Volume 21, Number 1, April 2009

Volume 21, Number 1, April 2009

Advisory and Editorial Boards Advisory Board University of Hawai‘i, USA Richard Day, Co-Editor, Reading in a Foreign Language, [email protected] Thom Hudson, Co-Editor, Reading in a Foreign Language, [email protected] Richard Schmidt, Director, National Foreign Language Resource Center, [email protected] Kimi Kondo-Brown, Interim Associate Dean, College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature, [email protected]

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 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 University of Washington, USA Northern Arizona University, USA University of Surrey Roehampton, UK University of Reading, UK

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

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 & Web Production Editor: Zhijun (David) Wen, University of Hawai’i, [email protected]

Copyright © RFL 2009

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 2009

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 2009

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 2009

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 2009

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

Copyright © RFL 2009

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]

Copyright © RFL 2009

Volume 21, Number 1, April 2009

Issue With Special Theme on Reading in Languages Other Than English Edited by Cindy Brantmeier and Keiko Koda Editorial Board, About RFL, and Information for Contributors From the Editors pp. i–ii

From the Guest Editors Cindy Brantmeier and Keiko Koda pp. iii–iv

Special-Theme Articles Russian orthography and learning to read Eugenia Kerek and Pekka Niemi pp. 1–21

Early reading strategies in Irish and English: Evidence from error types Christine E. Parsons and Fiona Lyddy pp. 22–36

Articles Chinese senior high school EFL students’ metacognitive awareness and reading-strategy use Lawrence Jun Zhang and Aijiao Wu pp. 37–59

The effects of cultural familiarity on reading comprehension İsmail Hakkı Erten and Salim Razı pp. 60–77

Reviews English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom (2nd ed.) Barbara M. Birch reviewed by Handoyo Puji Widodo and Zhiling Wu pp. 78–82

Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power Cynthia Lewis, Patricia E. Enciso, and Elizabeth Birr Moje (Eds.) reviewed by Michael Thomas Witten pp. 83–87

Teaching Reading to English Language Learners: A Reflective Guide Thomas S. C. Farrell reviewed by Alex Poole pp. 88–92

External Reviewers Elizabeth Bernhardt, James Dean Brown, Heidi Byrnes, Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli, Carol A. Chapelle, Nobuko Chikamatsu-Chandler, Pierre Cormier, Carol A. Fraