at Level 3 and 98.60 and 98.59% at Level 5. These figures indicate that the vocabulary is not controlled as well at Level 1 in the series as it is in the later levels. That is, Level 1 books have more words outside the level than books at Levels 3 and 5. Text coverage of the CER books at each level from the CER perspective. A similar pattern for the six CER books is shown in Table 16. In Inspector Logan, for example, the coverage of the Level Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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1 text is 92.05% (see the “Tokens and proper nouns” column). This is the result of 3,480 occurrences of Level 1 CER words (280 word families) plus 345 occurrences of proper nouns (20 words) throughout the book, which is divided by the total number of running words in the book (4,155 tokens). The other Level 1 book has 91.55% coverage. These are well below the coverage needed for unassisted reading. The percentage coverage is higher at the upper levels, as found in Levels 3 and 5. It is 98.39 and 97.63% at Level 3 and 96.58 and 98.59% at Level 5. Table 15. Token coverage of the OBW books at each level from the OBW perspective 1

2

3

4

5

6

6,035 (87.86)

167

29

57

23

17

439 (6.39)

Tokens and proper nouns 6,474 (94.25)

B1-2

4,994 (86.72)

210

20

74

3

23

337 (5.85)

B3-1

8,319 (77.33)

993 (9.23)

477 (4.43)

54

31

36

B3-2

8,297 (75.51)

1,254 (11.41)

543 (4.94)

57

57

B5-1

18,037 (78.59)

2,054 (8.95)

969 (4.22)

485 (2.11)

B5-2

18,373 (74.98)

2,178 (8.89)

1,087 (4.44)

537 (2.19)

OBW level OBW book B1-1

Proper nouns

Total tokens

Tokens not in any levels

6,869

102 (1.48)

5,331 (92.57)

5,759

98 (1.70)

654 (6.08)

10,443 (97.07)

10,758

194 (1.80)

17

602 (5.48)

10,696 (97.34)

10,988

161 (1.46)

317 (1.38)

52

768 (3.35)

22,630 (98.60)

22,952

270 (1.17)

483 (1.97)

98

1,500 (6.12)

24,158 (98.59)

24,503

247 (1.01)

Note. The values in parentheses are percentages. B1-1 = Book 1 of Level 1; B1-2 = Book 2 of Level 1; B3-1 = Book 1 of Level 3; B3-2 = Book 2 of Level 3; B5-1 = Book 1 of Level 5; B5-2 = Book 2 of Level 5. Table 16. Token coverage of the CER books at each level from the CER perspective Tokens not in any levels 33 (0.79)

1

2

3

4

5

6

3,480 (83.75)

133

28

38

11

87

345 (8.30)

Tokens and proper nouns 3,825 (92.05)

B1-2

3,645 (85.66)

236

34

36

32

17

251 (5.89)

3,896 (91.55)

4,255

4 (0.09)

B3-1

13,403 (82.03)

1,619 (9.94)

516 (3.17)

72

26

26

530 (3.25)

16,068 (98.39)

16,286

94 (0.57)

B3-2

11,633 (78.39)

1,721 (11.54)

663 (4.47)

145

26

14

480 (3.23)

14,497 (97.63)

14,840

158 (1.06)

B5-1

14,707 (70.48)

1,845 (8.84)

773 (3.70)

548 (2.63)

329 (1.58)

263

1,952 (9.35)

20,154 (96.58)

20,866

449 (2.15)

B5-2

19,048 (75.22)

2,859 (11.29)

1,062 (4.19)

715 (2.82)

369 (1.46)

78

915 (3.61)

24,968 (98.59)

25,322

276 (1.08)

CER level CER book B1-1

Proper nouns

Total tokens 4,155

Note. The values in parentheses are percentages. B1-1 = Book 1 of Level 1; B1-2 = Book 2 of Level 1; B3-1 = Book 1 of Level 3; B3-2 = Book 2 of Level 3; B5-1 = Book 1 of Level 5; B5-2 = Book 2 of Level 5.

The books of the two series are likely to give reasonable coverage at the higher levels, as shown in Tables 15 and 16. However, at the lower levels, the Level 1 words and proper nouns cover Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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only 92.60% on average, which is not close enough to 95 or 98% coverage. To further examine the coverage in various graded-reader series, books of three series, CER, PR, and MGR, were chosen. They were analyzed from the OBW perspective (using the OBW baseword lists). The OBW lists were chosen as a basis for investigating the books for several reasons. First, evidence from a descriptive analysis of the wordlists of OBW and CER shows that 94.01% of the families in the OBW list are in the CER list. This ensures that the OBW itself can represent a large number of families shared by the CER, while the CER cannot, because of its much larger size. When the size of the OBW list is compared with those of the PR and the MGR (using the vocabulary size in the catalogues because the lists are not given to the public), the differences are not large: 2,200 (MGR), 2,500 (OBW), and 3,000 (PR). Second, if the number of levels is an issue, the OBW has six levels, as do the CER and the PR, although the MGR has only five levels. The last reason is that the OBW graded-reading scheme provides good coverage at higher levels for its books. Initially, the OBW series was expected to be a good basis for investigating token coverage of other series. The question of whether this is true will be addressed next. To look at the effect of using the OBW lists as a standard, the words actually used in the CER books were reexamined from the OBW perspective. The same method was applied to six books of the PR series: The Missing Coins (Book 1of Level 1), The House of the Seven Gables (Book 2 of Level 1), The Yearling (Book 1 of Level 3), The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Book 2 of Level 3), Prime Suspect (Book 1 of Level 5), and The Warden (Book 2 of Level 5). Similarly, six books of the MGR series were chosen to represent the three levels. They are Alissa (Book 1of Level 1), Paradise Island (Book 2 of Level 1), The Runaways (Book 1 of Level 3), The Black Cat (Book 2 of Level 3), Great Expectations (Book 1 of Level 5), and The Man of Property (Book 2 of Level 5). To give a clearer picture of the sample books of the four series, Table 17 summarizes the text coverage of the books at the three levels studied. Table 17. Percentage text coverage of the books of four graded-reading schemes from the OBW perspective Level 1 Level 3 Level 5 Series Book 1 Book 2 Book 1 Book 2 Book 1 Book 2 OBW 94.25 92.57 97.07 97.34 98.60 98.59 CER 92.15 90.45 97.90 96.05 95.52 97.34 PR 89.21 93.82 96.39 94.78 97.45 94.76 MGR 87.16 78.24 92.76 96.04 95.87 97.66

Generally speaking, the OBW books come out best when analyzed using the OBW list. The two Level 5 OBW texts are the only ones to reach the desired 98% coverage. In many cases, however, the differences in coverage between the books from the other series and the OBW books are not great.

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The coverage of the Level 1 books in all the series including OBW is not satisfactory. The coverage figures are all below 95%, for several possible reasons. First, writing books at this level may not be possible using such a limited vocabulary. Second, the lists are not well made and thus cannot do the job that they are supposed to do. Finally, writers and editors may not be applying the lists very stringently, letting the story determine the words. Discussion An analysis and comparison of the lists of the word families in the two major series, OBW and CER, was carried out using the Range program. The results gave information about the wordlists of the graded readers and furthered understanding of the relationship between them and the GSL words. The results of the study indicate that the wordlists of the graded readers exploit high-frequency words to provide readable texts suitable for establishing known vocabulary and learning unknown vocabulary. In the three lower levels of the OBW and CER series, the number of word families in the two lists does not differ much, and the series overlap considerably. At the higher levels of the series (Levels 4 to 6) are considerable size differences, and as a result, only a small amount of overlap between the series for the new word families introduced at those levels. Although the 2,000 GSL families are crucial for learners of English, the OBW and the CER contain more families than does the GSL. The OBW has 595 more, and the CER has 1,301 more. In addition, the words actually used in the books do not stick closely enough to the families on the lists on which they are based, especially at Level 1. The study may provide useful information for teachers using graded readers in extensive reading programs. The findings highlight that the number of headwords cannot be used as a good criterion for comparing the series. For categorizing books in extensive reading, the findings based on the size differences between the lists of the two series suggest that when the books of various series need to be shelved or categorized in a reading room, they should be classified separately in their own series. They cannot be sensibly compared simply on the basis of similar numbers of headwords or levels. In addition, in practice, when using the graded-reading schemes of various series, the differences in vocabulary sizes, divisions of levels, and actual words used make it impossible to take one scheme as a good representative of the others and in this way develop a categorization that will fit all schemes. This suggests that teachers need to be very flexible when setting up standard sets of levels for a graded-reading library incorporating books from various series. In general, the books do not stick closely to the words in the publishers’ lists, particularly at Level 1. One cause of this is that words that are important for a story are brought in, and some of these words are repeated throughout the text. This is acceptable, and these words are likely to be learned without becoming burdens for the readers. When words outside the books and the lists are brought in and used only one or two times, this is evidence of careless simplification. However, coverage from the OBW perspective suggests that the graded-reading schemes of each series have attempted to provide suitable conditions for unassisted reading, particularly at higher levels. This suggests that reading across the series is possible if learners have gained enough Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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knowledge of the high-frequency words needed to read at that level. From a practical perspective, teachers may have difficulty knowing whether their learners know sufficient high-frequency words for each level. Teachers should be aware of the different words used in the books of different series when assigning learners to read any series of graded readers. Without careful attention to the different numbers of headwords in the books of different series, reading across the series might affect learners’ reading abilities and lead to unfavorable attitudes towards the habit of reading. In sum, to promote the learning of words in graded readers, learners should be assigned to read and work their way through the levels within one graded-reading scheme at a time. The difference in the sizes of the lists and actual words used in the books reminds teachers that learners will meet quite a high proportion of different unknown words when they move to a new level in their graded reading. If the idea of guessing from context is applied, because a considerable proportion of the GSL words are included in the graded-reader lists, supplementing the learning through reading with direct study of the GSL words would be wise. This helps increase the learners’ knowledge of the essential high-frequency vocabulary required for the learning of the unknown words in context when learners are engaged in reading various levels of graded readers. At this point, word cards would be best used individually (Nation, 2001), with learners making their own cards and choosing the words from the GSL lists. By doing so, the density of unknown words will become light enough to allow more fluent reading. This should enhance reading across the various series. The difference in vocabulary sizes and divisions of levels found in the study also suggests that extensive reading, particularly that done with graded readers, should be assigned with great care. This is to control ability levels. If too many words are unknown and learners lack motivation, they will not make many gains. Despite graded readers being used as simplified texts to increase both the learning of words and fluency in reading, learners are probably unable to take advantage of being exposed to more unknown language below a certain vocabulary threshold. If learners get too much new input and it is not comprehensible, their gains are likely to be few. Conversely, without new input, their chances to learn and demonstrate learning will be few. In other words, learners who are given materials that are too easy are not challenged, and their growth can be hampered (Chall & Conard, 1991). The findings clearly address a vocabulary size issue and suggest that teachers should place learners in appropriate levels of reading to reach the ultimate goal of extensive reading with graded readers. In terms of placing learners at appropriate levels of graded reading, if a placement test is needed, none of the three lists can act as a good source of words for testing for all series. Because of the size differences between the GSL and the two graded-reader series, particularly the CER lists, sampling words from the GSL for a placement test for extensive reading would not give a representative coverage of words in the graded-reader series, particularly at the higher levels of the series. If a test based on the GSL was used for the first four levels of the two series, it would be reasonably representative, but a substantial number of words would still be in the GSL and not in Levels 1 to 4, and a substantial number of words would still be in the two series and not in the GSL. The size differences are large between the two wordlists and the GSL. That is, the two series contain more words than are in the GSL. A total of 1,497 words occur in the two series but not in the GSL. This evidence does not support the idea of making a test from the GSL words to Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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represent the words in the graded readers. The GSL is not a feasible source of words for a placement test for extensive reading. The findings of this study answer the question of whether words from the wordlists of graded readers and the GSL could be a good source of words for a vocabulary size test for graded-reading schemes. They suggest that using the GSL as a source of words for a placement test is problematic. Moreover, as the two series differ from each other considerably in size, beyond the first three levels of the series, expecting a vocabulary measure to properly represent the words across the two series is clearly not feasible. Teachers or researchers who are looking for a word source for making such tests should look elsewhere. This study has worked within a narrow focus. It has looked only at the wordlists of graded readers and the GSL in terms of a word source for the learning of words in simplified texts. This study has attempted to examine similarities and differences in the sizes of lists and actual words used in the books, which provides an understanding of the wordlists in detail. Most graded readers are designed according to their own wordlists and deliberately not set up as a way of presenting new vocabulary; rather, they are seen as being supplementary readers that help establish vocabulary already met in language courses. This is in line with the results of the Nation and Wang study (1999). Despite the limitations in the size of the study, the findings add to our understanding of the wordlists of graded readers and their relationship with the GSL and actual words used in the books. An interesting issue for further study would be to develop the teaching and learning of vocabulary through extensive reading with graded readers when control of ability is needed. For example, how can we measure a vocabulary size that may enhance reading across series? What measures can be assigned to test the learning of words from graded readers? Is a placement test for graded-reading schemes feasible? Acknowledgments I am grateful to Professor Paul Nation, my PhD advisor, at Victoria University of Wellington, for his generous help with access to the OBW and CER wordlists and for his comments on an earlier draft of this article. I also thank the two publishers and the anonymous reviewers who provided valuable comments to clarify this article. This research was supported by a grant from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Mahasarakham University, Thailand. Without all mentioned, this study would never have been completed. Notes 1. The GSL, developed in the 1940s, contains 2,000 headwords. The frequency figures for most items are based on a 5 million-word written corpus. Percentage figures are given for different meanings and parts of speech of the headwords. In spite of its age, occasional errors, and solely written base, it remains the best of the available lists not only because of its information about the frequencies of meanings but also because of West’s careful application of criteria other than frequency and range. The 2,000 GSL words are of practical use to teachers and curriculum planners because they are contained within word families, each with its own frequency. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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2. Coverage refers to the percentage of the tokens in a text or corpus contained in a particular word list. Text coverage helps readers guess from context and build fluency in reading by providing good proportions of known words. See more details in Schmitt and McCarthy (1997, pp. 6–19). 3. The AWL contains 570 word families and does not include words that are in the most frequent 2,000 word families of English. For information on the development and evaluation of the AWL, see Coxhead (2000). References Bauer, L., & Nation, I. S. P. (1993). Word families. International Journal of Lexicography, 6, 253–279. Chall, J. S., & Conard, S. S. (1991). Should textbooks challenge students? The case for easier or harder books. New York: Teacher College Press. Chung, T. M., & Nation, I. S. P. (2004). Identifying technical vocabulary. System, 32, 251–263. Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213–238. Hill, D. (1997). Survey review: Graded readers. English Language Teaching Journal, 51(1), 57– 81. Hill, D. (2001). Graded readers. English Language Teaching Journal, 55, 300–324. Hirsh, D., & Nation, I. S. P. (1992). What vocabulary size is needed to read unsimplified texts for pleasure? Reading in a Foreign Language, 8, 689–696. Hu, M., & Nation, I. S. P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, 13, 403–430. Hwang, K., & Nation, I. S. P. (1989). Reducing the vocabulary load and encouraging vocabulary learning through reading newspapers. Reading in a Foreign Language, 6, 323–335. Laufer, B. (1989). What percentage of text-lexis is essential for comprehension? In C. Lauren & M. Nordmann (Eds.), From humans thinking to thinking machines (pp. 316–323). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Laufer, B., & Nation, I. S. P. (1995). Vocabulary size and use: Lexical richness in L2 written production. Applied Linguistics, 16, 307–322. Liu, N., & Nation, I. S. P. (1985). Factors affecting guessing vocabulary in context. RELC Journal, 16, 33–42. Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nation, I. S. P. (2004). A study of the most frequent word families in the British National Corpus. In P. Bogaards & B. Laufer (Eds.), Vocabulary in a second language: Selection, acquisition, and testing (pp. 3–14). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Nation, I. S. P. (2006). How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening? The Canadian Modern Language Review, 63(1), 59–82. Nation, I. S. P., & Wang, M. (1999). Graded readers and vocabulary. Reading in a Foreign Language, 12, 355–380. Nation, I. S. P., & Heatley, A. (2002). Range: A program for the analysis of vocabulary in texts [Computer software]. Retrieved from http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paulReading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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nation/nation.aspx Schmitt, N., & McCarthy, M. (Eds.). (1997). Vocabulary: Description, acquisition and pedagogy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sutarsyah, C., Nation, I. S. P., & Kennedy, G. (1994). How useful is EAP vocabulary for ESP? A corpus based study. RELC Journal, 25, 34–50. West, M. (1953). A general service list of English words. London: Longman. Appendix A Three Baseword Lists Some examples of the word families with their family members in the baseword lists for the Range program are shown below. The program compares the word forms in texts with three baseword lists built into the program consisting of the first 1,000 and the second 1,000 families of the GSL and the AWL.

The first baseword list consists of the first 1,000 word families.

The second baseword list consists of the second 1,000 word families

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The third baseword list consists of academic word families

Appendix B Samples of the Output of the Range Program The following screenshot illustrates the output of the Range program using the three baseword lists and a short text taken from Level 1 of the OBW series.

The box on the right shows the three baseword lists and a processed file produced when a text (from Level 1 of the OBW) was input to the Range program. The following output shows how many word families in the input text were found in each list. For example, 109 word families were in the first list, 21 in the second list, none in the AWL, and 6 words were outside the word lists. In addition, text coverage can be determined to see whether this text supports Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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reading ability at a certain level. This text had 84.59% coverage, which means that it is likely to contain many Level 2 words, unknown at Level 1, and this could affect reading ability at Level 1 if comprehension and fluency in reading is required. Processing file: C:\Documents and Settings\adminstrator\Desktop\Baseword123\OBW 1.txt Number of lines: 9 Number of words: 305 Reading: C:\Documents and Settings\adminstrator\Desktop\Baseword123\BASEWRD1.txt Reading: C:\Documents and Settings\adminstrator\Desktop\Baseword123\BASEWRD2.txt Reading: C:\Documents and Settings\adminstrator\Desktop\Baseword123\BASEWRD3.txt WORD LIST

TOKENS/%

TYPES/%

FAMILIES

One Two Three Not in the lists Total

258/84.59 31/10.16 0/ 0.00 16/ 5.25 305

132/82.50 22/13.75 0/ 0.00 6/ 3.75 160

109 21 0 ????? 130

A marked text can show which baseword lists each word in the input text belongs to. It can be used to examine all the words in the text in detail. For example, in the following, unmarked words were in the first list, words marked with <2> were in the second list, words marked with <3> were in the third list, and words marked with were not in any of the lists. This helps check the words that might affect reading ability at a certain level. ONE SATURDAY {2}AFTERNOON IN A SMALL TOWN, {!}EMMA {!}CARTER CAME OUT OF A {2}SHOE {2}SHOP WITH SOME NEW {2}SHOES. THEY WERE {2}CHEAP {2}SHOES, BUT {!}EMMA WAS VERY PLEASED WITH THEM. SHE WAS SEVENTY THREE YEARS OLD AND DID NOT HAVE MUCH MONEY. SHE BEGAN TO WALK HOME. ‘A {2}NICE {2}CUP OF {2}TEA,’ SHE THOUGHT, ‘AND THEN I CAN GO FOR A WALK IN MY NEW {2}SHOES.’ IT WAS A {2}QUIET TOWN AND THERE WAS NOBODY IN THE STREET. {2}SUDDENLY, {!}EMMA HEARD SOMETHING BEHIND HER. SHE DID NOT HAVE TIME TO LOOK, BECAUSE JUST THEN SOMEBODY RAN UP BEHIND HER, {2}HIT HER ON THE HEAD, AND {!}SNATCHED HER {2}BAG OUT OF HER HANDS. {!}EMMA FELL DOWN ON HER BACK. THEN SHE LOOKED UP, AND SAW A {2}TALL YOUNG MAN WITH LONG, {2}DIRTY {2}BROWN {2}HAIR. HE STOOD AND LOOKED DOWN AT HER FOR A SECOND; THEN HE RAN AWAY WITH {!}EMMA’S {2}BAG UNDER HIS ARM. ‘HELP! HELP!’ {!}EMMA CRIED. BUT NOBODY CAME, AND AFTER TWO OR THREE MINUTES {!}EMMA {2}SLOWLY GOT UP AND WENT TO THE NEAREST HOUSE. THE PEOPLE THERE WERE VERY KIND. THEY GAVE {!}EMMA A {2}CUP OF {2}TEA, AND SOON AN {!}AMBULANCE CAME AND TOOK HER TO {2}HOSPITAL. AT THE {2}HOSPITAL A DOCTOR LOOKED AT {!}EMMA’S HEAD AND BACK. ‘YOU’RE GOING TO BE {!}OK,’ HE SAID. ‘JUST TAKE IT EASY FOR A DAY OR TWO. CAN YOUR HUSBAND HELP YOU AT HOME?’ ‘MY HUSBAND DIED EIGHT YEARS AGO,’ SAID {!}EMMA. ‘THERE’S ONLY ME AT HOME.’ ‘WELL,’ THE DOCTOR SAID, ‘WE DON’T WANT YOU TO FEEL ILL AND FALL {2}DOWNSTAIRS AT HOME. SO I THINK YOU MUST STAY IN {2}HOSPITAL FOR {2}TONIGHT, AND PERHAPS {2}TOMORROW NIGHT, TOO.’ LATER, A {2} POLICEMAN CAME TO THE {2}HOSPITAL AND {!}EMMA TOLD HIM ABOUT THE {2}BAG {!}SNATCHER. ‘DID ANYBODY SEE THIS YOUNG MAN?’ HE ASKED.

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Appendix C The Six Baseword Lists Established From the Wordlists of the OBW and CER Series OBW baseword lists. The six OBW baseword lists included all the words at the levels established by the publisher.

Level 1 OBW basewords

Level 2 OBW basewords

Level 3 OBW basewords

Level 4 OBW basewords

Level 5 OBW basewords

Level 6 OBW basewords

CER baseword lists. The six CER baseword lists included all the words at the levels established by the publisher.

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Level 1 CER basewords

Level 2 CER basewords

Level 3 CER basewords

Level 4 CER basewords

Level 5 CER basewords

Level 6 CER basewords

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About the Author Udorn Wan-a-rom is an assistant professor and a full-time lecturer at the Department of Western Languages and Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Mahasarakham University, Thailand. He received his MA and PhD in applied linguistics from the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His main research is in second language (L2) reading, L2 testing, and L2 vocabulary acquisition. E-mail: [email protected] Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2008, Volume 20, No. 1 pp. 70–91

Developing reading fluency: A study of extensive reading in EFL Yurika Iwahori Nirayama High School Japan Abstract Due to the great interest of practitioners on reading fluency in first language (L1) and second language (L2) English classroom settings, fluency has become a hot topic. A number of studies have suggested that an extensive reading (ER) program can lead to improvement of L2 learners’ reading rate; however, studies about high school students are scarce. Inspired by current issues in reading and previous ER investigations, this study examined the effectiveness of ER on reading rates of high school students in Japan. In this study, students were provided with graded readers and comic books as reading material they would find enjoyable. Pretests and posttests of reading rate and language proficiency were administered and a t test was used to compare means of the rates and language proficiency within groups. Results indicate that ER is an effective approach to improve students’ rate and general language proficiency. Keywords: extensive reading, reading rate, reading fluency, automaticity, 1-minute reading probe, t test, C-test

Characterized with the motto “reading gain without reading pain” (Day & Bamford, 1998, p. l21), extensive reading (ER), an approach to second language (L2) reading instruction, aims to make covering large amounts of reading material enjoyable for students. The goal of ER is straightforward: to help students become fluent, independent, and confident readers (Day & Bamford, 1998). ER is one way that L2 learners are exposed to English, especially in an environment of English as a foreign language (EFL). According to Day and Bamford (2002), ER promotes reading fluency and increases reading speed (p. 138). As students are assigned to read a large amount of comprehensive materials, speed becomes important as it facilitates the enjoyment and comprehension of materials. A number of experimental and quasi-experimental studies have been conducted to examine the effectiveness of ER and to provide support for the use of ER in English as a second language (ESL) and EFL classroom settings. In studies on reading rate, for example, ER has been shown to increase learners’ reading speed (see Table 2 for a list of the studies). Samuels (2006) and Blevins (2005) claimed that ER is an effective approach to improving learners’ reading fluency. However, research has been limited to junior high schools and tertiary educational institutions, and little attention has been given to it in high schools in EFL environments. Many practitioners in Japan have used ER in their classes, suggesting that they intuitively know that their students http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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need a large quantity of English input (Schmidt, 1996). The lack of studies has in part reflected the difficulty in administering experimental or quasi-experimental studies at high schools in Japan. Extensive Reading Day and Bamford (1998) credited Harold Palmer as the first to use the term extensive in referring to a large amount of reading with a focus on the meaning of the text. For Palmer, reading extensively has the advantage of being both informative and pleasurable. In other words, ER has real-world purposes in reading. Day and Bamford (2002, pp. 137–140) posited 10 principles of ER: The reading material is easy; a variety of reading material on a wide range of topics must be available; learners choose what they want to read; learners read as much as possible; the purpose of reading is usually related to pleasure, information, and general understanding; reading is its own reward; reading speed is usually faster rather than slower; reading is individual and silent; teachers orient and guide their students; and the teacher is a role model of a reader. Table 1. Results of selected L2 ER studies with junior high school, high school, university, and adult learners of English N Population Results Study Vocabulary 4 ESL; adults; USA Gains Cho & Krashen, 1994 Horst, 2005 21 ESL; adults; Canada Gains 51 ESL; adults; USA Gains Pitts, White, & Krashen, 1989 Writing 25 EFL; high school; Pakistan Gains Hafiz & Tudor, 1990 Tsang, 1996 48 EFL; junior high school, high school; Gains Hong Kong Reading comprehension 46 EFL; college; Japan Gains Masuhara, Kimura, Fukuda, & Takeuchi, 1996 Reading comprehension and speed 14 EFL; young adults; Yemen Gains Bell, 2001 (About 62) EFL; university; Japan Gains Robb & Susser, 1989 65 EFL; junior high school; Taiwan Gains Sheu, 2003 Taguchi, Takayasu-Maass, 10 EFL; university; Japan No gains & Gorsuch, 2004 Reading comprehension, writing, and speed Lai, 1993 266a EFL; junior high school; Hong Kong Gains Reading comprehension, writing, and attitude Mason & Krashen, 1997 20, 71, 76 EFL; university; Japan Gains (3 studies) Note. N = the number of participants in the ER treatment groups. a The actual number of participants whose reading speed was analyzed was 207.

In addition to these principles, Ono, Day, and Harsch (2004) provided some tips for teachers. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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They suggested that teachers have students avoid using dictionaries and train them to skip unknown words. This is in contrast to the traditional practice in English language teaching pedagogy, which encourages students to try to guess words in context as much as they can. Furthermore, teachers should encourage students to simply stop reading if texts they are reading are not interesting. Following these principles and tips, ER studies have shown that their participants improved in areas such as reading comprehension, expanding vocabulary knowledge, and enhancing writing skills (see Table 1). Moreover, the studies reported that students who engaged in ER gained positive attitudes toward reading and increased their motivation to read. Some of the results of experimental and quasi-experimental ER studies are summarized in Table 1. The studies presented in the fourth and fifth rows are the most directly relevant in designing the methodology for the study, because the focus of the present study will be on the relationship between ER and reading rate. These will be discussed in more detail later. The theoretical frameworks supporting ER include input hypothesis (Krashen, 1985, pp. 2–3) and pleasure hypothesis (Krashen, 2004). According to Krashen (1982, 1985, 1989), language learners acquire languages by understanding messages in a low anxiety context. Specifically, Krashen (1989) explained the hypothesis in this way: “comprehensible input is the essential environmental ingredient—richly specified internal language acquisition device also makes a significant contribution to language acquisition” (p. 440). Following the predictions of the hypothesis, when the language acquisition device is involved, learners subconsciously acquire target languages (Krashen, 1989). By focusing on meaning rather than form, learners are less conscious of language acquisition and achieve what is called incidental learning (Krashen, 1989, p. 440). If the hypothesis is correct, the more comprehensible aural and written input is provided, the more language acquisition occurs. A number of ER studies yielded results that support this hypothesis (see Table 1). In ER programs, L2 learners can choose reading texts whose levels are appropriate for them. Therefore, they get a so-called flood of comprehensible input. Since the English proficiency among participants in these studies is heterogeneous, it is quite clear that comprehensible input is effective on any level of language learners. Krashen’s (2004) pleasure hypothesis proposed that pedagogical activities which help language acquisition are those that are enjoyable, “but enjoyment does not guarantee language acquisition” (p. 28). He noted that there is evidence that voluntary reading outside the classroom is pleasing. For example, the participants in ER studies in Mason and Krashen (1997) indicated growth of positive attitudes toward reading. Reading Fluency Paran (1996) claimed that “if L1 readers possess attributes in reading which L2 readers do not, then it is the task of the language teacher to develop ways of encouraging the development of these attributes” (p. 30). He also stated that if automatic word decoding is a major attribute of L1 reading, a way of fostering automaticity should be found. The most widely accepted theory for reading fluency is the automatic information processing (hereafter “automaticity theory”), proposed by LaBerge and Samuels (1974; see also Kuhn & Stahl, 2003; Mathson, Allington, & Solic, 2006; Rasinski & Hoffman, 2003). Although many learners are able to recognize words accurately, they spend excessive time and energy in the process of word identification, which Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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may lead to a breakdown of comprehension. When learners are able to recognize words accurately and rapidly, they have greater capacity for attention leading to comprehending a text. To explain automaticity theory, Samuels (1994) discussed two types of attention: external attention and internal attention (p. 817). Internal attention is central to the theory of automaticity in reading. It has three characteristics: alertness, selectivity, and limited capacity (pp. 818–819). Alertness refers to the active attempt to come in contact with the source of information. Selectivity is the ability to select individual processes used at any given moment. For example, while reading these sentences, the process of selective attention enables you to choose which line you will process, though you can see the lines above and below. Limited capacity means that the human mind has a limited capacity to perform difficult tasks. For example, a novice car driver must focus his or her attention on driving. An experienced driver, however, can drive a car while listening to music, talking to someone, and sometimes even watching TV. Samuels’ (2006, p. 8) made four assumptions to explain the automaticity theory for reading: The human mind has a limited capacity to perform difficult tasks; in performing difficult tasks, such as decoding words and comprehending a text, people make efforts and as a result consume their limited mind capacity; through practice over time, the amount of effort needed for the tasks becomes less; and eventually, the effort required for performing the tasks drops drastically. According to the automaticity theory, two steps are involved to get meaning from printed words: decoding and comprehension. In reading, decoding is a process wherein printed words are translated into spoken words (Samuels, 1994). Eskey (1988) claimed that decoding is believed to play a major role in the reading process. He also argued that the rapid and accurate decoding of words is crucial to any kind of reading, especially L2 reading. In comprehending a sentence, words must be interrelated and combined to construct meaning. Samuels (1994) stated that “comprehension is a constructive process of synthesis and putting word meanings together in special ways, much as individual bricks are combined in the construction of a house” (p. 820). Even if a sentence is easy, attention is still needed for comprehension to occur. When learners’ language proficiency is limited, they may exhaust their attention finishing the decoding. As a result, they have little attention remaining for comprehending the text. Components of Reading Fluency: Accuracy and Speed As explained above, the most widely accepted understanding of reading fluency is the automaticity theory. Samuels (2006) argued that the essence of reading fluency is the ability to decode and comprehend a text simultaneously. In dealing with components of reading fluency, Martinez, Roser, and Strecker (1999) suggested that fluency depends on “appropriate rate, accuracy, phrasing, and expression” (p. 327). Reutzel (2006) claimed that major elements of fluency are speed of reading, accuracy, and proper expressions (p. 63). Blevins (2005) noted that a fluent reader is one who can read rapidly, recognize words automatically, and interpret phrases correctly (p. 13). He stated that recognizing words automatically represents accuracy or smoothness of word decoding. Rasinski (2004) argued that there are three dimensions in reading fluency: accuracy in word decoding, automatic processing, and prosodic reading (p. 46). He claimed that learners’ automatic processing in decoding can be assessed by looking at their reading speed. Although some researchers mentioned the components of oral reading fluency or Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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prosodic reading, such as appropriate or correct phrasing and expression, most researchers and practitioners seem to agree on the following two components of silent reading fluency: (a) accuracy of word recognition, and (b) speed of reading. Relationship Between ER and Reading Fluency Decoding words automatically is essential for fluency in reading. Words that learners can recognize rapidly, accurately, and automatically have been called sight vocabulary. When learners encounter the same words a number of times, these words may enter their sight vocabulary (Day & Bamford, 1998; Ehri, 1995; Grabe, 1988; LaBerge & Samuels, 1974). Sight vocabulary is elemental for improving reading fluency. When learners have a large sight vocabulary, they decode more words automatically. As a result, they can save their finite cognitive resources to comprehend a text. It is crucial that learners have opportunities to keep seeing the words that they have seen before. Thus, a number of researchers recommend ER to increase sight vocabulary (Renandya & Jacobs, 2002; Samuels, 2006). According to Samuels (1994), “automatic word-decoding skills and prior knowledge of a text’s content may interact and strongly affect success in comprehension” (p. 831). Due to the fact that learners read a number of different kinds of texts in ER programs, it can be an effective approach to increase the learners’ variety of topical knowledge (Renandya & Jacobs, 2002). That knowledge can facilitate learners’ reading comprehension (Bernhardt, 1991; Harris & Sipay, 1985; Taylor, 2006). Several ER studies indicate the effectiveness of the treatment for syntactic knowledge (e.g., Elley & Mangubhai, 1983; Nassaji, 2003). Nation (2001) claimed that when learners read, they not only learn new words and enrich known ones, but they can improve their syntactic knowledge. A number of ER studies show participants’ improvement in the number of vocabulary items (see Table 1). Learners can develop their knowledge of the world, syntactic knowledge, and general vocabulary by reading extensively. Some studies on ER rate in EFL contexts are presented in the fourth and fifth row in Table 1. In these studies, participants’ reading rate and comprehension were measured. However, the reading rate is the main focus. A summary of the main findings and methodological features for the ER studies in EFL contexts are presented in Table 2. This table shows participants’ reading rate differences in before and after treatments. It also displays how researchers measured rate and decided the readability of the rate texts (the texts used to measure rate). Bell (2001) conducted his study over two semesters to determine if young adult students’ reading rate could be increased through ER in Yemen. He used an intensive reading (IR) class as a control group. The participants’ English proficiency was at a beginning level. The mean rate in the posttests of the treatment group improved from 68.10 to 127.53 words per minute (wpm) and the control group showed gains from 78.45 to 92.54 wpm. He used t tests on pretests and posttests to compare means between groups and found that the differences were statistically significant. To measure rate, participants first read two different texts for 3 minutes. Next, their rates were calculated by looking at the number of words they were able to read per minute. To measure texts’ readability, the researcher used Fry’s readability evaluations. The number of the books that participants in the ER group read was not mentioned. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Table 2. Results and measurement of selected rate studies in ER Study

N

Pretest (wpm)

Posttest Results (wpm)

Bell, 2001: EFL; young adults; Yemen Treatment 14 68.10 127.53 (ER) Control (IR)

12

78.45

Sig (BG)

92.54

Lai, 1993: EFL; junior high school; Hong Kong Treatment 1 86 165 226 Sig (WG) (ER) Treatment 2 88 85 181 Sig(WG) (ER) Treatment 3 33 106 121 Not Sig (WG) (ER) Robb & Susser, 1989: EFL; university; Japan Treatment 79.31 86.55 62a (ER) Sig (BG) Control (IR)

62b

78.50

33

85.2

Readability of texts for pretests and posttests

Two identical texts; time for reading for 3 minutes

Fry’s readability evaluations

Two different texts; time for reading an entire text

Not mentioned

Not mentioned

Not mentioned

Two different texts; time for reading an entire text using Nuttall’s assessment

Flesch-Kincaid readability formula

76.75

Sheu, 2003: EFL; junior high school; Taiwan Treatment 31 59.7 95.8 Sig (WG) (GR) Treatment 34 98.6 136.0 Sig (WG) (BNESC) Control

Texts for pretests and posttests; measurement

118.6

Sig (WG)

Taguchi, Takayasu-Maass, & Gorsuch, 2004: EFL; university; Japan Treatment 10 80.88 64.48 Two different texts; Flesch-Kincaid, (ER) Not Sig (BG) time for reading an Fog, and Fry Control 10 84.84 82.28 entire text formulas (RR) Note. ER = extensive reading; IR = intensive reading; GR = graded readers; BNESC = books for native English-speaking children; RR = repeated reading; BG = between groups; WG = within groups; Sig = statistically significant. a The authors did not mention the exact number of participants in the treatment group and control group. Thus, this number is approximate. bThe same as the above.

Lai (1993) conducted a study over 4 weeks on lower secondary students aged 11 to 15 in Hong Kong. There were three treatment groups, no control group,1 and the students’ English proficiency was heterogeneous. Participants took pretests and posttests, and the researcher used a t test to compare means within groups. The mean rate in the posttests in Treatment 1 improved from 165 to 226 wpm, in Treatment 2 from 85 to 181 wpm, and in Treatment 3 from 106 to 121 wpm. The differences between the pretests and posttests of the two treatment groups were statistically significant, but not in the third treatment group. The participants in the treatment groups read an average of 16.2 books every 4 weeks. To measure the rate, the participants first Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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read a text, and when they finished reading they recorded the time they spent. Their rates were then calculated by wpm. In the rate test, the participants knew there were eight true or false questions after reading. The readability of the rate texts was not mentioned. Robb and Susser (1989) conducted a study over two semesters, on freshmen, at a university in Japan. The participants’ English proficiency was not mentioned. They were divided into two groups: an ER group and IR group. They took pretests and posttests, and researchers conducted an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to compare the means between the groups. The mean rate of the posttest in the treatment group (ER) improved from 79.31 to 86.55 wpm, but not in the control group (IR), which fell from 78.50 to 76.75 wpm. They found that the mean differences in the posttest were statistically significant. Readability of the rate texts was not mentioned. Sheu (2003) conducted a study on junior high school students in Taiwan. The participants’ English proficiency was at a beginning level. There were two treatment groups and one control group in this study. The participants in the first treatment group read graded readers, and the participants in the second treatment group read books for native English-speaking children. There was no mention of the duration of the study. The participants in the treatment groups read books during classes, but not outside of school. Sheu used t tests to compare mean differences between the pretests and posttest within groups. The mean rate in the posttests improved from 59.7 to 95.8 wpm in the first treatment group, from 98.6 to 136.0 wpm in the second treatment group, and from 85.2 to 118.6 wpm in the control group. The mean differences of all three groups were statistically significant. For measuring rate, he adopted Nuttall’s assessment. In this assessment, calculating wpm was done by dividing the number of words in the text by the number of 10-second intervals the participants spent in reading the text. Following this, the number from the formula was multiplied by six. To check the readability of the texts, the researcher used the Flesch-Kincaid readability formula. Taguchi et al. (2004) conducted a study on university students for 17 weeks in Japan. Their English proficiency was at a beginning level. The participants were divided into two groups: an ER group and a repeated reading group. The total amount of time the participants in the ER group spent on sustained silent reading was from 733 to 901 minutes, and the number of pages they read was from 147 to 337 with an average of 205 pages. To measure rate, the participants read an entire text, measured the time they spent, and calculated their wpm. They read the passage 5 times, and their rate was measured each time. To compare means, only their first reading rate was targeted. Researchers used the Mann Whitney U tests to compare means between the groups. The mean rate decreased from 80.88 to 64.48 wpm in the treatment group (i.e., the ER group) and from 84.84 to 82.28 wpm in the control group (i.e., the repeated reading group). The mean difference between groups in the posttest was not significant. Researchers used Flesch-Kincaid, Fog, and Fry formulas to check the readability of the rate texts. The present study focused on the reading rate of ER for Japanese high school students. It also examined the improvement of students’ general language proficiency through a C-test because other ER studies (see Table 1) reveal the effectiveness of various ER treatments. Taking these purposes into account, the following two research questions were addressed in this study: 1. Do high school students’ reading rates improve through ER, and if so, to what degree? Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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2. Do high school students’ general language proficiency improve through ER, and if so, to what degree? Method Subjects This study was conducted for 7 weeks from June to August 2006. The participants were public high school students in Japan. They were drawn from an average-level coeducational high school. Thirty-three students, who were in the 2nd year of high school, were selected. Their ages were 16 to 17, and there were 19 female and 14 male students. The students’ native language was Japanese, and they were learning English as a foreign language. They had attended 4, 50-minute English reading classes and 2 writing classes per week. Japanese was the medium of instruction in these classes, and the translation method was used with a focus on memorization and knowledge accumulation. In these classes, they did not engage in any kind of ER follow-up activities, grammar classes, or special grammar treatment during this study. The study lasted 4 weeks during the semester and 3 weeks during the holiday because the students began their summer holiday when it was conducted. They had already studied English for 4 to 8 years, with a mean of 7 years. Based on reports from the Society for Testing English Proficiency (STEP) test,2 the participants’ English proficiency was at a beginning level. Eighteen participants were able to report their STEP Test levels, and their levels ranged from 4 to 2.3 One participant had lived in the US for 6 years because of their father’s work. Treatment The students were provided with graded readers as homework for 7 weeks. Following Day and Bamford (1998), who suggested that students need to be motivated to achieve goals, the amount of reading assigned was 28 books. This set number of books for them to read in 7 weeks was the goal. When the same researcher conducted an ER pilot test in the spring of 2006, the participants read 13 books, on average, with the goal of 16 books during the 4-week research period.4 Reading 28 books would be a challenging but feasible number for the students to achieve. Therefore, the number was determined with the hope that the students’ would feel more confident in themselves and in their reading abilities after achieving success. Graded readers usually show readability levels and are controlled for syntax, sentence length and complexity, and vocabulary (Bamford, 1984). In the present study, graded readers were chosen from publishers such as Macmillan, Oxford University Press, and Pearson Longman, with a range of basic vocabulary from 200–1,000 words. In addition to graded readers, students were supplied with comic books, such as Archie, Richie Rich, and Casper.5 One hundred seven graded readers and 30 comic books, totaling 137 books, were provided for the 33 students. Thus, students could choose books from a range of topics that they were interested in. Measurement of Reading Rate The studies listed in Table 2 show that although three of the researchers used the entire text Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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method,6 it is not clear whether there is an agreed-upon method by which L2 researchers and practitioners should use for measuring silent reading rate. The entire text method may be described as an authentic reading measure because students read a whole text just as people do in the real world (Rasinski, 2003). However, this method takes longer than a 1-minute reading probe, and it is uncertain how to determine the appropriate length of a text. Therefore, this study turned to the L1 literature for a method of operationalizing reading rates. To measure silent reading rates in L1 classroom settings, researchers and practitioners use two methods: 1-minute reading probe and entire text method (Harris & Sipay, 1985; Ream, 1977; Rial, 1977). In the present study, I chose the 1-minute reading probe to measure rate. Materials for Reading Rate and Text Readability To measure the reading rate, the students read a text extracted from Spargo (1989a) that had content at a level similar to what high school students usually read (see Appendix A). According to Harris and Sipay (1985) and Rasinski (2003), a passage for measuring rate should be at the student’s grade level. In order to check readability of the rate text, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level was used. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is one of the most commonly used measures (Readability formulas, n.d.). The readability of a text is measured based on factors such as the number of words in the sentences and the number of letters or syllables per word. Some texts that the students read in classes were measured by the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, with a mean of 6.2. The rate text measured by the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level was 6.1. The students were told that they would be asked three comprehension questions about the text after the rate test so that they should read the rate text at their normal speed (Cziko, 1980; Rasinski et al., 2005). Questions were drawn from the first 120 words of the rate text. The students answered the questions; however, their comprehension was not being tested. The students were given a time limit of 1 minute for reading before answering the questions. Immediately following the reading period, they answered the questions. They read the same text for both the pretest and posttest. C-Test Design To measure general language proficiency, the students took the C-test. The C-tests, invented by Klein-Braley and Raatz, were based on the cloze test (Jafapur, 1995). A number of researchers claim that the C-tests are thought to be an effective measure of overall language proficiency (e.g., Dörnyei & Katona, 1992; Eckes & Grotjahn, 2006; Grotjahn, 1986; Klein-Braley, 1997). KleinBraley stated that the C-tests are useful for FL learners for research purposes. The cloze test is made from one text and can bias results for those who already know the subject matter of the text. To solve this problem, the C-tests usually include four to five different texts. Each text contains 20–25 items and deals with a different topic with around 75 to 100 words (Norris, 2006). Words in the first sentence are not deleted for participants’ comprehension. After the first sentence, the second half of every other word is deleted, but words with only one letter are skipped (Connelly, 1997). If a word has an odd number of letters, the larger half is deleted. Every deleted letter was replaced by a dash (Jafapur, 1995). In this study, a 100-item C-test was designed by the researcher following these rules (see Appendix B), with texts selected from Krahnke (1996), Morizumi (2003), and Spargo (1989a, 1989b). The readability of the texts was set at a level that students were expected to attain at the end of Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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the study. The order of the 4 texts went from easy to difficult levels (Connelly, 1997): FleschKincaid Grade Level from 5.6 to 7.3 with a mean of 6.6. Taking the texts’ readability into consideration, the C-test in the present study was slightly more difficult than the texts that the students read in classes. Since the students were taking the C-test for the first time, they were given a sample C-test before the pretest to become familiar with the test format (see Appendix C). The C-tests were then administered as pretests and posttests for all students. The time needed for working through each text is generally 5 to 7 minutes (Connelly, 1997). The C-test with 100 items from four texts took 24 minutes.7 Students took the same C-test for the pretest and posttest. Procedure Before the tests and questionnaire were administered, students read a consent form that explained the purpose of the study and they agreed to participate. Following the tests, students filled out a questionnaire on which they recorded their gender, age, past experience of English education, living abroad, and English level based on results from the STEP Test. Students took the pretest in June and the posttest in August.8 Graded readers and comic books were placed on a book shelf in their classroom, and when students borrowed books they wrote their name and the title of each book taken in the loan notebook. Students were asked to write a book report as a way of verifying the amount of reading completed. In this report, students wrote the title of the book and a very brief comment in either English or Japanese (see Appendix D). Based on their book reports, the researcher interviewed all the students after school in the middle of the study period so that their progress could be checked and advice given. Analyses In this study, there were two dependent variables (reading rates and C-test) and one independent variable (a 7-week ER treatment). To compare means of each test within the group, a paired t test was used. There are four assumptions for a t test: (a) independence of groups, (b) independence of observations, (c) normality of the distributions, and (d) equal variances (Brown, 1992, pp. 644–645). Although the results of the pre-C-test exhibited skewness and kurtosis, there was still space for two or three standard deviations on either side of the mean, and no outliers. Therefore, the distribution can be described as normal (Brown, 1992). All of these assumptions for this statistic were met. In this calculation, the null hypothesis of no difference within group means was chosen. A Bonferroni adjustment was made to the alpha level to account for the two separate t tests. The alpha level was set to .025. Results Reading Rates Descriptive statistics for the reading rates are presented in Table 3. The mean reading rate from the pretest to the posttest improved from 84.18 to 112.82 wpm. Similar improvements in the median and mode scores were also found. The standard deviation (SD) remained stable (28.76 and 29.39), but the range widened from 106 to 148. The two distributions had neither significant skewness nor kurtosis problems. The reliability of reading rates was α = .76 (Cronbach’s alpha). Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Table 3. Descriptive statistics of pre- and post-reading rates in wpm (N = 33) Test Median Mode M SD SE Range Min Max Skew Kurtosis Pre-rate 84.18 80.00 52.00 28.76 5.01 106 45 151 0.74 0.20 Post-rate 112.82 113.00 130.00 29.39 5.12 148 52 200 0.85 1.67

Figure 1 displays the comparison of differences of each student’s pre- and post-reading rates in wpm. It indicates that most of the students’ posttest reading rates increased. Seven students in particular (4, 8, 9, 13, 21, 22, and 23) were able to boost their rate from 50 to 70 wpm. 250 Pre-Rate Post-Rate

Rate (wpm)

200 150 100 50 0 1

3

5

7

9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 Student

Figure 1. Comparison of pre- and post-reading rates in wpm.

C-Tests Descriptive statistics for the C-test results are presented in Table 4. The means on the post-C-test improved somewhat from 47.58 to 51.00. Similar small-sized improvements in the median and mode scores were also found. The standard deviation (SD) and range remained stable (going from 11.06 to 11.50, and from 55 to 57, respectively). The distributions in the pre-C-test were positively skewed; that is, many students scored low. The kurtosis statistic was positive, suggesting that the distribution may be too peaked (Tabachnick & Fidell, 1996). The reliability of the C-test was α = .92 (Cronbach’s alpha). Table 4 Descriptive statistics of pre- and post-C-test results (N = 33; k = 100) Test Median Mode Range Min Max Skew M SD SE Pre-C 47.58 46.00 35.00 11.06 1.93 55 28 83 1.03 Post-C 51.00 52.00 52.00 11.50 2.00 57 27 84 0.35

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Kurtosis 2.09 1.04

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Figure 2 displays the comparison of the differences of each student’s scores on the pretest and posttest of C-test. The scores on the posttest of the C-test exhibit the same histogram as those of the pretest, and those of the posttest are slightly better than the pretest. 90

Pre-C-Test

80

Post-C-Test

70 C-Test

60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1

3

5

7

9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 Student

Figure 2. Comparison of pre- and post-C-test results.

Paired t Test The results of a paired t test of reading rates (M = -28.636,9 SD = 25.58, at a 99 % confidence interval of the difference, [-40.83, -16.44]) showed that the difference was statistically significant, t(32) = -6.43, p < .0005, 2-tailed. Therefore, the null hypothesis of no difference within group means was rejected. That is, the average difference of 28.64 wpm between reading rate in June (pretest) and August (posttest) was statistically significant. This suggests that the students increased in their reading rate to a statistically significant degree in the 7-week period, during which they engaged in ER. The results of paired t test of C-test (M = -3.42, SD = 6.22, at a 99 % confidence interval of the difference, [-6.39, -0.46]) showed that the difference is statistically significant t(32) = -3.16, p = .003, 2-tailed. Therefore, the null hypothesis of no difference within group means was rejected. However, the actual mean difference of less than 4 points on a test with a total of 100 suggests that the growth in general proficiency is very small, although statistically significant. Discussion The results of the present study showed that high school students’ reading rates improved after a 7-week ER treatment. According to the pretest and posttest results, students’ C-test scores also improved. However, to appropriately address the results of reading rate, they should be interpreted with caution.

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Differences in Reading Rates The differences in students’ reading rates of pretest and posttests are meaningful because the differences are large. According to Robb and Susser (1989) and Taguchi et al. (2004), the average reading rate of Japanese university students is from about 65 to 90 wpm. Nuttall (1982) estimated that secondary school students’ average reading rate in ESL may be from 120 to 150 wpm and university students’ rate in ESL may be at about 200 wpm (p. 35). In comparison, students’ rates in the present study are within a similar range. Nuttall claimed that improvement of students’ rate by about 50 percent or doubling the rate is not uncommon after training; however, she did not explain the length of the training, particularly when their rate is limited, such as 40 wpm (p. 35). Although in the present study the participants’ rate in the pretest was not so slow, reading rates were shown to increase by about 30 percent in the ER treatment period. The results of the present study support the research question that high school students’ rates would improve through ER. Possible explanations for the differences within a group may be found by considering the following three factors: (a) participants’ expectations, (b) participants’ readiness to be exposed to English, and (c) measurement. First, students may have expected some improvement in their rates and general language proficiency after the treatment. This is because the purposes of the study and of ER were explained to them before the treatment. In addition, the consent form they read was translated from English into Japanese, and thus they understood the purpose of the study. Second, it was possible that students were ready to be exposed to English. Due to the prevalence of the grammar-translation method at Japanese junior and senior high schools, students have accumulated a fundamental English syntactic and lexical knowledge (LoCastro, 1996). In other words, participants in the present study may have been ready to be exposed to comprehensible flood of English to expand their potential abilities. The number of the books that students read in the treatment period ranged from 1 to 10, with an average of 4 books. Despite reading a small amount of books, their reading rates increased. Third, the rate results could be different depending on the way they were measured. In this study, a 1-minute reading probe was adopted. A 1-minute reading probe is an efficient form of rate assessment (Rasinski, 2003), but this method differs from those used by other researchers to measure rate (see Table 2). For example, one researcher utilized Nuttall’s assessment. In this assessment, students’ reading rate is counted at 10-second intervals without single figures; hence their accuracy rate is not measured. Other researchers utilized an entire text method. Differences in C-Test The difference in the pre- and post-C-test results is statistically significant, despite the difficulty in achieving rapid improvement of general language proficiency. Since the difference between the pre- and post-C-test results was only 3.42 points, the results of the present study somewhat support the research hypothesis that high school students’ general language proficiency would improve through ER. The overall low means and the positive skewness suggest that the C-test was difficult for the students. Although a number of ER studies have revealed its effectiveness in Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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ESL and EFL contexts (see Table 1) and many advantages are presented by several researchers, the results of this study are less robust. Whereas the results indicate students’ improvement in English skills, it was not clearly established that they experienced language learning in areas such as spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and text structure. Limitations of the Study There are some limitations in this study. First, there was no control group. Unfortunately, it was not allowed to test students who were not participating in the treatment. Not having a control group at the same institution hinders the evaluation of ER studies in high schools. Generally, without a control group, it is rather difficult to claim conclusively that improvements were the result of the ER treatment. Second, it is difficult to measure different kinds of proficiency, such as knowledge of the world, vocabulary, grammar, spelling, and text structure using a C-test. Hence it is hard to determine what the students learned through the ER program. Third, they had the ability to decode faster at the end of the study period; however, it is not clear whether students were decoding and comprehending the text at the same time. In terms of automaticity theory, the ability to decode and comprehend a text at the same time is the essence of reading fluency (Samuels, 2006). Fourth, there is a possible practice effect on the result of posttests because students took the same reading rate and C-test as a pretest and posttests. Finally, there is a limitation in the context of the population, which included only Japanese high school students whose English proficiency was at a beginning level. Learning behavior is different in each culture, and because of this, the background at this particular group must be taken into account. Despite these limitations, the results of this study show that ER improves one aspect of reading fluency and general language proficiency of Japanese high school students with a few books and short treatment period. Based on these results, it is recommended that ER as fluency instruction be incorporated into English class curriculums. ER provides a possible way for students to become fluent readers by being exposed to English, to increase their vocabulary size, syntactic knowledge, and knowledge of the world. For fluency reading, vocabulary plays an important role. Thus, further research will be needed on how much participants increase their vocabulary in ER in addition to their reading rate. Although a number of studies prove effectiveness of ER treatment, to my knowledge, no studies have been conducted to measure vocabulary and rate in the same study. To most effectively measure reading rate, establishing a unified measurement is essential for both achievement and analytic purposes. This study adopted a 1-minute reading probe to measure rate. However, there is no consensus among L2 researchers on how to measure reading rate, much less reading rate texts’ readability. Although this method only measured one aspect of fluency, it is necessary to develop reliable and valid methods to measure reading rates in the ESL and EFL contexts. One test developer created a test, the Reading Fluency Indicator,10 for the purpose of measuring oral reading rate, accuracy, comprehension, and prosody. Another test for measuring reading fluency is under development by another test developer (Samuels, 2006). However, these tests are for oral reading fluency. In terms of text readability, researchers selected grade-appropriate Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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texts from the Lexile Framework for Reading (n.d.) for a large-scale assessment of reading fluency in L1 context (Johnston, 2006). To enhance future research, it should be possible to use the materials that these test developers make. Once researchers adopt the same test materials and the same measures, it will be more feasible to compare results and accurately determine the effectiveness of ER treatment. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Professor Richard R. Day and Professor Lourdes Ortega, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, for their insightful and valuable comments on this paper, and Munehiko Miyata, Takako Yamaguchi, Yusuke Okada, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. A special thanks to Bruce Lindquist for his constructive advice and strong support. Notes 1. The researcher conducted the study on the first treatment group in 1988, on the second treatment group in 1989, and on the third group in 1991. Participants in three groups were from three different schools. 2. The STEP Test is the most popular English proficiency test among high school students in Japan. Every year, about 2,500,000 people, including test takers who take the test abroad, take the STEP Test (Eiken, n.d.). There are seven proficiency levels in this test, and the first is the most advanced level. 3. According to the STEP information, the 4th and 3rd levels of the STEP are equivalent to the English proficiency of Japanese junior high school students, and pre-2nd and 2nd levels are equivalent to that of high school students (Eiken, n.d.). In this study, four students were in 4th level of the STEP, 10 were in 3rd, three were in pre-2nd level, and one was in 2nd. 4. The pilot test was conducted in the US. There were 4 participants who were international students studying English in the US. They volunteered to participate in the pilot study. Their motivation to read books seemed strong since they were in the US to study, and for the reward they would receive after the study period. 5. Krashen (2004) claimed that comic books help readers’ comprehension with pictures without negative effects on school accomplishment and language development. In addition, comic book readers tend to have more positive attitudes toward reading. 6. In the entire text method, students read an entire text. The number of words in the text and the number of seconds it takes them to read are subjected to the following formula: # words read × 60 = reading rate in words per minute # of seconds to read

7. In the pilot test, the participants were given 28 minutes for the 100-item C-test. The C-test was Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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the same test that was administered in this study except one text. It was found that there was ample time for participants to finish the C-test; therefore, the time for the C-test was set for 24 minutes in this study. 8. It is rather muggy in August in Japan, but the posttest was conducted under the same conditions as the pretest because air-conditioners were equipped in all the classes. 9. This mean is the d-value. The formula of the d-value is d-value = Mpre-rate – Mpost-rate

10. Pearson AGS Globe (2006) developed this oral reading fluency test for children aged 5 to 8. References Bamford, J. (1984). Extensive reading by means of graded readers. Reading in a Foreign Language, 2, 218–260. Bell, T. (2001). Extensive reading: Speed and comprehension. The Reading Matrix, 1. Retrieved October 28, 2006, from http://www.readingmatrix.com/archives/archives_vol1_no1.html Bernhardt, E. B. (1991). Reading development in a second language: Theoretical, empirical and classroom perspectives. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Blevins, W. (2005). The importance of reading fluency and the English language learner. The Language Teacher, 29, 13–16. Brown, J. D. (1992). Statistics as a foreign language part 2: More things to consider in reading statistical language studies. TESOL Quarterly, 26, 629–664. Cho, K., & Krashen, S. D. (1994). Acquisition of vocabulary from the Sweet Valley Kids series: Adult ESL acquisition. Journal of Reading, 37, 662–667. Connelly, M. (1997). Using C-test in English with post-graduate students. English for Specific Purposes, 16, 139–150. Cziko, G. A. (1980). Language competence and reading strategies: A comparison of first- and second-language oral reading errors. Language Learning, 30, 101–114. Day, R. R., & Bamford, J. (1998). Extensive reading in the second language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Day, R. R., & Bamford, J. (2002). Top ten principles for teaching extensive reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 14,136–141. Dörnyei, Z., & Katona, L. (1992). Validation of the C-test amongst Hungarian EFL learners. Language Testing, 9, 187–206. Eckes, T., & Grotjahn, R. (2006). A closer look at the construct validity of C-tests. Language Testing, 23, 290–325. Ehri, L. C. (1995). Phases of development in learning to read words by sight. Journal of Research in Reading, 18, 116–125. Eiken. (n.d.) Eiken toha [About Eiken]. Retrieved August 7, 2007, from http://eiken.or.jp/about/index.html Elley, W. B., & Mangubhai, F. (1983). The impact of reading on second language learning. Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 53–67. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Eskey, D. (1988). Holding in the bottom: An interactive approach to the language problems of second language readers. In P. Carrell, J. Devine, & D. Eskey (Eds.), Interactive approaches to second language reading (pp. 93–100). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grabe, W. (1988). Reassessing the term “interactive.” In P. Carrell, J. Devine, & D. Eskey (Eds.), Interactive approaches to second language reading (pp. 56–70). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grotjahn, R. (1986). Test validation and cognitive psychology: Some methodological considerations. Language Testing, 3, 159–185. Hafiz, F. M., & Tudor, I. (1990). Graded readers as an input medium in L2 learning. System, 18, 31–42. Harris, A. J., & Sipay, E. R. (1985). How to increase reading ability: A guide to developmental and remedial methods (8th ed.). White Plains, NY: Longman. Horst, M. (2005). Learning L2 vocabulary through extensive reading: A measurement study. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 61, 355–382. Jafapur, A. (1995). Is C-testing superior to cloze? Language Testing, 12, 194–216. Johnston, S. (2006). The fluency assessment system: Improving oral reading fluency with technology. In T. V. Rasinski, C. Blachowicz, & K. Lems (Eds.), Fluency instruction: Research-based best practices (pp. 123–140). New York: Guilford. Klein-Braley, C. (1997). C-tests in the context of reduced redundancy testing: An appraisal. Language Testing, 14, 47–84. Krahnke, K. (1996). Reading together a reading/activities text. New York: St. Martin’s. Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. New York: Prentice-Hall. Krashen, S. D. (1985). The input hypothesis: Issues and implications. New York: Longman. Krashen, S. D. (1989). We acquire vocabulary and spelling by reading: Additional evidence for the input hypothesis. The Modern Language Journal, 73, 440–464. Krashen, S. D. (2004). The power of reading: Insights from the research (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Kuhn, M. R., & Stahl, S. A. (2003). Fluency: A review of developmental and remedial practices. Educational Psychology, 95, 3–21. LaBerge, D., & Samuels, S. J. (1974). Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 293–323. Lai, F.-K. (1993). The effect of a summer reading course on reading and writing skills. System, 21, 87–100. Lexile Framework for Reading (n.d.). Retrieved December 13, 2006, from http://www.lexile.com LoCastro, V. (1996). English language education in Japan. In H. Coleman (Ed.), Society and the language classroom (pp. 40–58). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Martinez, M., Roser, N. L., & Strecker, S. (1999). “I never thought I could be a star”: A readers theatre ticket to fluency. The Reading Teacher, 52, 326–334. Mason, B., & Krashen, S. D. (1997). Extensive reading in English as a foreign language. System, 25, 91–102. Masuhara, H., Kimura, T., Fukada, A., & Takeuchi, M. (1996). Strategy training or/and extensive reading? In T. Hickey & J. Williams (Eds.), Language, education, and society in a changing world (pp. 263–274). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Mathson, D. V., Allington, R. L., & Solic, K. L. (2006). Hijacking fluency and instructionally informative assessments. In T. V. Rasinski, C. Blachowicz, & K. Lems (Eds.), Fluency instruction: Research-based best practices (pp. 106–119). New York: The Guilford Press. Morizumi, S. (2003). EXCEED English Series I. Tokyo: Sansei Do. Nassaji, H. (2003). Higher-level and lower-level text processing skills in advanced ESL reading comprehension. The Modern Language Journal, 87, 261–276. Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norris, J. (2006). Development and evaluation of a curriculum-based German C-test for placement purposes. In R. Grotjahn (Ed.), The C-test: Theory, empirical research, applications (pp. 45–83). Frankfurt: Lang. Nuttall, C. (1982). Teaching reading skills in a foreign language. London: Heinemann Educational Books. Ono, L., Day, R. R., & Harsch, K. (2004). Tips for reading extensively. English Teaching Forum, 42(4), 12–19. Paran, A. (1996). Reading in EFL: Facts and fictions. English Language Teaching Journal, 50, 25–34. Pearson AGS Globe (2006). Reading fluency indicator. Retrieved November 8, 2006, from http://www.agsglobe.com/group.asp?nGroupInfoID=a24550 Pitts, M., White, H., & Krashen, S. D. (1989). Acquiring second language vocabulary through reading: A replication of the clockwork orange study using second language acquirers. Reading in a Foreign Language, 5, 271–275. Rasinski, T. V. (2003). The fluent reader: Oral reading strategies for building word recognition, fluency, and comprehension. New York: Scholastic Professional Books. Rasinski, T. V. (2004). Creating fluent readers. Educational Leadership, 61, 46–51. Rasinski, T. V., & Hoffman, J. V. (2003). Oral reading in the school literacy curriculm. Reading Research Quarterly, 38, 510–522. Rasinski, T. V., Padak, N. D., McKeon, C. A., Wilfong, L. G., Friedauer, J. A., & Heim, P. (2005). Is reading fluency a key for successful high school reading? Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 49, 22–27. Readability formulas (n.d.) Retrieved November 8, 2006, from http://csep.psyc.memphis.edu/cohmetrix/readabilityresearch.htm Ream, M. (1977). The Merrill Ream 10-lesson speed reading course. Mission, KS: Sheed Andrews and McMeel. Renandya, W. A., & Jacobs, G. M. (2002). Extensive reading: Why aren’t we all doing it? In J. C. Richards & W. A. Renandya (Eds.), Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice (pp. 295–302). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reutzel, D. R. (2006). “Hey, teacher, when you say ‘fluency,’ what do you mean?”: Developing fluency in elementary classrooms. In T. V. Rasinski, C. Blachowicz, & K. Lems (Eds.), Fluency instruction: Research-based best practices (pp. 62–85). New York: Guilford. Rial, A. F. (1977). Speed reading made easy. New York: Doubleday & Company. Robb, T. N., & Susser, B. (1989). Extensive reading vs skills building in an EFL context. Reading in a Foreign Language, 5, 239–251. Samuels, S. J. (1994). Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading, revisited. In R. B. Ruddell, M. R. Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th ed.) (pp. 816–837). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Samuels, S. J. (2006). Reading fluency: Its past, present, and future. In T. V. Rasinski, C. Blachowicz, & K. Lems (Eds.), Fluency instruction: Research-based best practices (pp. 7–20). New York: The Guilford Press. Schmidt, K. (1996). Extensive reading in English: Rationale and possibilities for a program at Shirayuri gakuen. Sendai Shirayuri Gakuen Journal of General Research, 24, 81–92. Sheu, S. P.-H. (2003). Extensive reading with EFL learners at beginning level. TESL Reporter, 36, 8–26. Spargo, E. (1989a). Timed readings, Book 1 (3rd ed.). Chicago, IL: Jamestown Publishers. Spargo, E. (1989b). Timed readings, Book 4 (3rd ed.). Chicago, IL: Jamestown Publishers. Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (1996). Using multivariate statistics. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (1996). Using multivariate statistics (3rd ed.). New York: Harper Collins. Taguchi, E., Takayasu-Maass, M., & Gorsuch, G. J. (2004). Developing reading fluency in EFL: How assisted repeated reading and extensive reading affect fluency development. Reading in a Foreign Language, 16, 1–23. Taylor, S. E. (2006). Fluency in silent reading. Retrieved January 15, 2007, from http://www.readingplus.com/schools/pdfs/FluencyInSilentReading.pdf Tsang, W.-K. (1996). Comparing the effects of reading and writing on writing performance. Applied Linguistics, 17, 210–233. Appendix A Reading Rate Sheet (Extracted from Spargo, 1989a) Do you plan to visit Italy someday? If so, it’s a good idea to know about the country and its people. Italy has two very different areas. The business centers and large cities of the North hum with noise. The South, on the other hand, enjoys the sleepy charm of the country. People of the North like the bustle of city life. They enjoy all the things a city has to offer. Those from the South like a slower pace. They like their rural surroundings. One thing all Italians have in common is their zest for life. The climate of Italy is like that of California. It is sunny and warm all year in the South. Except in the mountains, summers are warm all over the country. Winter brings snow, sleet, cold rain, and fog to the North. Central Italy is mild in winter. Many Italians are happiest when in groups. Wherever they gather, you are likely to hear fine singing and happy laughter. A building boom is going on in the cities of Italy. Steel and glass skyscrapers tower over ancient ruins. Italy throbs with life and color. Talk on the street corners is lively. The background music coming from open windows could be classical or the latest hit tune. Donkeys and street peddlers sometimes add to the color and noise. The city streets are busy. Here you will see well-dressed people. These people are going to work in new office buildings. The street traffic includes different kinds of cars. You can even spot some motor scooters and bicycles. Italians also like food. They are good cooks. Each city and region has its own specialties. Bologna, for Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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instance, is known for its sausages. Olive oil, garlic, and tomatoes are used more freely in cooking in the South than in the North. Some Northerners use butter instead of olive oil. You will see rice on their plates instead of pasta. An Italian dinner begins with appetizers and ends many courses later with a fine dessert. In the course of a dinner, you can sample some of Italy’s fine cheeses. There are many to choose from. There are also many fine wines, and they are reasonably priced. You may never visit Italy. Still, it’s nice to read about its lively and colorful personality. Maybe someday you will be lucky enough to see part of this wonderful land.

Appendix B C-Test TEXT 1: A Message From Forty Years Ago (Extracted from Morizumi, 2003) Here is a picture of Japanese killifish or medaka. Not lo _ _ ago w _ saw a l _ _ of th _ _ in lit _ _ _ streams al _ _ _ rice fie _ _ _ in t _ _ country si _ _. But mo _ _ of th _ _ are go _ _ now. W _ _? One o _ the rea _ _ _ _ is th _ _ farm insect _ _ _ _ _ _ we us _ _ on t _ _ fields ma _ _ the wa _ _ _ of t _ _ streams unsui _ _ _ _ _ for kill _ _ _ _ _ to li _ _ in. As time goes on, they may die out completely. We are now in the age of ecological crisis. TEXT 2: Sleeping Through the Winter (Extracted from Spargo, 1989a) To survive, animals learn how to adjust to changes in their world. Some ha _ _ learned h _ _ to li _ _ through co _ _ winters wh _ _ food i _ in sh _ _ _ supply. Th_ _ _ secret i _ a win _ _ _ sleep cal _ _ _ hibernation. Wh _ _ temperatures dr _ _, these ani _ _ _ _ go t _ sleep. T _ _ best-known hiber _ _ _ _ _ is t _ _ bear. A _ _ bears c _ _ hibernate. B _ _ mainly i _ is th _ _ _ that li _ _ in col _ _ _ climates that do. TEXT 3: Computer and Communication (Extracted from Krahnke, 1996) Our great-grandparents communicated face-to-face or by writing notes and letters to each other. If th _ _ were sepa _ _ _ _ _ by mo _ _ than a f _ _ miles, commun _ _ _ _ _ _ _ had t _ wait un _ _ _ they co _ _ _ travel t _ _ distance a _ _ see ea _ _ other o _ until som _ _ _ _, a mess _ _ _ _ _ or pos _ _ _ service wor _ _ _, could del _ _ _ _ the no _ _ or let _ _ _ . Much h _ _ changed i _ the la _ _ hundred ye _ _ _ . The tele _ _ _ _ _ became com _ _ _ in much of the world by the 1930s, and it allowed instant voice communication over wires. TEXT 4: Water, Water Everywhere (Extracted from Spargo, 1989b) Most people know that water is unevenly distributed over the earth’s surface in oceans, rivers, and lakes. Few rea _ _ _ _, however, h _ _ very une _ _ _ the distri _ _ _ _ _ _ actually i _ . It i _ important t _ think o _ the to _ _ _ amount o _ water o _ the pla _ _ _ Earth, t _ _ areas wh _ _ _ the wa _ _ _ occurs, a _ _ the lo _ _ -term impor _ _ _ _ _ of t _ _ findings. T _ _ oceans o _ the wo _ _ _ cover 140 mil _ _ _ _ Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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square mi _ _ _ of t _ _ Earth’s surface. The average depth of the ocean basins is about 12,500 feet. If the basins were shallow, seas would spread far onto the continents.

Appendix C Sample C-Test Directions: The following tests have been developed by removing the second half of every second word in a text. You are supposed to reconstruct the texts. Example Text (Extracted from Morizumi, 2003) Kina Shokichi is one of my favorite musicians. He w _ _ born i _ Okinawa i _ 1948. H _ began t _ play mu _ _ _ when h _ was i _ junior hi _ _ school. Example Answers Kina Shokichi is one of my favorite musicians. He was born in Okinawa in 1948. He began to play music when he was in junior high school.

Appendix D Book Report (Adapted from Bamford, 1984, p. 220) Title of Book: ( I read all.

): /

pages of the book. (circle one) 途中で読むことをやめた時のページ数を記入

How did you like the book? (circle one) 1. Great! (I loved it) 2. Good (I liked it) 3. OK (I didn’t mind reading it) 4. Boring/Stupid (I wish I hadn’t read it)

Write your feeling about the book: 英語でも、日本語でも記入可（どちらか片方で感想を書いて下さい） This book was very interesting and easy to understand the story. 非常におもしろかった、また内容も簡単に理解できた。

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About the Author Yurika Iwahori holds an MA degree in Second Language Studies from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. She has seven years of experience in teaching English in Japanese high schools. She currently teaches at Nirayama High School. Her research interests are in reading fluency and vocabulary development in ESL and EFL contexts. E-mail: [email protected]

Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2008, Volume 20, No. 1 pp. 92–122

Vocabulary recycling in children’s authentic reading materials: A corpus-based investigation of narrow reading Dee Gardner Brigham Young University United States Abstract Fourteen collections of children’s reading materials were used to investigate the claim that collections of authentic texts with a common theme, or written by one author, afford readers with more repeated exposures to new words than unrelated materials. The collections, distinguished by relative thematic tightness, authorship (1 vs. 4 authors), and register (narrative vs. expository), were analyzed to determine how often, and under what conditions, specialized vocabulary recycles within the materials. Findings indicated that thematic relationships impacted specialized vocabulary recycling within expository collections (primarily content words), whereas authorship impacted recycling within narrative collections (primarily names of characters, places, etc.). Theme-based expository collections also contained much higher percentages of theme-related words than their theme-based narrative counterparts. The findings were used to give nuance to the vocabulary-recycling claims of narrow reading and to more general theories and practices involving wide and extensive reading. Keywords: narrow reading, vocabulary, themes, registers, authorship

Over the past 30 years, a large body of literature has touted reading as the major source of students’ vocabulary development (e.g., Cunningham & Stanovich, 2003; Krashen, 1989, 1993a, 1993b; Nagy & Anderson, 1984; Nagy & Herman, 1985, 1987). This claim has also received some empirical support from studies that have found small, incremental gains in word knowledge through contextual exposure during reading (reviewed in Swanborn & de Glopper, 1999), as well as studies that have correlated amount of print exposure with large vocabulary differences among school-aged children (reviewed in Cunningham & Stanovich, 2003). As a result, wide reading (reading large amounts of “authentic” material) and its more robust conceptualization, extensive reading, have been advocated for expanding the vocabularies of various learners in first-language (L1), second-language (L2), and foreign-language instructional settings (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2003; Day & Bamford, 1998, 2002; Graves, 2006; Krashen, 1989, 1993a, 1993b). At the heart of this issue is the assumption that readers will encounter new (unfamiliar) words multiple times in multiple and varied contexts during extensive reading experiences, eventually http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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resulting in the “incidental acquisition” of those words (Nagy, 1997; Nagy, Anderson, & Herman, 1987; Nagy & Herman, 1987; Shu, Anderson, & Zhang, 1995). Proponents have also put forth this hypothesis as being the best explanation of how young L1 learners acquire the bulk of their large vocabularies through the 12th grade, with estimates ranging somewhere between 40,000 (Nagy & Herman, 1987) and 80,000 words (Anderson, 1996; Anderson & Nagy, 1992), depending on what is counted as a word. As appealing as this hypothesis has been in reading research and pedagogy, there remains a relative dearth of research studies that have carefully considered the vocabulary input of children’s authentic reading materials to determine how well, and under what conditions, they do recycle vocabulary, particularly those words that are not from the relatively small pool of highfrequency forms found in most texts (the, of, and, a, take, get, mother, play, etc.). The much larger group of more specialized vocabulary items—to which the words of this study belong— constitutes the bulk of the English word stock (Nation, 1990), thus effectively representing the large-scale vocabulary (e.g., 40,000 to 80,000 words) that can potentially be acquired during the school years and beyond. With this background in mind, the aim of the current study is to extend the earlier work of Gardner (2004), in which he analyzed the vocabulary input of a 1.5 million-word extensive reading corpus, consisting of seven children’s narrative collections (four texts each) and seven grade-equivalent expository collections (four texts each). One of his major findings was that the words children are exposed to during narrative reading are vastly different than those they are exposed to during expository reading, particularly at the more specialized, content-rich levels of vocabulary (i.e., beyond the high-frequency words of the language) where 17,921 of 23,857 word types (72.5%) were either found in narrative texts only or grade-equivalent expository texts only (i.e., zero overlap). Additionally, this lack of sharing of critical word types occurred even though many of the narrative and expository collections were related by common themes—one of two conditions proposed by advocates of narrow reading for improving vocabulary recycling in reading curricula of English as an L2 or a foreign language (e.g., Cho, Ahn, & Krashen, 2005; Day, 1994; Krashen, 1981, 1985, 2004; Schmitt & Carter, 2000), the other being authorship (i.e., using texts written by the same author). Krashen (1985) has articulated these two conditions as follows: If the Input Hypothesis is correct . . . it suggests that narrow input is more efficient for L2 acquisition, that early specialization rather than late specialization is better, that students should be encouraged to read on only one topic at a time, or several books by the same author, in the intermediate stage, and that [L2] students stay on somewhat familiar ground when they first enter the mainstream. . . . In addition, each topic has its own vocabulary, and to some extent its own style; the same can be said for each author. Narrow input provides many exposures to these new items in a comprehensible context and built-in review. (p. 73) The current study examines this assertion from the standpoint of authentic vocabulary input from the children’s reading corpus (Gardner, 2004), considering theme (topic) and authorship, in addition to register, as primary variables of interest in order to tease apart nuances of specialized vocabulary recycling in authentic reading collections. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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At the outset, the potential benefits of narrow reading are recognized to extend beyond vocabulary recycling only (e.g., exposing L2 readers to consistent stylistic and discourse moves of certain authors). However, because vocabulary recycling is a central tenet of this position, it deserves more careful examination. A clearer understanding of the impact of text relationships on vocabulary recycling will serve as a guide for theories and practices in English language education in general, particularly in the areas of wide and extensive reading and vocabulary development. The findings may also prove informative in L1 settings, where the assumed language benefits of theme-based instruction (e.g., Walmsley, 1994) and the known challenges with content-area, nonfiction reading materials (e.g., Bamford, Kristo, & Lyon, 2002; Vacca & Vacca, 1996) have also received a great deal of attention. Why a Focus on Authentic Reading Materials? Before proceeding, it is important to note that the existence of narrow reading and similar approaches (e.g., Dubin, 1986) is largely a result of the linguistic characteristics of authentic reading materials. Such materials, unlike graded readers (e.g., Waring, 2003; Wodinsky & Nation, 1988), basal readers (e.g., Bello, Fajet, Shaver, Toombs, & Schumm, 2003), decodable texts (e.g., Mesmer, 2001), or other linguistically engineered materials, do not intentionally control for the presentation of vocabulary and other language structures. By their nature, authentic reading materials are fairly unpredictable in terms of the language demands they place on readers, as well as the language-learning opportunities they afford. While authentic oral communication is often simplified and repeated in order to achieve the conditions of comprehensible input, the same is not true for most authentic written language, which is made permanent in print, thus removing the author from the reader in terms of both time and space. While modern technology may hold the key to making written text more flexible as a language learning tool (Cobb, 2007; Huang & Liou, 2007), and while such technology has also introduced e-mailing, on-line chatting, and text-messaging with their real-time, two-way communication capabilities, these modes of written communication are vastly different from the linguistically frozen materials of printed school English (novels, trade books, textbooks, etc.). By extension, narrow reading is simply one attempt to deal with this challenge of authentic written input by suggesting that collections of authentic texts written on similar topics or by one author will improve the chances that essential linguistic redundancy will actually take place, or in other words, that readers, especially L2 readers, will be exposed to necessary levels of repetitive, comprehensible input as they move from one text to the next. Essentially, vocabulary learning from extensive reading is very fragile. If the small amount of learning of a word is not soon reinforced by another meeting, then that learning will be lost. It is thus critically important in an extensive reading program that learners have the opportunity to keep meeting words they have met before. (Nation, 1997, p. 15) A clearer understanding of how relationships between authentic reading materials might affect such crucial vocabulary recycling is at the heart of the current study.

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Why a Focus on Specialized Vocabulary? The work of Paul Nation and his colleagues has been instrumental in showing the distributions of vocabulary in authentic written and spoken materials. Table 1 is a repurposing of Nation’s (2001) analysis of the distribution of vocabulary in the American Heritage Intermediate (AHI) corpus (Carroll, Davies, & Richman, 1971), which consists of 5 million running words taken from a random selection of third- through ninth-grade texts. This corpus is particularly important to the current study because it was the primary source for the landmark claims associated with the incidental hypothesis (Nagy & Anderson, 1984) and the call for wide reading in reading instruction (Nagy, Herman, & Anderson, 1985). Table 1. Vocabulary coverage in the American Heritage Intermediate corpus Number of word families Cumulative % of text coverage 10 23.7 100 49 1,000 74.1 2,000 81.3 3,000 85.2 4,000 87.6 5,000 89.4 12,448 95 43,831 99 86,741 100 Note. Adapted from Nation (2001, p. 15).

Table 1 shows clearly that a small subset of high-frequency word families (i.e., base forms plus their inflections and transparent derivations, e.g., climb, climbs, climbing, climbed, climber, climbers) covers most of the running words of the AHI corpus. For instance, the top 100 word families cover nearly half (49%) of the running words, and the top 1,000 word families cover nearly three-fourths (74.1%) of the running words. Examples of these high-frequency words include function words (the, of, and, a, to, in, etc.) and high-frequency content words (take, get, said, people, find, water, words, know, etc.), many of which can be found in authentic children’s texts. However, the remaining 85,741 word families in the AHI corpus (86,741 minus 1,000) cover only slightly more than one-fourth (25.9%) of the running words. This means that they repeat much less frequently in general than the 1,000 high-frequency word families. In most cases, however, these less frequent word families characterize a particular text or content area. They are also the words that children are less likely to know, and for which the long-term vocabulary learning benefits of extensive reading are most likely to be realized (nourishment, saturated, tomb, mineral, topographic, prohibition, tomahawk, etc.). Determining how often, and under what conditions, these words actually repeat in collections of authentic reading materials is the focus of this study.

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Linguistic Studies of Vocabulary Recycling in Narrow-Reading Materials Most of the linguistic studies that consider the impact of text-level variables such as theme or authorship on vocabulary recycling have focused on adult-level materials. The findings are nonetheless important to the current study. For instance, Hwang and Nation (1989) performed an analysis of the vocabulary load in running stories from newspapers versus the vocabulary load in unrelated stories, concluding that [A] higher proportion of word families outside the 2,000 [most frequent] words will recur in stories from the same series, thus reading running stories reduces the vocabulary load to a greater extent than reading unrelated stories … [and] running stories provide more repetitions of more words outside the first 2,000 words [italics added] than unrelated stories, and thus provide more favorable conditions for learning vocabulary [italics added] than unrelated stories. (p. 332) The authors also suggested that their findings have implications for other texts besides newspapers, especially in settings of English as a foreign language, where several disparate topics often comprised textbooks. Sutarsyah, Nation, and Kennedy (1994) also found substantial differences in the distribution of vocabulary between a single content text (economics), consisting of approximately 300,000 words, and a corpus of 160 shorter academic texts (from over 15 subject areas), consisting of approximately the same number of words. While the diverse corpus contained a much larger vocabulary base than the single text, the words were mostly of lower frequency. In contrast, “a small number of words that were closely related to the topic of the text occurred with very high frequency in the economics text” (p. 34). Additionally, with the exception of higher general frequency words (from the 2,000 word family list) and a few subtechnical terms common to many disciplines, there was little overlap in vocabulary between the narrower textbook and the broader corpus, leading the researchers to conclude the following: Most English courses make use of a series of unrelated texts. This can increase the vocabulary load of the course enormously. If teachers or course designers wish to avoid this, it is worth considering making the course consist of a few themes so that the texts within a theme bear more relationship to each other and thus make use of a smaller vocabulary. (p. 49) It is important to note that the single text in this particular study was an expository textbook, consisting of a tight theme (macroeconomics) written by one author. Finally, Schmitt and Carter (2000) compared the vocabulary of a series of nine theme-related newspaper stories (the tragic death of Princess Diana) to the vocabulary of nine unrelated stories from the same newspapers, containing the same number of total running words (7,843). The findings indicated that the theme-related Diana stories contained 156 fewer types (different words) for L2 readers to deal with, and repeated those types more often in general than the unrelated stories. This overall trend was also true when content words and proper nouns were examined, leading the researchers to the general conclusion that narrow reading may facilitate Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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earlier access to authentic L2 reading materials “by lowering the lexical load required of the learner” (p. 8). The important point for purposes of the current study is that the theme-related texts were tightly related to each other (i.e., death of Princess Diana), whereas the unrelated stories had no connections beyond the fact that they belonged to the newspaper register in general. It is also crucial to note that only five of the content words actually listed in the study (crash, palace, photographers, police, princess—all occurring in the Diana stories) would be considered as specialized vocabulary in the current investigation, as the rest would have been identified as general high-frequency forms (e.g., said, car, pay, school, people, work, time, one, year); in other words, they come from the relatively small pool of general high-frequency forms and are therefore likely to occur in many texts, regardless of the relationships between those texts. While there is no question that continued exposure to such high-frequency forms is essential for building general reading fluency and text comprehension, it is equally clear that they do not represent the types of topic- and content-related words upon which a reader can build an extensive vocabulary. Taxonomy of Textual Relationships To date, very little has been done to formalize the potential relationships between authentic reading materials in terms of how such relationships might affect language sharing and recycling. While popular book-leveling schemes in elementary education (e.g., Fountas & Pinnell, 1996, 1999, 2005) have provided important guidelines for grouping texts according to general linguistic and print characteristics (percentages of higher-frequency vs. lower-frequency words, numbers of morphologically and conceptually complex words, font size, words per line, etc.), they do not address specific vocabulary redundancy that may occur as a result of thematic, authorship, or similar relationships between those texts (e.g., genre and register). Viewed another way, traditional leveling schemes tend to relate two or more texts based on the linguistic demands they place on young readers (i.e., how well such readers will be able to comprehend those texts), not on the potential redundancy of the textual content. Therefore, a book about plants and a book about outer space could both be rated at the same difficulty level, even though there is likely to be very little overlap in the topic-related words of the two texts (e.g., blossom and root vs. star and comet). Likewise, a children’s adventure novel and a children’s trade book about magnets could both be rated as at the same level, depending on their general linguistic and print characteristics. Figure 1 depicts a proposed taxonomy for classifying relationships between authentic texts that could directly impact specialized (topic-related) vocabulary recycling within such materials. The taxonomy is in essence a classification scheme that could be used to more accurately predict the chances that blossom and root or, alternatively, star and comet, will appear in Text 1, Text 2, and so forth. Three primary text relationships are considered in the taxonomy: themes, authorship, and registers. In the case of themes, the primary considerations are twofold: (a) the general presence or absence of thematic relationships between texts and (b) the relative tightness of a given theme. For instance, mummy is a tighter theme than mystery in this study and might therefore be expected to recycle specialized vocabulary more efficiently. In general, Gold Rush Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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is a tighter theme than Westward Movement, which is a tighter theme than American History; bees is a tighter theme than insects, and so forth.

Specialized Vocabulary Recycling No themes

No themes

Less

vocab Loose themes

Loose themes

More

vocab Semi-tight themes

NAa

Semi-tight themes

vocab Tight themes

Tight themes

Narrative

Expository

Multiauthor

Multiauthor

vocab

vocab vocab

vocab

Narrative

Expository

Uniauthor

Uniauthor

Figure 1. Proposed taxonomy of textual relationships for specialized vocabulary recycling in collections of authentic reading materials. a

There are no collection possibilities for the two cells on this particular row (Expository Uniauthor and Narrative Uniauthor) because uniauthor creates a potential relationship between the texts, even though they are not related by a content theme.

With regard to authorship issues, it has been broadly accepted that text collections written by one author (uniauthor) are more efficient in recycling vocabulary than text collections written by multiple authors (multiauthor). Finally, regarding register issues, the primary consideration has been the differences between the culturally- and socially-oriented vocabulary of narrative fiction (storybooks) and the informationally-oriented vocabulary of expository nonfiction. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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The possible combinations of these variables are depicted in Figure 1 and will subsequently be referred to as the taxonomy of textual relationships. A fourth dimension, content-area, may also have a bearing on vocabulary recycling in text collections. For instance, science-based materials may exhibit different vocabulary characteristics than history-based materials. However, because of the practical constraints of using an existing corpus, this dimension will only be addressed loosely in the current study by analyzing possible differences between the history-based collections under Westward Movement and the science-based collections under Mummy and Mystery. It is clear that relatively little is known about vocabulary recycling as a function of text relationships, especially with regard to authentic children’s reading materials. The current study will more carefully examine this issue by analyzing the specialized vocabulary of several collections of children’s texts (Gardner, 2004) written at approximately the fifth- to sixth-grade level. The following question will be used to focus the analyses: To what extent do specialized words recycle within various collections of authentic children’s reading materials that are related by (a) theme (Mystery, Westward Movement, Mummy), (b) authorship (texts written by different authors vs. texts written by one author), (c) register (narrative fiction vs. expository nonfiction), and (d) the various combinations of (a–c) above? Method and Procedure Constructs of Word, Vocabulary, and Type The terms word, vocabulary, and type are used broadly and interchangeably in this study, and all three are defined conservatively as “unique spellings.” While it is realized that some children may be able to make connections during reading between the morphologically related words of English (e.g., climb, climbs, climbing, climbed, climber), there is growing evidence of disparities in this ability based on children’s individual reading skills (Carlisle, 2000; Mahony, Singson, & Mann, 2000; Singson, Mahony, & Mann, 2000) and the amount of direct instruction they receive in raising their morphological awareness (Carlo et al., 2004; Cunningham, 1998; Stahl & Shiel, 1992). Furthermore, differences in children’s awareness of morphological relationships have been isolated as one of several significant variables predicting early vocabulary acquisition (McBride-Chang, Wagner, Muse, Chow, & Shu, 2005). The fact that many of the studies cited above deal with native English-speaking children or bilinguals suggests that this morphologicalawareness problem may be even more pronounced for nonnative children trying to negotiate the complex morphological system of English. In fact, Schmitt and Zimmerman (2002) found that even adult learners of English (university students) struggle to make many morphological connections without explicit help, particularly when derivation is involved. It should also be noted that the definition of word, vocabulary, and type used in this study does not account for multiword items (phrasal verbs, idioms, etc.) or variant meaning for the same Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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word forms (homonymy and polysemy). However, the more specialized nature of the words in this study suggests that there will be fewer chances for form-meaning error than if highfrequency words were being analyzed (Ravin & Leacock, 2000). Children’s Thematic Corpus The actual corpus of children’s extensive reading materials comes from Gardner’s (2004) earlier study. Hereafter the corpus will be referred to as the Children’s Thematic Corpus. With the aid of an experienced fifth-grade teacher and a children’s librarian, Gardner established four collections of four texts each for each of three popular themes used in upper elementary education (fifth and sixth grades): Mummy (tight, science-based theme), Westward Movement (semitight, historybased theme), and Mystery (loose, science-based theme). This collaboration resulted in the 12 text collections outlined in Appendix A. A total of 48 texts were used to establish the four collections in each of the three themes: 3 × 4 × 4 (Themes × Collections × Texts). Of the 48 texts in the 12 collections, 27 are from documented (published) thematic units (see the theme unit source key in Appendix A), and 21 were chosen with the expert assistance of the fifth-grade teacher and children’s librarian, based on (a) subjective grade-level readability assessments or readability scores printed on the back covers of several books, (b) thematic fit, and (c) popularity of texts. A narrative and an expository control collection (no thematic or authorship relationships between the texts) were also established with the assistance of the teacher and children’s librarian (see Appendix A). The control narrative collection consisted of four popular Newbery Medal books from four different genres of fiction (science, mystery, adventure, and romance), and the control expository collection consisted of four gradeequivalent informational books from four different content-areas (earth science, political science, life science, and geography-culture). From the perspective of the current investigation, the two control collections could alternatively be viewed as examples of wide reading, whereas the thematic collections would be more appropriately labeled as narrow reading. Preliminary Procedure for Analyzing Vocabulary Scanning. Each of the 56 texts (48 thematic and 8 control) was scanned into the computer using Omnipage text scanning software. Words not able to be scanned because of font and background problems were entered into the computer by keyboard. Each electronic document was then carefully edited to correct the relatively few scanning errors that occurred. Equalization of word counts. For comparative purposes in the current study, each of the electronic texts was reduced to equal chunks of running words as follows: the first 5,000 running words of each text, beginning with the first word on page one. This was done for two reasons: to account for differences in text length, especially between the lengthy narrative texts and the relatively short expository texts at the same grade level, and to allow comparisons of vocabulary repetition within a consistent number of running words that a child could encounter in a normal reading experience. Identification of specialized vocabulary. The texts in each of the 14 collections (12 thematic and Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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2 control) were run, by collection, through the Range vocabulary program (Heatley, Nation, & Coxhead, 2002) and sorted into lists of High-Frequency Words and Other Words. The predetermined high-frequency list consisted of words from the first 1,000 word families of the General Service List (GSL; West, 1953), which accompanies the Range program, and which, unlike the second 1,000 GSL word families, have been found to be fairly stable over time (Nation & Hwang, 1995). An additional 108 function words and numerical terms that were not found in the first 1,000 GSL list were also added (e.g., ahead, amid, billion, eighths, during). The Other Words (i.e., not in the high-frequency list) were subsequently identified as being specialized if they appeared in at least three texts of a four-text collection. Hereafter these words are referred to as specialized words, specialized vocabulary, or specialized types interchangeably. These are the words of interest in the current study, because they tend to characterize the content of the various collections of extensive reading materials (e.g., mummy, pyramids, museum, archeologist, buffalo, prairie, investigation). It is crucial to reiterate that these are shared, specialized words, occurring in several different texts of a collection instead of one text only (e.g., Hirsh & Nation, 1992). They are thus more representative of the types of words that children could encounter in an extensive reading program that uses themes, authors, and registers to organize instruction. They also fulfill the well established assumption for successful incidental word acquisition, namely, that children will encounter new words multiple times in multiple and varied contexts within a reasonable time frame. Data Analysis Once the specialized words were identified, three measures of vocabulary recycling were selected for comparison purposes: 1. Total number of specialized types (number of different words occurring in several texts). For instance, the words mummy and prairie would be counted as one type each, even though they might repeat 100 times and 4 times respectively. 2. Total number of specialized tokens (raw frequency counts). For instance, the word mummy would have a token count of 100 in the example above, and the word prairie would have a token count of 4. 3. Total number of specialized types that repeat at least six times (6+). For instance, the word mummy would be counted as one 6+ type in the scenario above (i.e., it repeats at least six times), whereas prairie would not be counted (i.e., it does not occur at least six times). The 6+ figure is a fairly conservative estimate of the number of incidental encounters that is generally necessary for new vocabulary to be acquired during extensive reading (see Zahar, Cobb, & Spada, 2001, for review.) Each of these three measures addresses a different aspect of vocabulary recycling in authentic extensive reading collections. The first gives a general sense of how many different specialized words are drawn together by the relationships between texts or collections. The second provides an indication of how often these different words repeat in general, and the third provides information about specific specialized words that reach repetition levels conducive to incidental Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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vocabulary acquisition while reading (i.e., 6+ times). Results and Discussion Table 2 lists all 14 collections according to their average rank for the three vocabulary recycling measures (types, tokens, and 6+ types) based on the first 5,000 running words in each text (i.e., 20,000 per collection). It is clear that large differences exist in the number of specialized types, tokens, and 6+ types in the various collections. Looking first at the extremes, the Mummy Expository Uniauthor collection has 136 more specialized types than the non-thematic Control Expository Multiauthor collection (164 minus 28), 1,717 more specialized tokens (1,925 minus 208), and 85 more 6+ types (97 minus 12). These recycling differences become even more staggering when one considers that all of this happens in roughly 80 pages of text (20,000 running words). Additionally, the Mummy Expository Multiauthor collection is only slightly behind the Mummy Expository Uniauthor collection in this regard. This suggests that presence of a tight theme (Mummy) may have an important impact on vocabulary recycling. Table 2. Rank order of collections considering specialized types, tokens, and 6+ types appearing in at least three of four texts in each collection (based on 5,000 tokens per text, i.e., 20,000 per collection) Type Token 6+ Type Average Theme Register Authorship Rank Rank Rank total total total ranka Mummy Expository Uniauthor 164 1 1,925 2 97 1 1.3 Mummy Expository Multiauthor 141 2 1,935 1 95 2 1.7 Westward Narrative Uniauthor 108 3 1,467 4 60 3 3.3 Westward Expository Multiauthor 93 4.5 1,004 5 54 4 4.5 Mystery Narrative Uniauthor 90 6 1,643 3 47 6.5 5.2 Westward Expository Uniauthor 80 7 720 7 48 5 6.3 Mummy Narrative Uniauthor 93 4.5 708 8 42 8 6.8 Mystery Expository Multiauthor 72 8.5 751 6 47 6.5 7.0 Westward Narrative Multiauthor 72 8.5 616 9 38 9 8.8 Mystery Expository Uniauthor 54 12 473 10 33 10 10.7 Control Narrative Multiauthor 58 10 360 11 21 11.5 10.8 Mystery Narrative Multiauthor 56 11 334 13 21 11.5 11.8 Mummy Narrative Multiauthor 52 13 346 12 20 13 12.7 Control Expository Multiauthor 28 14 208 14 12 14 14.0 Note. Westward = Westward Movement. a Rank order based on average of three ranks for types, tokens, and 6+ types.

However, while Mummy Narrative Uniauthor appears to recycle specialized words much more efficiently than Control Narrative Multiauthor (no theme), the same is not true of its multiauthor counterpart (Mummy Narrative Multiauthor), which actually has fewer specialized types, tokens, and 6+ types than the narrative control. In fact, two of the theme-based narrative collections have average ranks that fall below the narrative control collection. The same is not true for the expository collections, which all exhibit more vocabulary recycling than the expository control collection. This suggests that theme may have a more important impact on vocabulary recycling in expository collections than in narrative collections. Also noteworthy in these data is the great disparity between Mummy Expository Uniauthor (tight, science-based theme) and Mystery Expository Uniauthor (loose, science-based theme) in terms of specialized types (164 vs. 54), Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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tokens (1,925 vs. 473), and 6+ types (97 vs. 33). Roughly the same disparity exists between Mummy Expository Multiauthor and Mystery Expository Multiauthor. The same is not true of their narrative equivalents. In fact, the order is exactly reversed, with the Mystery narratives (loose theme) showing slightly more specialized word recycling than the Mummy narratives. Interestingly, the Westward Movement collections (semitight, history-based theme) appear to congregate more toward the middle of the rankings as a whole. Again, these findings add support to the ongoing conclusion that thematic relationships between texts have their greatest impact on vocabulary recycling in expository, rather than narrative, text collections. Table 3 reflects the major register distinction between expository and narrative texts as this distinction appears to be the primary variable of interest. The table reflects two clear vocabulary differences between the expository and narrative collections: 1. The Mummy expository collections (tight theme) occupy the top two rankings among expository texts; yet their Mummy narrative counterparts are ranked much lower among narratives, with the Mummy Narrative Multiauthor collection actually coming in last among narratives, falling below the Control Narrative Multiauthor collection (no theme) and the Mystery Narrative Multiauthor collection (loose theme). 2. The three highest ranked narrative collections, Westward Narrative Uniauthor (3.3), Mystery Narrative Uniauthor (5.2), and Mummy Narrative Uniauthor (6.8) are all singleauthor collections. This same pattern does not hold true for the expository collections. While the Mummy Expository Uniauthor collection (1.3) is slightly higher than the Mummy Expository Multiauthor collection (1.7), the exact opposite is true for the Westward Movement expository texts (multiauthor, 4.5; uniauthor, 6.3) and the Mystery expository texts (multiauthor, 7.0; uniauthor, 10.7). This suggests that single authorship has its greatest impact on vocabulary recycling within narrative text collections. Table 3. Rank order by expository and narrative collections Theme

Authorship

Average rank

Mummy Mummy Westward Westward Mystery Mystery Control

Expository collections Uniauthor Multiauthor Multiauthor Uniauthor Multiauthor Uniauthor Multiauthor

1.3 1.7 4.5 6.3 7.0 10.7 14.0

Westward Mystery Mummy Westward Control Mystery Mummy

Narrative collections Uniauthor Uniauthor Uniauthor Multiauthor Multiauthor Multiauthor Multiauthor

3.3 5.2 6.8 8.8 10.8 11.8 12.7

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In summary, the major differences in vocabulary recycling seem to be at the register level, that is, between narrative and expository texts. With regard to the narrative collections, neither presence of theme (see Narrative Control vs. Narrative Mystery Multiauthor and Narrative Mummy Multiauthor) nor tightness of theme (see Mummy vs. Mystery) appears to make any real difference in terms of vocabulary recycling. Number of authors, on the other hand, appears to make a big difference, with all three uniauthor collections recycling specialized vocabulary better than their multiauthor counterparts. With regard to expository collections, the situation is completely reversed. Not only does presence of theme make a difference (i.e., the Control Expository Collection is ranked last, and by a good margin), but the relative tightness of the themes matches the taxonomy perfectly (see Figure 1), with the two thematically tight Mummy collections ranked the highest, followed by the two thematically semitight Westward Movement collections, and, lastly, the two thematically loose Mystery collections. Number of authors, on the other hand, appears to produce inconsistent, even random differences in specialized vocabulary recycling within the expository collections. Table 4 provides the top 10 most frequent specialized words appearing in all 14 collections. (See Appendix B for a list of all specialized words by collection.) The table is arranged horizontally by theme and vertically by register and authorship. An examination of these words is very informative. First, the presence of theme can be clearly identified in the theme-based expository collections (e.g., Mummy = mummy, Egypt, tombs, pyramids, preserved; Westward Movement = trail, cattle, wagon, fort, Indians; Mystery = bones, evidence, clues, buried, horror). This is in stark contrast with the more semantically random words of the expository control collection (e.g., feet, America, area, huge, ice). However, this same contrast is not so readily apparent between the theme-based narrative collections and the narrative control collection. With the exception of two words in the Narrative Mummy Multiauthor collection (Egypt and Egyptian), it is difficult to find any theme-related differences between the two Mummy narrative collections and the narrative control collection. There is also no discernable, theme-related difference between the specialized vocabulary of the two Mystery narrative collections and the narrative control collection. However, several words in the Westward Movement narratives do exhibit some of the same thematic characteristics as their expository counterparts (e.g., wagon, prairie, Indians). Such similarities may be a result of the content area that they are drawn from (history vs. science)—a topic that should be more carefully considered in future research. Also apparent in the table is the role of character names in the narrative uniauthor collections, along with their large token counts (e.g., Anthony, 150; Laura, 198; Pa, 192; Kayo, 338; Rosie, 327). Even the words bone and breath in the Mystery Narrative Uniauthor collection refer primarily to the name of a dog (Bone Breath), and the word club in the same collection refers primarily to a children’s club for animals (Care Club). Obviously, the repetition of names (people, places, groups, organizations, etc.) is one of the vocabulary advantages of reading fictional stories written by one author (e.g., a series), and it likely explains why the narrative uniauthor collections are ranked higher than their narrative multiauthor counterparts in terms of vocabulary recycling (see Tables 2 and 3). Interestingly, only one of the single-authored Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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expository collections seems to be impacted by names—the Westward Expository Uniauthor collection. Here, however, one might argue that there are important characteristic differences between names of historical significance (e.g., John, James, George) and names in fictional narratives. Table 4. Top 10 specialized types (with token counts) appearing in at least 3 of 4 texts in each collection (based on 5,000 tokens per text, i.e., 20,000 per collection) MUMMY EXP MA MUMMY 166 MUMMIES 161 EGYPTIANS 77 EGYPT 56 EGYPTIAN 50 TOMBS 46 PYRAMID 46 BURIED 45 TOMB 43 PRESERVED 40

MUMMY EXP UA EGYPT 189 PYRAMID 124 PYRAMIDS 80 EGYPTIANS 72 BC 65 EGYPTIAN 51 TOMBS 42 DYNASTY 41 NILE 41 TOMB 34

MUMMY NAR MA HALL 46 HAIR 18 EGYPT 15 LOT 13 EGYPTIAN 10 ANGRY 10 JOB 10 SUDDENLY 9 FINALLY 9 KITCHEN 9

MUMMY NAR UA ANTHONY 150 LOT 19 DESK 17 FINALLY 14 LIKED 12 SUDDENLY 12 TEA 12 JOB 11 BIT 10 CORNER 10

WESTWARD EXP MA TRAIL 69 CATTLE 52 WAGON 41 WAGONS 38 FORT 35 AMERICAN 33 MISSOURI 30 INDIANS 28 TERRITORY 24 SAN 23

WESTWARD EXP UA AMERICAN 46 CALIFORNIA 43 AMERICANS 34 AMERICA 29 JOHN 25 JAMES 22 INDIAN 21 SMITH 20 GEORGE 17 MISSISSIPPI 17

WESTWARD NAR MA WAGON 69 PRAIRIE 33 GRASS 29 WAGONS 27 MA 22 INDIANS 20 HAIR 15 SLOWLY 15 FEET 13 SUDDENLY 13

WESTWARD NAR UA LAURA 198 PA 192 MA 113 MARY 94 WAGON 87 JACK 44 BROWN 23 PATH 23 TALL 23 FEET 19

MYSTERY EXP MA BONES 67 JOHN 66 BONE 51 EVIDENCE 51 SKULL 31 TEETH 17 CLUES 15 HAIR 14 FOOT 14 PHYSICAL 13

MYSTERY EXP UA ISLAND 59 FEET 33 FINALLY 28 CREATURE 18 AMERICAN 13 BURIED 13 HORROR 13 MAD 13 EVIL 12 HOLE 12

MYSTERY NAR MA SHOP 21 FAT 18 JEANS 16 FUNNY 11 JACKET 11 CORNER 10 HAIR 10 LOT 10 SUDDENLY 9 PROBABLY 8

MYSTERY NAR UA KAYO 338 ROSIE 327 CAT 99 BREATH 62 BONE 60 SAMMY 55 CLUB 49 SAUNDERS 35 HOMER 33 BENTON 31

CONTROL EXP MA FEET 32 AMERICA 16 AREAS 14 AREA 12 PACIFIC 12 HUGE 10 OCEAN 10 CALIFORNIA 8 ALASKA 8 ICE 7

CONTROL NAR MA FEET 21 CLIFF 20 HAIR 18 FOOT 15 KITCHEN 13 SUDDENLY 12 RUG 11 NOSE 10 SKIN 10 CHAIR 10

Note. EXP = Expository; NAR = Narrative; MA = Multiauthor; UA = Uniauthor.

“Theme” Word Rating Comparison Observed differences in the thematic nature of the specialized words prompted a subsequent inReading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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depth analysis of this variable. Two master’s-level linguists, not associated with the study, were given an alphabetized list of the specialized words appearing in all 14 collections (759 distinct types, some of which were shared between collections) and were asked to independently rate each word based on the following criteria: 1. The word definitely or possibly belongs to the Mummy theme 2. The word definitely or possibly belongs to the Mystery theme 3. The word definitely or possibly belongs to the Westward Movement theme 4. The word does not seem to belong to any of the three themes The raters were instructed that a given word could be rated only once per theme, for example, definitely or possibly, but not both. However, raters could rate a particular word as definitely or possibly belonging to more than one theme (e.g., the word burial was rated as possibly Mummy, possibly Mystery, and possibly Westward Movement). Specialized words from the two control collections (Narrative and Expository) were also included in the list to serve as controls for the rating process. It was assumed that most of the specialized words in the control collections would be rated as not belonging to any theme. The raters used dictionaries and internet searching browsers (e.g., Google) to gain understanding of specialized words they were not familiar with in the lists (e.g., Abusir—a site in ancient Egypt). Initial interrater agreement was 56.7%, with 430 of 759 total words rated exactly the same. The raters subsequently compared their ratings; differences were worked out through discussion and by collapsing the definitely and possibly distinction into one category—In Theme. Because the purpose of the ratings was to arrive at a consensus for each word, initial ratings were only used as points of reference for discussion purposes. The words in the alphabetized list along with their ratings were then assigned back to the original themes from which they were drawn, and appropriate descriptive calculations were run. Table 5 displays the results of the thematic ratings for all 12 thematic collections and for the two control collections. The order of the theme-based collections is based on highest-to-lowest percentage of specialized types that were rated as being In Theme. Note that the results of this analysis highlight a divide (see the broken line in Table 5) that coincides with the natural distinction between the two macroregisters. Several important conclusions can be drawn from the figures in Table 5: 1. Percentages of theme-related specialized words are higher in the expository collections than in the narrative collections, with a high of 51.2% in Mummy Expository Uniauthor and a low of 3.6% in Mystery Narrative Multiauthor. 2. The percentages of thematic types among the expository collections follow the taxonomy of textual relationships perfectly—that is, Mummy expositories (tight theme) have the highest percentages of thematic types, followed by Westward Movement expositories (semitight theme), and then Mystery expositories (loose theme). The same is not true of the narrative collections. 3. The number of theme-related specialized words in the narrative collections is abysmal, with the best case being 14 of 72 (Westward Narrative Multiauthor), and the worst case Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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being 2 of 56 (Mystery Narrative Multiauthor). Table 5. Theme-word-rating comparisons by theme-based collections and control collections Number and percentage (%) Total Theme Register Authorship Types In Theme Not in Theme In Different Theme Theme-Based Collections Mummy Mummy Westward Westward Mystery Mystery Westward Westward Mummy Mystery Mummy Mystery

Expository Expository Expository Expository Expository Expository Narrative Narrative Narrative Narrative Narrative Narrative

Uniauthor Multiauthor Multiauthor Uniauthor Uniauthor Multiauthor Multiauthor Uniauthor Multiauthor Uniauthor Uniauthor Multiauthor

164 141 93 80 54 72 72 108 52 90 93 56

84 66 40 31 13 17 14 11 4 4 4 2

51.2 46.8 43.0 38.8 24.1 23.6 19.4 10.2 7.7 4.4 4.3 3.6

70 69 49 45 36 53 57 94 47 80 81 53

42.7 48.9 52.7 56.3 66.7 73.6 79.2 87.0 90.4 88.9 87.1 94.6

10 6 4 4 5 2 1 3 1 6 8 1

6.1 4.3 4.3 5.0 9.3 2.8 1.4 2.8 1.9 6.7 8.6 1.8

Control Collections Control Narrative Multiauthor 58 NA NA 55 94.8 3 5.2 Control Expository Multiauthor 28 NA NA 21 75.0 7 25.0 Note. Words in the In Different Theme category of the theme-based collections were judged by raters to belong to a theme that they did not actually appear in, whereas words in this same category of the control collections were judged by raters to belong to a theme even though no thematic relationships were assumed in the control collections.

The data for the control collections provide useful validation of the subjective ratings themselves. As was expected, most of the specialized words in the narrative control collection (no theme) were rated as not belonging to any of the themes (55 of 58, i.e., 94.8%). The three narrative control words judged to be theme related were cliff (Mystery), screamed (Mystery), and stomach (Mummy). While only 75% (21 of 28) of the specialized words in the expository control were rated as not belonging to any theme, a visual inspection of the seven that were judged to be thematic suggests why this is the case: Alaska, America, Atlantic, California, Louisiana, Oregon, and Pacific. All seven were rated as definitely or possibly belonging to the Westward Movement theme. Overall, it appears that the raters’ intuitions were consistent with the expectation that most of the words in the control collections would be rated as not belonging to a theme, thus providing a secondary validation of the rating accuracy itself. General Summary and Extensions to Pedagogy The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the vocabulary-recycling claims of narrow reading, namely, that authentic reading materials related by a common theme or written by a single author will recycle content vocabulary more efficiently than unrelated materials, thus Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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providing English language learners with more exposure to such items for potential acquisition. In this regard, the linguistic findings of the study suggest the following five conclusions: 1. Themes have their greatest impact on specialized vocabulary recycling among authentic informational (expository) materials, with little or no impact among authentic fictional (narrative) materials. While all theme-based expository collections exhibited more specialized vocabulary recycling (and by quite a large margin) than the expository control collection (no thematic relationship), the same was not true with the narrative collections, where two collections actually exhibited less specialized vocabulary recycling than the narrative control. 2. Tighter themes draw together and recycle specialized vocabulary more efficiently among authentic expository materials than looser themes, but relative thematic tightness has no bearing on specialized vocabulary recycling in authentic narrative collections. While the trend in specialized vocabulary recycling among the expositories followed the proposed taxonomy of textual relationships perfectly (i.e., more specialized vocabulary recycling in the tight Mummy theme, followed by the semitight Westward Movement, followed by the loose Mystery, followed by the Control), the same was not true among the narratives, with one loose Mystery collection ranked highest among the seven narrative collections, and one tight Mummy collection actually ranked last among all narratives, even falling below the narrative control collection. 3. The specialized words in the expository collections were more recognizably theme based (i.e., Mummy-related, Westward Movement-related, Mystery-related) than their narrative counterparts. Furthermore, the extent of thematic fit among the specialized vocabularies of the expository collections followed the proposed taxonomy perfectly (i.e., more theme-specific words in the tight Mummy theme, followed by the semitight Westward Movement theme, followed by the loose Mystery theme). No such themespecific pattern existed among the specialized vocabulary of the narratives, which, with the possible exception of the history-based Westward Movement collections, were essentially theme-less. 4. Authentic children’s narratives written by the same author have substantially more specialized vocabulary recycling than narratives written by several different authors, but authorship has no observable impact on specialized vocabulary recycling among authentic children’s expository materials. While all three of the narrative uniauthor collections exhibited more specialized vocabulary recycling than their four multiauthor counterparts, the same was not true among the expositories, where no such pattern was observed. 5. Advantages in specialized vocabulary recycling among authentic narrative collections written by one author can be largely accounted for by the repetition of names in stories (characters, places, etc.), not thematic content. By far, the highest repetitions of specialized words in the uniauthor narratives were names of characters (Anthony, Laura, Pa, Ma, Mary, Kayo, Rosie, etc.).

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Taken together, these linguistically based conclusions indicate that narrow reading has some concrete advantages in terms of specialized vocabulary recycling, but that such advantages may be much more complex than previously indicated (e.g., Cho et al., 2005; Day, 1994; Krashen, 1981, 1985; Schmitt & Carter, 2000). For one, the impact of themes and the impact of authorship on specialized vocabulary recycling may not be mutually supportive constructs, appearing instead to be heavily register-sensitive. That is, themes work best for expository collections, and single authorship works best for narrative collections. Second, the impact of themes and authorship on vocabulary recycling is as much an issue of what vocabulary as it is what register. English language educators should not assume that because a group of fictional narratives have been classified as theme based, they will greatly improve their learners’ exposure to theme-based words and concepts, nor should they assume that a fictional series written by a single author (theme-based or not) will provide substantially more specialized vocabulary redundancy than unrelated materials, with the noted exception of character names and places. This should not be taken to mean that there are no additional advantages to narrow fiction reading that might lead to gains in word knowledge (lowering the overall lexical load, increasing motivation to read, etc.). However, one must be somewhat skeptical of the loose claims that such reading leads to increased, repetitive exposures to new or less familiar words. Conversely, the power of themes to draw together and recycle the specialized vocabulary of expository materials should also be duly noted in many areas of English language education, especially in content-based instruction and English for academic purposes. Indeed, there is irony in the fact that the expository collections, which are not known for being friendly to incidental word learning from context (Anderson, 1996; Coté, Goldman, & Saul, 1998), produce the best conditions for recycling specialized, theme-specific vocabulary, especially when they are related by tighter themes such as Mummy. Pedagogically, this apparent paradox of improved vocabulary recycling in learner-unfriendly contexts suggests that any vocabulary recycling advantages gained through theme-based expository reading may still need to be augmented by direct vocabulary instruction and more “word consciousness” raising for young L1 and L2 readers (Graves, 2006; Zahar et al., 2001). In other words, the findings regarding narrow (tight-themed) expository reading should not necessarily be translated into more opportunities for incidental vocabulary acquisition. However, the lexical advantages of narrow expository reading should also be recognized. Because such reading tends to draw together and recycle a greater proportion of specialized words that are more easily identifiable as being theme related (e.g., mummy, pyramid, tombs, Egypt, embalming, pharaoh, mummification), several potential advantages accrue for classroom instruction: (a) the reading materials will likely have more connections and relevance to other theme-related classroom discussions or projects; (b) the words in such materials are prime candidates for direct vocabulary instruction because of their salience to both the theme in general and the reading materials that support that theme; and (c) there appears to be a greater likelihood of specialized, theme-based vocabulary redundancy between different expository reading materials from the same tight theme, thus allowing teachers to more confidently choose from a variety of gradeequivalent authentic materials that will recycle many of the same crucial vocabulary items.

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Finally, the proposed taxonomy of textual relationships (Figure 1) appears to require some revision based on the disparities in specialized vocabulary recycling noted between the narrative and expository text collections (see Figure 2). The separation of narrative fiction and expository nonfiction in the revised taxonomy reflects the register-related nuances of narrow reading: Number of authors affects specialized vocabulary recycling in collections of narrative fiction, but not in collections of expository nonfiction; conversely, thematic relationships affect specialized vocabulary recycling in collections of expository nonfiction, but not in collections of narrative fiction. The revised taxonomy also reflects the general advantages of narrow reading over wide reading in terms of exposing young readers to repetitive encounters with new or less familiar vocabulary, and in reducing the overall lexical load placed on such readers. Specialized Vocabulary Recycling

Less

No themes (Wide reading)

Loose themes Less Multiauthor (Wide reading)

More

Semi-tight themes

More Uniauthor

Tight themes

Narrative

Expository

Fiction

Nonfiction

Figure 2. Revised taxonomy of textual relationships for specialized vocabulary recycling in collections of authentic reading materials.

Conclusion More research is needed to validate the findings of this study. Future research could include different themes, texts, and controls, perhaps using a more randomized selection of materials. In Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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addition, the definition of word used in this study (i.e., unique spellings) is open to challenge on several grounds, including the potential for children to link morphologically related words and the potential presence of multiword items, homonymy, and polysemy. However, there was no visual indication in the data to suggest that any of these variables would have altered the primary findings of the study, which clearly suggest major vocabulary-recycling differences based on the textual relationships between authentic reading materials. For example, Appendix B provides evidence of rich morphological relationships between several of the specialized words in the theme-based expository collections. There would also appear to be some obvious strengths in the type of corpus-based research conducted in this study, particularly in bringing some degree of accountability to the broad claims of new vocabulary exposure through extensive reading of authentic materials, which have often lacked the nuances necessary to make them truly informative for pedagogical purposes. All too often, people are simply told that young readers must read widely or extensively in class or at home in order to substantially grow their vocabularies, without careful consideration of the types of materials that they could possibly read, the types of words that such reading will expose them to, and the varying levels of essential lexical redundancy that come about as a result of choices regarding which text to read first, second, third, and so forth. In fact, the findings of this corpusbased study suggest that even the more pedagogically focused approach of narrow reading, with its assumed vocabulary-exposure benefits, may have been greatly oversimplified. In short, there is no adequate substitute for real data, in this case, actual words and actual word repetitions in actual authentic reading materials. It should be emphasized, however, that this study examined specialized, content-rich vocabulary (i.e., the types of words that are representative of long-term, large-scale vocabulary growth during the school years—mummy, embalming, laboratory, anthropologist, frontier, etc.), and did not consider the recycling of the relatively small set of high-frequency words (2,000 to 3,000 words) that L2 readers must first gain proficiency with in order to achieve basic reading comprehension and to utilize context as a means of building vocabulary knowledge (Laufer, 1989; Nation, 2001). However, given the nature of general high-frequency words (i.e., they appear in many texts) and given that authentic texts are not controlled for the presentation of vocabulary, it is doubtful that narrow reading would provide any appreciable differences in vocabulary recycling at the high-frequency level either. Future research could examine the verity of this assertion. Finally, it is hoped that the findings of this study and the revised taxonomy of textual relationships will prove useful to English language teachers and curriculum designers who must ultimately make the choices about what their students will be encouraged to read throughout the course of a term, semester, or school year. If the goal is to improve their learners’ repetitive exposure to the vocabulary of school, then consideration of the relationships between texts can make a profound difference. In this regard, narrow reading of theme-related expository materials will provide better conditions for such exposure, provided that the theme is sufficiently tight to draw together and recycle theme-related content words in an advantageous manner—in short, not just any theme will do. For instance, a tight expository-based Mummy theme would be better than a loose Mystery theme, but both would be superior to no theme at all (e.g., wide reading). A tight bee theme would be better than a loose insect theme, but again both would be better than no Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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theme at all, and so forth. Given the apparent vocabulary-recycling advantages of such thematic decisions, the logical next step is to test whether young L2 readers can actually utilize these benefits to gain vocabulary knowledge through reading or whether the nature of the words in expository materials, and the concepts they often entail, require extratextual support before they can be acquired. A final point with regard to expository materials is that there are no apparent vocabulary-recycling advantages for utilizing text collections written by one author. In contrast, narrow reading of fictional storybooks written by one author will improve the chances for specialized vocabulary recycling. However, the lexical advantages to the language learner will likely involve issues of general reading fluency (repetition of character names, places, etc.), rather than repeated exposures to theme-based or content-area vocabulary (i.e., the language of school). Indeed, there is no indication in the data that theme-relatedness plays any facilitative role in specialized vocabulary recycling within collections of narrative fiction. The marked disparities noted in this study between theme-based narrative and expository collections adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting major differences between children’s narrative and expository reading materials and reading experiences (reviewed in Grabe, 2002). In this regard, and in line with Gardner’s (2004) assertions, the findings of this study suggest that more attention should be paid to the what of reading and vocabulary exposure, not merely the how much. References America’s journal. (1996). New York: Scholastic. Anderson, R. C. (1996). Research foundations to support wide reading. In V. Greaney (Ed.), Promoting reading in developing countries (pp. 55–77). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Anderson, R. C., & Nagy, W. E. (1992). The vocabulary conundrum. American Educator, 16(4), 14–19, 44–47. Bamford, R. A., Kristo, J. V., & Lyon, A. (2002). Facing facts: Nonfiction in the primary classroom. The NERA Journal, 38(2), 8–15. Bello, M., Fajet, W., Shaver, A. N., Toombs, A. K., & Schumm, J. S. (2003). Basal readers and English language learners: A content analysis study. Reading Research and Instruction, 42(2), 1–16. Carlisle, J. F. (2000). Awareness of the structure and meaning of morphologically complex words: Impact on reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 169– 190. Carlo, M. S., August, D., McLaughlin, B., Snow, C. E., Dressler, C., Lippman, D. N., Lively, T. J., & White, C. E. (2004). Closing the gap: Addressing the vocabulary needs of Englishlanguage learners in bilingual and mainstream classroom. Reading Research Quarterly, 39, 188–215. Carroll, J. B., Davies, P., & Richman, B. (1971). The American heritage word frequency book. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Cobb, T. (2007). Computing the vocabulary demands of L2 reading. Language Learning and Technology, 11, 38–63. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Cho, K.-S., Ahn, K.-O., & Krashen, S. (2005). The effects of narrow reading of authentic texts on interest and reading ability in English as a foreign language. Reading Improvement, 42, 58–64. Coté, N., Goldman, S. R., & Saul, E. U. (1998). Students making sense of informational text: Relations between processing and representation. Discourse Processes, 25(1), 1–53. Cunningham, P. (1998). The multisyllabic word dilemma: Helping students build meaning, spell, and read “big” words. Reading and Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 14, 189–218. Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (2003). Reading matters: How reading engagement influences cognition. In J. Flood, D. Lapp, J. R. Squire, & J. M. Jensen (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Day, R. R. (1994). Selecting a passage for the EFL reading class. English Teaching Forum, 32(1), 20–23, 38. Day, R. R., & Bamford, J. (1998). Extensive reading in the second language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Day, R. R., & Bamford, J. (2002). Top ten principles for teaching extensive reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 14, 136–141. Dubin, F. (1986). Dealing with texts. In F. Dubin, D. E. Eskey, & W. Grabe (Eds.), Teaching second language reading for academic purposes (pp. 127–160). Reading, MA: AddisonWesley. Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. S. (1996). Guided reading: Good first teaching for all children. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. S. (1999). Matching books to readers: Using leveled books in guided reading, K-3. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. S. (2005). The Fountas and Pinnell leveled book list, K-8, 2006– 2008 edition. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Gardner, D. (2004). Vocabulary input through extensive reading: A comparison of words found in children’s narrative and expository reading materials. Applied Linguistics, 25, 1–37. Grabe, W. (2002). Narrative and expository macro-genres. In A. Johns (Ed.), Genre in the classroom: Multiple perspectives (pp. 249–267). Mahwah, NJ: LEA. Graves, M. F. (2006). The vocabulary book: Learning & Instruction. Williston, VT: Teachers College Press. Heatley, A., Nation, I. S. P., & Coxhead, A. (2002). RANGE and FREQUENCY programs [Computer software]. Retrieved from http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/staff/paulnation/RANGE32.zip Hirsch, D., & Nation, I. S. P. (1992). What vocabulary size is needed to read unsimplified texts for pleasure. Reading in a Foreign Language, 8, 689–696. Huang, H-T., & Liou, H-C. (2007). Vocabulary learning in an automated graded reading program. Language Learning & Technology, 11, 64–82. Hwang, K., & Nation, I. S. P. (1989). Reducing the vocabulary load and encouraging vocabulary learning through reading newspapers. Reading in a Foreign Language, 6, 323–335. It’s a mystery. (1996). New York: Scholastic. Krashen, S. (1981). The case for narrow reading. TESOL Newsletter, 15(6), 23. Krashen, S. (1985). The input hypothesis: Issues and implications. New York: Longman. Krashen, S. (1989). We acquire vocabulary and spelling by reading: Additional evidence for the input hypothesis. The Modern Language Journal, 73, 440–464. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Krashen, S. (1993a). The case for free voluntary reading. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 50(1), 72–82. Krashen, S. (1993b). The power of reading: Insights from the research. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited. Krashen, S. (2004). The case for narrow reading. Language Magazine, 3(5), 17–19. Laufer, B. (1989). What percentage of text-lexis is essential for comprehension? In C. Lauren & M. Nordman (Eds.), Special language: From humans thinking to thinking machines (pp. 316–323). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Mahony, D., Singson, M., & Mann, V. (2000). Reading ability and sensitivity to morphological relations. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 191–218. McBride-Chang, C., Wagner, R. K., Muse, A., Chow, B. W. Y., & Shu, H. (2005). The role of morphological awareness in children’s vocabulary acquisition in English. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26, 415–435. Mesmer, H. A. E. (2001). Decodable text: A review of what we know. Reading Research and Instruction, 40, 121–142. Nagy, W. E. (1997). On the role of context in first- and second-language vocabulary learning. In N. Schmitt & M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary: Description, acquisition and pedagogy (pp. 64–83). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nagy, W. E., & Anderson, R. C. (1984). How many words are there in printed school English? Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 304–330. Nagy, W. E., Anderson, R. C., & Herman, P. A. (1987). Learning word meanings from context during normal reading. American Educational Research Journal, 24, 237–270. Nagy, W. E., & Herman, P. (1985). Incidental vs. instructional approaches to increasing reading vocabulary. Educational Perspectives, 23, 16–21. Nagy, W. E., & Herman, P. (1987). Breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge: Implications for acquisition and instruction. In M. McKeown & M. Curtis (Eds.), The nature of vocabulary acquisition (pp. 19–35). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Nagy, W. E., Herman, P. A., & Anderson, R. C. (1985). Learning words from context. Reading Research Quarterly, 20, 233–253. Nation, I. S. P. (1990). Teaching and learning vocabulary. New York: Newbury House Publishers. Nation, I. S. P. (1997). The language learning benefits of extensive reading. The Language Teacher, 21(5), 13–16. Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nation, I. S. P., & Hwang, K. (1995). Where would general service vocabulary stop and special purposes vocabulary begin? System, 23, 35–41. Paulson, K. J. (1994). Westward movement: A fifth grade theme. In S. A. Walmsley, Children exploring their world: Theme teaching in the elementary school (pp. 217–242). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Ravin, Y., & Leacock, C. (2000). Polysemy: An overview. In Y. Raven & C. Leacock (Eds.), Polysemy: Theoretical and computational approaches (pp. 1–29). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schmitt, N., & Carter, R. (2000). The lexical advantages of narrow reading for second language learners. TESOL Journal, 9(1), 4–9. Schmitt, N., & Zimmerman, C. (2002). Derivative word forms: What do learners know? TESOL Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Quarterly, 36, 145–171. Shu, H., Anderson, R. C., & Zhang, H. (1995). Incidental learning of word meanings while reading: A Chinese and American cross-cultural study. Reading Research Quarterly, 30(1), 76–95. Singson, M., Mahony, D., & Mann, V. (2000). The relation between reading ability and morphological skills: Evidence from derivational suffixes. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 219–252. Stahl, S. A., & Shiel, T. G. (1992). Teaching meaning vocabulary: Productive approaches for poor readers. Reading and Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 8, 223– 241. Sutarsyah, C., Nation, I. S. P., & Kennedy, G. (1994). How useful is EAP vocabulary for ESP? A corpus based case study. RELC Journal, 25(2), 34–50. Swanborn, M. S. L., & de Glopper, K. (1999). Incidental word learning while reading: A metaanalysis. Review of Educational Research, 69, 261–285. Vacca, R. T., & Vacca, J. L. (1996). Content area reading (5th ed.). New York: Harper Collins. Walmsley, S. A. (1994). Children exploring their world: Theme teaching in the elementary schools. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Waring, R. (2003). The Oxford University Press guide to the why and how of using graded readers. Tokyo: Oxford University Press. West, M. (1953). A general service list of English words. London: Longman. Willcox-Schnabl, T. (1994). Egyptian mummies: A sixth grade theme. In S. A. Walmsley, Children exploring their world: Theme teaching in the elementary school (pp. 243–270). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Wodinsky, M., & Nation, I. S. P. (1988). Learning from graded readers. Reading in a Foreign Language, 5, 155–161. Zahar, R., Cobb, T., & Spada, N. (2001). Acquiring vocabulary through reading: Effects of frequency and contextual richness. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 57, 541– 572. Appendix A References of Books in Children’s Thematic Corpus Theme Unit Source Key: Source A = (Egyptian Mummies: A Sixth Grade Theme, Willcox-Schnabl, 1994); Source B = (Westward Movement: A Fifth Grade Theme, Paulson, 1994); Source C = (America’s Journal, 1996); Source D = (It’s a Mystery, 1996); Source E = (Children’s Librarian and Fifth-Grade Teacher) Books in Thematic Collections

Bantam Doubleday Dell. [Source A] Voight, C. (1991). The Vandemark mummy. New York: Fawcett Juniper. [Source A]

Mummy Narrative Multiauthor Mummy Narrative Uniauthor Masterman-Smith, V. (1982). The great Egyptian heist. New York: Four Winds Press. [Source A] Peck, R. (1986). Blossom Culp and the sleep of death. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell. [Source A] Snyder, Z. K. (1967). The Egypt game. New York: Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

Bellairs, J. (1978). The treasure of Alpheus Winterborn. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. [Source E] Bellairs, J. (1983). The mummy, the will, and the crypt.

Gardner: Vocabulary recycling in children’s authentic reading materials New York: Dial Books for Young Readers. [Source B] Bellairs, J. (1984). The dark secret of Weatherend. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers. [Source E] Bellairs, J. (1996). The curse of the blue figurine (rev. ed.). New York: Puffin Books. [Source B] Mummy Expository Multiauthor Bendick, J. (1989). Egyptian tombs. New York: Franklin Watts. [Source A] Lauber, P. (1985). Tales mummies tell. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. [Source A] Putnam, J. (1993). Eyewitness books: Mummy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. [Source A] Wilcox, C. (1993). Mummies & their mysteries. Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Books. [Source A] Mummy Expository Uniauthor Millard, A. (1982). Ancient Egypt. London: Granada. [Source A] Millard, A. (1987). Great civilizations: Egypt 3118 BC-AD 642. New York: Franklin Watts. [Source A] Millard, A. (1995). Mysteries of the pyramids. Brookfield, Connecticut: Copper Beech Books. [Source E] Millard, A. (1996). Pyramids. New York: Kingfisher. [Source E] Westward Movement Narrative Multiauthor Conrad, P. (1985). Prairie songs. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers. [Source B] Fleischman, S. (1988). By the great horn spoon (rev. ed.). Boston: Little, Brown and Company. [Source B] Lawlor, L. (1986). Addie across the prairie. Niles, IL: Albert Whitman & Company. [Source B] Moeri, L. (1994). Save Queen of Sheba (rev. ed.). New York: Puffin Books. [Source B] Westward Movement Narrative Uniauthor Wilder, L. I. (1971a). Little house in the big woods (rev. ed.). New York: Harper & Row. [Source E] Wilder, L. I. (1971b). Little house on the prairie (rev. ed.). New York: Harper & Row. [Source E] Wilder, L. I. (1971c). Farmer boy (rev. ed.). New York: Harper & Row. [Source E] Wilder, L. I. (1971d). On the banks of Plum Creek (rev. ed.). New York: Harper & Row. [Source E] Westward Movement Expository Multiauthor Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Blumberg, R. (1989). The great American gold rush. New York: Bradbury Press. [Source B] Freedman, R. (1983). Children of the wild west. New York: Scholastic. [Sources B & C] Sandler, M. W. (1994). Cowboys. New York: Harper Collins. [Sources B & C] Tunis, E. (1961). Frontier living (chapters 9–19). Cleveland: The World Publishing Company. [Source B] Westward Movement Expository Uniauthor Hakim, J. (1994a). A history of US (Book 5): Liberty for all (chapters 1–9). New York: Oxford University Press. [Source E] Hakim, J. (1994b). A history of US (Book 5): Liberty for all (chapters 10–18). New York: Oxford University Press. [Source E] Hakim, J. (1994c). A history of US (Book 5): Liberty for all (chapters 19–27). New York: Oxford University Press. [Source E] Hakim, J. (1994d). A history of US (Book 5): Liberty for all (chapters 28–36). New York: Oxford University Press. [Source E] Mystery Narrative Multiauthor Brenner, B. (1972). Mystery of the plumed serpent (rev. ed.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. [Source D] Elmore, P. (1992). Susannah and the purple mongoose mystery. New York: Dutton Children’s Books. [Source D] Konigsburg, E. L. (1967). From the mixed-up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. New York: Atheneum. [Source D] Wortis, A. (1991). Windcatcher. New York: Avon Books. [Source D] Mystery Narrative Uniauthor Kehret, P. (1995a). Frightmares: Cat burglar on the prowl. New York: Pocket Books. [Source E] Kehret, P. (1995b). Frightmares: Don’t go near Mrs. Tallie. New York: Pocket Books. [Source E] Kehret, P. (1996a). Frightmares: Backstage fright. New York: Pocket Books. [Source E] Kehret, P. (1996b). Frightmares: Screaming eagles. New York: Pocket Books. [Source E] Mystery Expository Multiauthor Beattie, O., & Geiger, J. (1992). Buried in ice. New York: Scholastic. [Source D] Bisel, S. C. (1990). The secrets of Vesuvius. New York: Scholastic. [Source D]

Gardner: Vocabulary recycling in children’s authentic reading materials Jackson, D. M. (1996). The bone detectives. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. [Source D] Sheely, R. (1993). Police lab: Using science to solve crimes. Silver Moon Press. [Source D] Mystery Expository Uniauthor Simon, S. (1976). Ghosts. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. [Source E] Simon, S. (1979). Creature from lost worlds. New York: J. B. Lippincott. [Source E] Simon, S. (1981). Mad scientists, weird doctors, & time travelers in movies, TV, & books. New York: J. B. Lippincott. [Source E] Simon, S. (1997). Strange mysteries from around the world (rev. ed). New York: Morrow Junior Books. [Source E] Books in Nonthematic Collections Control Narrative Collection

117

L’Engle, M. (1962). A wrinkle in time. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. [Source E] O’Dell, S. (1960). Island of the blue dolphins. New York: Dell Publishing. [Source E] Paterson, K. (1977). Bridge to Terabithia. New York: Harper & Row. [Source E] Raskin, E. (1978). The Westing game. New York: Viking Penguin. [Source E] Control Expository Collection Dow, L. (1990). Whales: A great creature of the world book. New York: Weldon Owen Pty Limited. [Source E] Heinrichs, A. (1992). America the beautiful: Montana (2nd ed.). Chicago: Children’s Press. [Source E] Maestro, B., & Maestro, G. (1996). The voice of the people: American democracy in action. New York: Lothrop, Less & Shepard Books. [Source E] Ride, S., & Okie, S. (1986). To space & back. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace. [Source E]

Appendix B Specialized Types (With Token Counts) Appearing in At Least Three of Four Texts per Collection (Words marked with asterisks were rated as being In Theme) Mummy Exp MA (141 specialized types) MUMMY * MUMMIES * EGYPTIANS* EGYPT * EGYPTIAN * TOMBS * PYRAMID * BURIED * TOMB* PRESERVED* LINEN* PYRAMIDS * WRAPPED* NILE* EMBALMING* CAVES* MUMMIFIED * BURIAL* PROBABLY SKIN PHARAOHS* OSIRIS* BACTERIA * CAVE * DECAY * COFFIN* RESIN *

166 161 77 56 50 46 46 45 43 40 37 33 28 25 25 24 23 22 21 21 20 19 18 18 18 17 17

GRAVE * EMBALMERS* SAND* PHARAOH * ANUBIS* HAIR WRAPPINGS* ORGANS* BANDAGES* KHUFU * PRIESTS * DECORATED ROBBERS STRIPS EMBALMED* HUGE PRESERVE * NATRON * JARS* PERIOD CLOTHING REMOVED BITUMEN * COFFINS* PASSAGE SPELLS STOMACH* TREASURES* WRAPPING * CLOTH FEET FUNERAL*

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17 16 16 15 15 15 15 14 14 14 13 12 12 12 12 12 12 11 11 11 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 9 9 9

BRAIN* 9 CARVED* 9 JACKAL* 9 SACRED 9 SEALED 9 CUSTOMS 8 EXTRA 8 GREEK 8 OUTER 8 LOT 8 MUMMIFICATION* 8 STATUES 8 WARM 8 FINALLY 7 JEWELRY * 7 LAYER 7 FLINT 7 GRAVES* 7 INTESTINES* 7 LUNGS* 7 PATRON 7 AREA 6 CEREMONY* 6 ARCTIC 6 CEREMONIES* 6 CLOTHES 6 EXACTLY 6 HERODOTUS* 6 ICY 6 INTERNAL 6 LAYERS 6 LIVER * 6

PROCESS SANDS* SKULL* TOE CENTURY * BOTTOM FREEZING FUR HORUS * STATUE STUFFED UNDERGROUND WASHED WET PRACTICED CLIFF CURIOUS DUG EUROPE FERTILE * FINGER GOVERNMENT ITEMS KNIFE NOSE PERFORMED PRESERVING* QUICKLY SHELTERS SIMILAR SKELETON * STICKY

6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

Gardner: Vocabulary recycling in children’s authentic reading materials TOOLS YARDS BOTHER CIVILIZATION * EVERYDAY EVIL EXACT FEATHERS FINGERS MOLDED NARROW PACKED POURED SAWDUST SERIES SHARP SPICES* WEIGHED

4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

Mummy Exp UA (164 specialized types) EGYPT * PYRAMID* PYRAMIDS* EGYPTIANS* BC* EGYPTIAN* TOMBS* DYNASTY* NILE* TOMB* PERIOD NUBIA* BLOCKS* GOODS OSIRIS * HORUS* BURIED * GIZA * THEBES* PRIESTS * DYNASTIES* RAMP CHAMBER* UPPER MUD PAPYRUS* COPPER TEXTS HIEROGLYPHS* III KHUFU * MONUMENTS* MEMPHIS* THRONE * FLOOD STRAIGHT BURIAL * MUMMIES* SCRIBES* LINEN* PRESERVED* SAND * GOVERNMENT ROBBERS BRICKS INUNDATION

189 124 80 72 65 51 42 41 41 34 25 25 24 22 21 20 20 20 19 18 16 16 16 16 15 15 14 14 14 14 14 13 13 13 12 12 12 12 12 11 11 11 11 11 10 10

ISIS * 10 GODDESSES* 9 CARVED* 9 HEIGHT 9 MEDITERRANEAN*9 PHARAOH * 9 SKILLED 9 STRAIGHT-SIDED 9 ARCHITECT* 8 DECORATED 8 DRAGGED 8 GRAIN 8 PROBABLY 8 ASWAN* 8 BLOCK * 8 PRAYERS 8 PUNT 8 QUARRY * 8 REEDS * 8 ZOSER* 8 COMPLEX 7 DIVINE * 7 HUGE 7 II 7 REED * 7 AFFORD 7 BENT 7 CENTURIES * 7 CENTURY* 7 CROPS 7 GEB* 7 HOLY * 7 INVENTED 7 MAGIC 7 NUT 7 SENUSRET* 7 TREASURES* 7 FINALLY 6 IV 6 WRAPPED * 6 ANUBIS * 6 CEREMONY * 6 CIVILIZATION * 6 DEIR* 6 ETERNAL* 6 FEET 6 FERTILE * 6 RAMPS 6 SHU* 6 SURVIVED 6 TIMBER 6 FLOODED 5 JARS* 5 POTTERY 5 QUARRIES* 5 AREA 5 BRICK 5 COURTIERS* 5 DEMOTIC* 5 EDUCATION 5 EL* 5 ETERNITY* 5 GUARDED 5 IMHOTEP* 5 MASTABAS* 5 PASSAGE 5 PERIODS 5 ROOF 5 SCRIBE* 5 STATUE 5

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SKILL VAST ABUSIR * ACCOMPANIED AMULETS* ARCHAIC* BANDAGES * CALENDAR CULTURE DOUBLE FOOT FOREVER HATHOR* IVORY LEBANON MASTABA* NARROW OXEN POURED PROFESSIONAL REGULAR ROMANS * TREATED BASKETS * BEER CANALS CEILING DESCENDED DIG * DITCHES DONKEYS* EMPTY FAMINE * GOVERNORS HIERATIC * HIEROGLYPHIC* HUNI* PEASANT PLANETS PTOLEMY* RAINS RUBBLE SMOOTH STEEP TALLER TREASURE * VICTIM WEAPONS

118 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

Mummy Nar MA (52 specialized types) HALL HAIR EGYPT * LOT EGYPTIAN* ANGRY JOB SUDDENLY FINALLY KITCHEN KID THIN EXACTLY HOLE THICK GRINNED

46 18 15 13 10 10 10 9 9 9 8 8 7 7 7 6

BUSY DIRTY DUMB FEET INTERRUPTED AFTERNOON AREA BOTTOM GRAY LIKED NOSE OKAY QUICK SIGHED STUCK ANNOUNCED BUTTON CLOCK LOCKED NARROW NODDED PALE PLENTY PROBABLY SEARCH SLIPPED STARED ATTENTION BURIED * CARVED * HELLO HEY KNEES MESS NICE PICK

6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

Mummy Nar UA (93 specialized types) ANTHONY LOT DESK FINALLY LIKED SUDDENLY TEA JOB BIT GRAY STARED TALL CORNER NICE CLOCK FUNNY HALL HIT JOHN KITCHEN MYSTERIOUS* SLOWLY CHAIR TOWER CREAM WORRIED CHAPTER FEET

150 19 17 14 12 12 12 11 10 10 10 10 10 10 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 8 8 8 8 7 7

Gardner: Vocabulary recycling in children’s authentic reading materials GONNA NOSE ODD SICK LEATHER RADIO GRINNED QUICKLY ANGRY CAP CHESS HAIR SCARED SIGH BATHROOM CHEERFUL COFFEE DOORWAY HMMM MUTTERED NODDED OKAY QUIETLY SCREEN SIGHED SNAPPED STUCK AFRAID BROWN CARVED* FLAKES FUN LIQUOR NARROW PAIR POCKET ROOF ROTTEN* SHUT STARING TONE BLOTTER CLUTCHED DIGGING* DIRTY DISCONTENTED DUG ELDERLY GASPED GLOW HIDING KIDS LONELY NEST RIDICULOUS SINISTER SOMEHOW STAIRS STRAIGHT SWEAR SWEPT TONGUE UPSTAIRS WET YEAH

7 7 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

Westward Exp MA (93 specialized types) TRAIL* CATTLE* WAGON* WAGONS* FORT * AMERICAN * MISSOURI* INDIANS* TERRITORY* SAN OXEN * INDIAN * PRAIRIE* TEXAS * MEXICO* FRONTIER * RANGE * ST AMERICANS * JOB RANCHES * LOUIS MEXICAN* MISSISSIPPI* IOWA * GRASS* AMERICA * SPANISH DUST KANSAS* TRIP FEET JOHN MULES* RAILROAD* HERDS TOUGH GOVERNMENT * JOURNEY* SADDLE SLAVES* ARKANSAS* CONGRESS SHOPS VAST ACRES* CENTS CRUDE FOOT FRAME KNIVES PATENT PLOW RUSH MAP BOOTS* EQUIPMENT FENCES HORN HORSEBACK* LOADED OCCUPIED PACK PLENTY RIFLES * RIO* SLAVERY*

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69 52 41 38 35 33 30 28 24 23 23 22 22 22 21 21 16 15 14 14 14 12 12 12 12 11 11 11 10 10 10 9 9 9 9 8 8 8 8 8 7 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

SOIL WYOMING* CORNER ESPECIALLY FERTILE GULF PICK PUEBLO* QUICK WEATHER BUSY CAMP* CIVIL CLAY EL EXTRA MALE PICKED QUICKLY RARE RAW SITE STRAIGHT TIN TWENTY-FOUR UNSETTLED*

119 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

Westward Exp UA (80 specialized types) AMERICAN * CALIFORNIA* AMERICANS* AMERICA* JOHN JAMES INDIAN* SMITH GEORGE MISSISSIPPI* SLAVE* ENGLAND TERRITORY* WASHINGTON* YORK ST TH CENTURY STEAMBOAT * JEFFERSON* PARENTS ROUTE MISSOURI* SIERRA* TRIP FRONTIER* SLAVERY* TALL FORT* LOUIS OREGON* SPANISH ESPECIALLY HAIR HENRY OHIO* DEMOCRACY * GOVERNMENT*

46 43 34 29 25 22 21 20 17 17 16 14 14 14 13 11 11 11 11 10 10 10 9 9 9 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 7 7 7 7 7 7

OCEAN TH-CENTURY LIBERTY* ORLEANS* CLOTHES PHILADELPHIA* POET REGION SAMUEL WILLIAM ACADEMY FOUNDED SPAIN THOMAS CAPE FINALLY HARVARD HORN JOURNEY* LIKED MIGHTY OVERLAND* PAIR TERRITORIES* AFRAID ATLANTIC* BOTHERED BROWN CLOTHING EUROPEAN FEET HIRED HORRIFIED KANSAS*3 LOT PENNSYLVANIA* PIONEERS* PLENTY POETRY PROFESSOR TREATED WAGONS*

7 7 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

Westward Nar MA (72 specialized types) WAGON* PRAIRIE * GRASS* WAGONS* MA* INDIANS* HAIR SLOWLY FEET SUDDENLY STARED BABY BROWN ALIVE KNEES SHUT BARREL* CORNMEAL* DIRT PILE COW * QUIET QUIETLY

69 33 29 27 22 20 15 15 13 13 11 11 11 10 9 9 9 9 9 8 8 8 8

Gardner: Vocabulary recycling in children’s authentic reading materials SMELL THIN COOL DUST HAT* STRAIGHT WHISPERED HUNGRY QUICKLY COAT GUESS LEGS PALE TALL WORSE YELLOW AFRAID AWFUL CHICKENS* DINNER FEVER * FINGERS INSTANT LOUD RAIN SKIN SLIGHT WARM DELICATE ESPECIALLY FOREHEAD GULPED PICKED RIFLE* SACKS THICK THUMB TWISTED WASHED WHEEL WIPED YELL ANGER BISCUITS* CREPT PLENTY PUSHING SLID TIED

8 8 7 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

Westward Nar UA (108 specialized types) LAURA PA* MA* MARY WAGON* JACK TALL BROWN PATH FEET EDGE LEGS SLOWLY CARRIE LOG CHAPTER

198 192 113 94 87 44 23 23 23 19 18 18 15 15 14 13

SUPPER YELLOW CLEAN TINY ROOF CLIMBED* HAIR THICK FLAT STOVE FAT NOSES TIED BARE WARM SMOKE TIRED BIT* EMPTY SNUG THIN TIN BOTTOM HOLE PORK QUICKLY SHUT TIGHT CLIMB * CURVED PALE PAN PLATE SLOPE WET OVERHEAD WASHED CRACK FOOT HURRIED HURT MITTENS QUIET SUDDENLY SMOOTH TAILS TONGUE AX * BITS* DISHES FENCE FUN GRAY GREASED PUSHED SLICES STEEP TONIGHT BOILED CLOTHES FRIGHTENED INDIANS* KNEES LOGS LONELY MANES* RAIN ROPES STRETCHED WHISPERING

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13 13 12 12 12 11 11 11 11 11 10 10 10 9 9 9 9 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

ACHED ARCHED BREATH CIDER * COMBED COMFORTABLE EXCITED FUR HALF-PINT HUGE MELTED NEATLY OAK PICKED POURED ROOTS SHOUTED SMELLED STOMACH STUCK TONGUES TROTTED

120 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

Mystery Exp MA (72 specialized types) BONES* JOHN BONE* EVIDENCE* SKULL* TEETH CLUES* HAIR FOOT PHYSICAL FILE SOLVE* EXAMINING CRIMINALS * EXAMINE TINY RIDGES AREA FEET INVESTIGATION * LEG WEIGHT WILLIAM SUDDENLY

67 66 51 51 31 17 15 14 14 13 13 13 12 12 11 11 11 10 10 10 10 10 10 9 ANTHROPOLOGIST 9 CHAPTER 9 SKELETON* 9 FINALLY 8 BAG 8 EXAMINED 8 NARROW 8 QUICKLY 8 SEARCH* 8 BURIED * 7 COLLECTED 7 LABORATORY* 7 LOT 7 MALE 7 SKIN 7 BENT 6 NODDED 6 PLENTY 6 PROBABLY 6

PROCESS RESEARCH SMOOTH UPPER ITEMS TALL CHECK PICKED QUIET WASHINGTON ARCHES BOTTOM CRACK* EMPTY INVOLVES JOB SEARCHES* SHOUTED CORNER COUPLE DAMAGE GRISLY* HIT IMMEDIATELY INVESTIGATE* RIDGE SCATTERED SEARCHING* TOOL

6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

Mystery Exp UA (54 specialized types) ISLAND FEET FINALLY CREATURE* AMERICAN BURIED* HORROR* MAD EVIL* MYSTERIOUS* HOLE HUGE LABORATORY* ORIGINAL PROFESSOR* FRIGHTENING* LONDON SUDDENLY YORK EMPTY FEATURES HIDDEN* SERIES IMAGINE BURIAL * FINAL FOOTPRINTS* HORRIBLE* ODD PROBABLY PUBLISHED THOMAS WEIRD CANNOT EXCITING EXPEDITION

59 33 28 18 13 13 13 13 12 12 12 11 11 11 9 8 8 8 8 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 5

Gardner: Vocabulary recycling in children’s authentic reading materials JACK REPTILES TERROR * ENGLAND ROBERT BOTTOM BRITISH CAMERA ELECTRIC ENTIRE HIT JOHN PLANE CONFUSED RID SHELTER TERRIBLE WORSE

5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3

Mystery Nar MA (56 specialized types) SHOP FAT JEANS FUNNY JACKET CORNER HAIR LOT SUDDENLY PROBABLY NOISE AFTERNOON FEET CARD* PICK PICKED SMELL GRABBED BOTTOM GLANCED WHISPERED HEY KID LEGS LOTS PILE POCKETS* PUSHED HESITATED CLEAN COOL DOORWAY FADED FINALLY GUESS HI PARK PRACTICE QUIET REPEATED SIGHED SLIPPED SLOWLY STRAIGHT WORRIED

21 18 16 11 11 10 10 10 9 8 8 7 7 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

BUSY CRAZY ESPECIALLY FINAL GRINNING INFORMED MINIATURE NERVOUS TALL WORST YELLOW

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

Mystery Nar UA (90 specialized types) KAYO ROSIE CAT BREATH BONE* SAMMY CLUB SAUNDERS HOMER BENTON DIAMOND WEBSTER FEET BASEBALL POLICE FUR PROJECT KIDS PROBABLY PARENTS NOSE OAKWOOD NOTEBOOK QUICKLY WHISPERED EXTRA VOCABULARY CUSHMAN UNDERSIGNED WHEREAS APARTMENT LOCKED PET AFTERNOON HURRIED NODDED POCKET* REMOVED TAIL KITCHEN LOT TELEPHONE QUIT RELIEF SORRY FUN HULENBACK CREATURES* FRIGHTMARES* PROJECTS SICK SLOWLY

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338 327 99 62 60 55 49 35 33 31 28 23 20 18 17 14 13 13 12 12 11 11 10 10 10 9 9 9 8 8 8 8 8 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5

BIKE EDGE HAIR HUGE LEG LICKED PUSHED SLIPPED STUCK WAGGED BICYCLE CHEST GROOM II III WELL-BEING ATTENTION CHEEK GRABBED LEGS PICKED SNIFF VETERINARIAN BACKPACK BET CAIRN CLIMBED DARLING GRINNED HA NICE OKAY PEERED PENCIL PETS PLOPPED REPEATED WORRIED

121 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

Control Exp MA (28 specialized types) FEET AMERICA AREAS AREA PACIFIC HUGE OCEAN CALIFORNIA ALASKA ICE JOHN SWIM ATLANTIC FLORIDA GRADUALLY LOUISIANA ORANGE APART DELAWARE EDUCATION HAWAII LOT OREGON SPLIT WEATHER

32 16 14 12 12 10 10 8 8 7 7 6 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

CREATED FEATURES PREFER

3 3 3

Control Nar MA (58 specialized types) FEET CLIFF HAIR FOOT KITCHEN SUDDENLY RUG NOSE SKIN CHAIR TIRED DUMB KIDS AFRAID AFTERNOON BREATH EDGE SCREAMED GRAY SLOWLY WHISPERED FINGERS LEGS BOTTOM NODDED QUICKLY STARED BARE CAP FADED GAZE LUNCH MANAGED PUSHED SLAMMED SLID STOMACH TIGHT TIPTOED TONGUE TWISTED WARM WORRY AUTUMN BOTHER DAMP DELIGHT ESPECIALLY HIPS HURRIED KNEES LUCKY PICKED POP TAIL TEETH UNLIKE WARNED

21 20 18 15 13 12 11 10 10 10 10 9 9 7 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

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About the Author Dee Gardner is an associate professor of Applied Linguistics and TESOL at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, United States. His primary research and teaching interests are in the areas of vocabulary acquisition, literacy development, and applied corpus linguistics. E-mail: [email protected]

Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2008, Volume 20, No. 1 pp. 123–128

Reviewed work: Cultural Practices of Literacy: Case Studies of Language, Literacy, Social Practice and Power. (2007). Victoria Purcell-Gates (Ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pp. 256. ISBN 805854924. $27.50

Reviewed by

Teresa Castineira Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla Mexico

http://www.leaonline.com/

This book was carried out under the aegis of the Cultural Practices of Literacy Study, whose principal investigator is Victoria Purcell-Gates. The work of the Cultural Practices of Literacy Study has two main goals: “(a) to theorize marginality in relationship to schooling in ways that will suggest real possibilities for schooling; and (b) to design curricula that promise to disrupt the persistent, almost perfect, correlation between social status and/or marginality and academic achievement” (p. 16). Therefore, this book with its critical position contributes to raising awareness among educators and literacy practitioners on certain issues such as power relations, colonization, and resistance in literacy practices. Today, literacy is much more than reading and writing due to the multiple modes of meaningmaking that are available in a post-industrial society. Hobbs (1997, as cited in Chauvin, 2003, pp. 119–120) stated that literacy is “the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages in a variety of forms.” This book, however, deals with two specific literacy practices: reading and writing. The whole book was greatly influenced by the French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu’s (1991) ideas of cultural and linguistic capital and by the Australian critical literacy researcher Allan Luke’s (2003) concern of the link between out-of-school and in-school literacy practices. http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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This book presents a collection of 10 case studies (chapters 2–11) around four major areas: (a) language, literacy and hegemony, (b) the immigrant experience: language, literacies and identities, (c) literacy in and out of school and on the borders, and (d) new pedagogies for new literacies. In chapter 1 (“Complicating the Complex”), the editor sets the theoretical foundations and background for the different tendencies when researching literacy. She discusses the various conceptions held by educators, political leaders, and the general public of what literacy entails. She knowledgeably considers the various labels that literacy has acquired in the contemporary world. Such labels include the new perspective on literacy, multiple literacies, literacy as social practice (or social literacies), and new literacies (p. 2). Purcell-Gates gives a brief account of the work of different researchers on out-of-school (vernacular) literacies who, under Bourdieu’s (1991) influence, “work to resist this hegemony [the academy] and to find ways to ‘legitimate’ the literacies of marginalized groups within academic settings” (p. 6). However, she asserts that the study of vernacular literacies is not enough to give a full account of literacy. The editor points out that other scholars are trying to bridge the gap between vernacular and academic literacies by bringing the vernacular into the school. She believes that literacy research should be carried out on both sides, out of school and in school. Purcell-Gates states that when theorizing and researching literacy, it should be taken as “social, multiple and ideological” (p. 10). Therefore, she adheres to the “literacy-as-social-practice paradigm” (p. 10), taking into account that literacy is practiced by different sociocultural groups who live in a globalized world. Purcell-Gates (2004) advocated an ethnographic approach when researching literacy. Her main reason was that “ethnography is grounded in theories of culture and allows researchers to view literacy development, instruction, learning, and practice as it occurs naturally in sociocultural contexts” (p. 92). The case studies in this book all take a quasi-ethnographic, qualitative approach, where literacy is seen in practice. Researchers in each case study assume an active participant role within the community under study. Procedures used by the researchers include observation, interviews, artifact collection, and analysis and coding of sociotextual domains. The first section (“Language, Literacy, and Hegemony”) presents two case studies. The first case study “Appropriation and Resistance in the (English) Literacy Practices of Puerto Rican Farmers”, reported in chapter 2 by Catherine Mazak, focuses on a family of land owners and farmers in a rural community in Puerto Rico. The researcher first presents a Puerto Rican language history where the struggle between Spanish and English is central. Mazak’s case study “explores the ways in which reading and writing in both Spanish and English are used by two farmers in the interior of the island. It is a study of language appropriation and resistance, where English is taken up by the participants to meet their own needs on their own terms” (p. 28). These needs mainly consist of access to information in the scientific and economic domains. An interesting finding in this study is the fact that those who know English can act as brokers in the community that resists English colonization. As an English teacher in a Spanish speaking context, I found this case study extremely meaningful as it raises issues of power, identity, and resistance (for issues on language resistance, see Canagarajah, 1999).

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Chapter 3 (“Language and Literacy Issues in Botswana”), by Annah Molosiwa, is the second case study in the first section. The researcher first outlines the geographical, historical, and language contexts of Botswana. She points out the absence of a print literacy culture in the country, where the oral word is highly appreciated. However, her informants (four women living in the US) link English with power and literacy, a condition that devalues Setswana and other minority languages. The researcher concludes that more research into the “cultural practices of literacy for the different ethnic groups in Botswana” (p. 54) is needed in order to enhance educational policy. One thing that is less convincing in this study is that the participants’ own words are rarely heard. Instead, the researcher summarizes the respondents’ answers or gives her own interpretations. The second section of the book (“The Immigrant Experience: Languages, Literacy, and Identities”) contains three case studies. The first case study “Sharing Stories, Linking Lives: Literacy Practices among Sudanese Refugees” (chapter 4), by Kristen H. Perry, is an investigation “of the literacy practices of southern Sudanese refugee youth—the so-called ‘Lost Boys’—in Michigan” (p. 57). The researcher first outlines the historical context of Sudanese refugees. Through the testimonies of the four Sudanese refugees who participated in this study, Perry has found that they view “literacy as an important tool in the struggle against inequality and injustice in the Sudan” (p. 67). From my point of view this is a very complete case study and one of the most interesting because it challenges some general traditional beliefs, such as that held by many English teachers who assert that if one does not know how to write in one’s mother tongue one cannot write in a foreign language. The researcher, influenced by Barton and Hamilton (2000), convincingly concludes that “literacy practices change and new ones are frequently acquired through processes of informal learning and sense making” (p. 58). The second study (chapter 5) by Gaoming Zhang, “Multiple Border Crossings: Literacy Practices of Chinese American Bilingual Families,” deals with “literacy practices, beliefs, and values in two Chinese American bilingual families” (p. 85). The researcher, a teacher of a weekend Chinese school, examines the relationship between in-school and out-of school literacy practices in these families. Zhang also addresses the question of how two different languages are used across and within sociotextual domains. The researcher also analyzes the role that Chinese American bilingual parents play in shaping their children’s literacy practices. One interesting facet in this study is that the researcher examines not only print and oral texts but also drawings and artifacts. I consider this a very well thought out and complete ethnographic study. The third study in this section (chapter 6), “Literacy Practices in a Foreign Language: Two Cuban Immigrants” by Kamila Rosolová, has as a main goal “to explore the ways in which literacy and language intersect and are negotiated by immigrants” (p. 99). After investigating and providing solid evidence on the two participants’ backgrounds and their literacy practices in Cuba, the researcher suggests that “their immigrant experiences as regards their English literacy practices vary and appear to be influenced heavily by family literacy practices in their native countries. These practices influenced predilections, values, attitudes and language knowledge…[that] intersect with the social, political, and cultural contexts in which both participants live ” (p. 110). I found this study well supported and interesting in the way the researcher shows the contrast between each participant’s needs and interests in terms of literacy practices. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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The third and largest section of the book “Literacies in and out of School and on the Borders” is influenced the most by the work of Luke (2003), who stated that “[l]iterate practice is situated, constructed, and intrapsychologically negotiated through an (artificial) social field called the school, with rules of exchange denoted in scaffolded social activities around particular selected texts” (p. 140). This section is composed of six case studies. In the first study “Breadth and Depth, Imports and Exports: Transactions Between the In- and Out-of-School Literacy Practices of an ‘At Risk’ Youth” (chapter 7), Stephanie Collins explores the case of an 11-year-old academically unsuccessful student. She explores the sociotextual domains to which the participant has access and where she is successful. These domains include bureaucracy, community organizations, entertainment, personal and public writing, and social cohesion. The last domain is important because of the acquisition of symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1990, 1991) that it entails. Social cohesion in this case includes reading of “hip-hop lyrics and brand names labels on clothing—both forms of cultural capital among their peers, both vehicles for signifying community-appreciated style [italics added], be the community actual or imagined” (pp. 126–127). I found this case study interesting because it demonstrates how this “at risk” youth obtains validation from the community, and not from the school. However, I found the writing overly sentimental, possibly due to the involvement between the participant and the researcher who was the youth’s literacy tutor. In chapter 8, the study “Literacy and Choice: Urban Elementary Students’ Perceptions of Links Between Home, School, and Community Literacy Practices”, by Jodene Kersten, explores the connection between literacy practices at home and in school with elementary school children. One of the most interesting things that I found in this study is the way the researcher converted her young participants into ethnographers and researchers in their communities and how they reflected on their literacy practices. They identified such sociotextual domains of literacy practice as the church, shopping, eating out, journaling, and creative writing. The results of the study show the disconnections between home and school literacy practices. The researcher concludes by stating that “the onus is on schools and educators to acknowledge the values and literacy practices children are bringing to the classroom and use these to inform and shape pedagogy to move toward academic achievement for all students” (p. 153). I consider this study innovative and well evidenced. In chapter 9 (“‘You Have to Be Bad or Dumb to Get in Here’: Reconsidering the In-School and Out-of-School Literacy Practices of At-Risk Adolescents”) David Gallagher analyzes the case of four at-risk adolescents who were “identified as being deficient and/or resistant of academic literacy” (p. 157) and were being offered literacy tools to succeed in their classes. Influenced by Moje (2002), Gallagher concludes that it is necessary to do more investigations into the spheres of homes, communities, youth cultures, and classrooms in order to understand “how the students negotiate the boundaries of these different spheres” (p. 159). In this way literacy researchers can better understand the nature of literacy in the lives of at-risk adolescents. One of the most interesting points in this study is how these students imported and exported their literacy practices from informal to formal settings and vice versa, thus creating a hybrid literacy. I would have liked to listen more to the participants’ own voices in this study and to actually read one or two samples of their written texts. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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In the study “School and Home: Contexts for Conflict and Agency” (chapter 10), Chad O’Neil analyzes narratives, which led to memory and insights, about literacy practices of two undergraduate students. Their literacy practices seemed to be influenced, both positively and negatively, by two sociotextual domains: the family and the school. The researcher analyzes sites of conflicts between these two domains and finds the development of agency in both students “as they sorted out their likes and dislikes and as they responded to the various types of textual practices within the different social domains in their lives” (p. 175). The study is well documented and the voices of the participants are heard in the study. The last case study “Digital Literac(ies), Digital Discourses, and Communities of Practice: Literacy Practices in Virtual Environments” (chapter 11), by Douglas Eyman, deals with a different domain, that of technology for literacy practice. The study focuses on a writing and technology class at the university level whose goals are “concerned with practices of writing with new technologies and efforts to understand and critically reflect on how these new technologies transform writing” (p. 182). The methodology used in this study was based on observation of the class as well as examination of the coursework produced by the students. These students created a community of practice where they could interact with each other. The researcher could also interact with students in a synchronous and asynchronous way. Interestingly, for these students digital literacy was “seen as a transference of traditional literacy practices (reading and writing) to new media” (p. 186). I found this study well supported theoretically and well evidenced with opinions and illustrations from the participants’ work. In the final chapter (“Comprehending Complexity”), Purcell-Gates wraps up the book by identifying some common themes recurring in the case studies presented in the book. She provides information on the evolving database of the Cultural Practices of Literacy Study and summarizes and draws conclusions from those case studies. Finally, she encourages researchers to continue investigating literacy practices in order to better design literacy curricula at school. Despite the use of formal terms, this book is reader friendly, with a few typological errors. The book contains two appendices. The first is an example of a semistructured interview of literacy practices, and the second is a format for keeping records of demographic information. The book also contains two useful indices: an author index and a subject index. It is worth mentioning that the book is enhanced in some sections by black and white pictures, drawings, and samples of digital writing. I recommend this book to language and literacy teachers and researchers, literacy curriculum designers, policy makers, literacy tutors, and sociologists, among others. Being interested in critical studies, I found this book very illustrative in terms of literacy practices as sources of power, knowledge, resistance, and agency. References Barton, D., & Hamilton, M. (2000). Literacy practices. In D. Barton, M. Hamilton, & R. Ivani (Eds.), Situated literacies: Reading and writing in context (pp. 7–15). London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Canagarajah, S. (1999). Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chauvin, B. A. (2003). Visual or media literacy? Journal of Visual Literacy, 23, 119–128. Hobbs, R. (1997). Literacy for the information age. In J. Flood, S. B. Heath, & D. Lapp (Eds.), The handbook of research on teaching literacy through the communicative and visual arts (pp. 7–14). New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan. Moje, E. (2002). Re-framing adolescent literacy research for the new times: Studying youth as a resource. Reading Research and Instruction, 41, 211–228. Luke, A. (2003). Literacy and the other: A sociological approach to literacy research and policy in multilingual societies. Reading Research Quarterly, 38, 132–141. Purcell-Gates, V. (2004). Ethnographic research. In N. K. Duke & M. H. Mallette (Eds.), Literacy research methodologies (pp. 92–113). New York: The Guilford Press. About the Reviewer Teresa Castineira is a full-time professor at the Facultad de Lenguas of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico. She has an MSc in Teaching English from Aston University, UK, and is currently doing her doctorate in Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University. Her main interests are critical discourse analysis, literacy, and English for academic purposes. E-mail: [email protected]

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Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2008, Volume 20, No. 1 pp. 129–131

Reviewed work: Reading Work: Literacies in the New Workplace. (2004). Mary Ellen Belfiore, Tracey A. Defoe, Sue Folinsbee, Judy Hunter, & Nancy S. Jackson (The InSites Research Group). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pp. 306. ISBN 0805846220. $37.50

Reviewed by

Helen de Silva Joyce NSW Department of Education and Training Australia

http://www.leaonline.com/

Across industrialised nations there is a concern that the literacy levels of adults are inadequate for the demands of reading and writing at work. This situation is often described in terms of a crisis and governments reach for simplistic back-to-basics approaches that ignore the complexities of learning to read and write and the context-embeddedness of literacy skills. Reading Work: Literacies in the New Workplace takes a social practices view of literacy in the workplace through ethnographic research in four workplaces in North America. A social practices view of literacy rejects the concept of literacy as “simply the isolated skills of reading and writing” (p. 4) and is concerned with how readers and writers use their literacy skills to be participating members of social contexts. This social focus adopts a multidimensional view of literacies “as plural and as complex, multifaceted social and cultural practices” (pp. 4–5). The main concern of the book is how literacies fit into everyday working life in the new workplace and its primary audience is workplace educators, although the book offers much that academics could integrate into university courses concerned with adult literacy. The introduction presents theoretical ideas that have underpinned the research of the authors and their concern for workplace education—changing ideas of literacies and understandings of the new workplace (Barton, 1994; Cope & Kalantzis, 1999; Gee, 1990; Hull, 1995). The book is then divided into two parts. Part I contains four chapters presenting narratives of working life in http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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the research sites—“a food processing plant, a textile factory, an urban tourist hotel and a hightech metal parts manufacturer” (p. xii). Using pseudonyms, the authors describe these workplaces as “diverse in their products, their levels of technological innovation, their degrees of conformity to the ‘new workplace’ and the cultural profiles of their workforce, but showing a great deal of similarity in the dynamics and dilemmas surrounding the changing practice of workplace literacies” (p. xii). The narratives in Part I are told by the researchers who spent 6–8 months in the workplaces they describe. The narratives are first-person stories of engagement; for example, It’s three p.m. My feet are killing me and my whole body aches. I am absolutely exhausted from being on my feet for eight hours in my new, stiff unbearable steel-toed shoes. … It’s the end of my first full day as a participant observer at Texco. (p. 63) Through these narratives the reader is given an overall picture of the workplaces and how issues are viewed differently by managers and employees. For example, documentation in workplaces is crucial under quality systems such as the International Standards Organization (ISO) 9001 and this aspect of literacy is explored in the narrative around the textile factory. Here managers are concerned with better completion of the forms that employees have to fill out when something goes wrong, and they want more responses in the ‘Comments’ section of the form on how a product runs through each stage of its process for the purposes of new products being developed. (p. 70) However, the researcher in this context, Sue Folinsbee, is able to pick up a mismatch between the need to respond quickly to customer requirements and to complete documents, which gives mixed messages about paperwork. Workers reported to her that “there are subtle and not-sosubtle messages that getting the product done and out the door is more important than paperwork” (p. 75). Part II contains four chapters that reflect on what can be learned from the research, with one chapter examining barriers to learning and using literacies that were revealed through the research. For example, there is a tendency for managers to interpret non-completion of paperwork as simply a lack of skills on the part of employees. However, at all sites the researchers identified resistance to participating in this literacy practice, resulting from unresolved issues around “social relations, power, risk and blame” (p. 232). Two chapters explore the challenges and possibilities offered by a social practices view of literacies for workplace educators. One interesting example presented in Part II is of the researcher and practitioner, Tracy Defoe, discovering her own illiteracy in reading engineering drawings. The writers draw from this exploration an affirmation of “how dynamic, relative and relational literacies are in real life” (p. 225) and use this example to remind workplace educators that noone can attain all literacies and people in the workplace have a range of different literacy skills from which workplace educators can learn. The final chapter is a conversation between the researchers about the “joys and pitfalls of collaborative research” (p. xiii). The appendix focuses on the research methods and offers further reading suggestions on ethnographic research.

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The strength of this book is in the in-depth research that the authors were able to undertake over 6–8 months in the four workplaces, giving insights into inconsistent workplace practices and perspectives that make it difficult to plan workplace literacy programs. These include oversimplified analyses by managers of employee skills, resistance to literacy practices that can mask abilities, inabilities to deal with workplace documents, and the tendency to view literacy as simply a set of skills outside of social practices. The narrative style of the first part gives the reader a sense of shadowing the researchers and first-hand understandings of how simplistic back-to-basics individualistic approaches can often lead to blaming individual employees for systemic problems. The second part offers workplace educators ways of understanding theoretical orientations to literacy and their relevance to workplace literacy education, the complexity of workplace practices that involve literacy, and ideas for implementing more effective programs. For those who want to dip in and out of the book, the chapter and section titles can be a little elusive and could have been more directly signalled. The narrative style at times becomes a little too personal. However, for me as an experienced workplace educator, the stories in this book resonated. I think it provides an interesting insight into the complexities of the constantly changing modern workplace. It is especially relevant as governments internationally emphasise adult literacy outcomes for work and look for simplistic approaches, with no understanding of how people practise multiple literacies and not a single literacy. A more complex view of reading and writing is essential in workplace education where educators are trying to understand complex networks of social and cultural practices in which the literacy skills of employees are embedded. The authors “see the workplace as a tapestry and literacies as the multiple threads woven into the whole” (p. 2), and their book makes an interesting contribution to understanding the intricate networks of workplace literacy practices. References Barton, D. (1994). Literacy: An introduction to the ecology of written language. Oxford: Blackwell. Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (1999). Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. London: Routledge. Gee, J. P. (1990). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. London: Falmer Press. Hull, G. (1995). Controlling literacy: The place of skills in ‘high performance’ work. Critical Forum, 3(2/3), 3–26. About the Reviewer Helen de Silva Joyce is the Director of Community and Migrant Education in the NSW Department of Education and Training, Australia. She has more than 25 years experience in language research and language education. She has published extensively including a wide range of theoretical and practical articles and resource materials. Her major research areas are spoken language and intertextuality in social and work contexts. E-mail: [email protected] Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2008, Volume 20, No. 1 pp. 132–135

Reviewed work: Reading Skills for College Students (7th ed.). (2007). Ophelia H. Hancock. Upper Saddle Rivers, NJ: Prentice Hall. Pp. 469. ISBN 0132208121. $70.00

Reviewed by

Zhijun Wen University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa United States

http://www.prenhall.com

No one denies the importance of strong reading skills, especially for college and graduate students who often have to complete extremely long readings each week. Inexperienced students are sometimes overwhelmed by their intimidating reading assignments. Reading proficiency is undoubtedly crucial to academic success, and students definitely need guidance and practice in order to become efficient readers. Reading Skills for College Students offers some advice and practice which may help these students achieve their goals. The textbook is designed to help college students develop advanced English reading abilities. It consists of three parts; the first two parts constitute the main body of the textbook. Part 1 aims to help students develop basic reading skills, such as building vocabulary, finding main ideas, reading for detail, drawing inferences, reading critically, and increasing reading speed. It is 13 chapters long. The first chapter gives some general advice on study skills, such as how to manage time well, how to make effective study plans, and how to find learning resources. Chapters 2–13 deal with 12 major reading skills, with each chapter focusing on a different skill. Each skill is accompanied by one to four exercises. Part 2 attempts to familiarize students with six major subject areas: literature, history, psychology, biology, computer science and data processing, and business. Each subject area spans one chapter, which is also accompanied by exercises for consolidating the skills taught in Part 1 and for testing comprehension. Each chapter from the first two parts ends with suggestions for further study. Part 3 provides 15 supplementary reading passages for honing the reading skills and for expanding background knowledge. Each selection is followed by vocabulary and comprehension exercises. http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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According to Hancock, the book is intended to foster college students’ general reading skills and enable them to enjoy reading. I am not in a position to assess whether people can achieve these goals by using this book because that would require longitudinal studies. In this review, I will examine the basic principles and underlying theoretical assumptions on which Hancock’s methodology is based. Hancock’s theoretical assumptions are consistent with the interactive approach to reading. On the one hand, he assumes that reading is a bottom-up process, which involves building up meaning from text. This assumption can be inferred from his perspective on what constrains students’ reading speed. He writes that good readers perceive several words during one fixation of the eyes and that vocalizing or subvocalizing each word slows the reading process. These claims indicate that he is primarily concerned with low-level decoding processes in tackling the issue of reading speed. On the other hand, Hancock takes it for granted that context, prior knowledge, and schemata play important roles in reading. He devotes a large portion of the textbook to teaching different subject areas and to providing background information. This reveals that his approach to reading also subsumes top-down ingredients. As for the relationship among different reading skills, Hancock assumes that they are separable. This can be seen from how he handles them in his book. Altogether, he teaches 12 separate reading skills: making use of contextual clues, using word structural knowledge (root words, prefixes, and suffixes), developing dictionary skills, reading for main ideas, finding details, using signal words, understanding organizational patterns (comparison-contrast, cause-effect, etc.), understanding purpose and tone, drawing inferences, reading critically, understanding graphs, and increasing reading rate. This way of handling the reading skills may result from practical pedagogical necessities. For example, organizing activities around a separate skill makes the teaching objectives narrower and easier to assess. The reading skills fall into five broader categories: vocabulary (using contextual clues, word structure knowledge, and dictionary skills), comprehension (reading for main ideas, finding details, using signal words, understanding organizational patterns, understanding purpose and tone, and drawing inferences), critical reading, graph reading, and speed reading skills. This categorization of reading skills is compatible with the current trends in reading research, which favor broad categories such as word-attack, comprehension, fluency, and critical reading skills (Hudson, 2007, p. 103). Of course, Hancock does not start from word-attacking skills. He assumes that college students have already developed low-level processing skills such as letter recognition. However, despite this assumption, many international students who are studying in Englishspeaking countries are not native speakers of English. For many of these students, low-level processing ability in their second language (L2) is still a major concern, because automaticity of lower-level processing abilities is essential to efficient reading comprehension. According to Perfetti’s (1985, 1988, 1991) verbal efficiency theory, automaticity of local text processes is the most important prerequisite of reading success. If lexical access is not automatic, it will tax the attention needed for high-level processing and as a result limit comprehension. Most L2 learners’ reading speed is much slower than that of first language (L1) readers. This phenomenon is well documented in studies on L2 online sentence processing (Marinis, 2003; Papadopoulou, 2005), which reveal that L2 learners’ local text processes are not automatic. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(1)

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Hancock does not say explicitly whether the book is designed for native speakers of English or learners of English as a second language (ESL). It can certainly be used as a textbook for ESL learners, but it obviously does not address ESL learners’ concerns and their language backgrounds. Reading research has demonstrated that different orthographies require different decoding strategies (Hudson, 2007). For example, Chinese and Japanese writing systems are logographic, and readers of such languages may use direct visual-meaning mapping rather than the phoneme-grapheme correspondences that are commonly used by readers of alphabetic writing systems such as English. Koda’s (1992, 1997, 1999) studies showed that low-level L1 processing routines are often transferred to L2. According to Hudson, inappropriate transfer of L1 visual processing routines impedes L2 reading comprehension (p. 96). Thus, textbooks for effective training of L2 reading must consider L1 background. In addition to failing to address ESL learners’ concerns, Hancock’s handling of the reading activities is also unsatisfactory. Most of the exercises are like items in reading tests, which require nothing but accurate answers. Almost none of the exercises in the book are designed to engage readers in interactive and communicative activities. In fact, effective reading requires readers to actively interact with the text. According to Pearson and Tierney (1984), effective reading calls for the reader to actively negotiate meaning with the author. Readers should anticipate, plan, compose, edit, and monitor the message as they read it. The book fails to include any such activities. On the other hand, the book devotes a large proportion of the exercises to building vocabulary. It is easy to see that Hancock considers vocabulary to be the most important factor in determining reading success. However, reading is certainly not confined to acquisition of new vocabulary, although reading and academic success do indeed presuppose a large vocabulary. Finally, it is worth pointing out that Hancock treats reading as a skill separate from other language skills such as writing. None of the reading exercises in the book include writing activities. However, L2 researchers widely agree that the four language skills (i.e., listening, speaking, reading, and writing) are not really separable. It is doubtful whether teaching them separately will be fruitful. Hancock’s Reading Skills for College Students is intended to help students gain confidence in reading. Its underlying assumptions about reading processes and reading skills are compatible with the general principles of current reading theories. Overall, however, the book fails to address ESL learners’ concerns and lacks interactive and communicative exercises. Hancock’s decision to treat reading as a skill separate from other language skills is also questionable. References Hudson, T. (2007). Teaching second language reading. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Koda, K. (1992). The effects of lower-level processing skills on FL reading performance: Implications for instruction. The Modern Language Journal, 76, 502–512.

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Koda, K. (1997). Orthographic knowledge in L2 lexical processing: A cross-linguistic perspective. In J. Coady & T. N. Huckin (Eds.), Second language vocabulary acquisition (pp. 35–52). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koda, K. (1999). Development of L2 intraword orthographic sensitivity and decoding skills. The Modern Language Journal, 83, 51–64. Marinis, T. (2003). Psycholinguistic techniques in second language acquisition research. Second Language Research, 19, 144–161. Papadopoulou, D. (2005). Reading-time studies of second language ambiguity resolution. Second Language Research, 21, 98–120. Pearson, P. D., & Tierney, R. J. (1984). On becoming a thoughtful reader: Learning to read like a writer. In A. C. Purves & O. S. Niles (Eds.), Becoming readers in a complex society (pp. 144–173). Chicago, IL: National Society of the Study of Education. Perfetti, C. A. (1985). Reading ability. New York: Oxford University Press. Perfetti, C. A. (1988). Verbal efficiency in reading ability. In G. E. MacKinnon, T. G. Waller, & M. Daneman (Eds.), Reading research: Advances in theory and practice (Vol. 6, pp. 109–143). New York: Academic Press. Perfetti, C. A. (1991). Representations and awareness in the acquisition of reading competence. In L. Rieben & C. A. Perfetti (Eds.), Learning to read: Basic research and its implications (pp. 33–44). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. About the Reviewer Zhijun Wen is a PhD student in the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He is interested in bilingualism, cognition in second language acquisition, connectionist modeling, corpus linguistics, cross-linguistic processing, generative approach to SLA, psycholinguistics, sentence processing, speech perception, statistics, and testing. His current research concentrates on second language processing and second language reading. E-mail: [email protected]

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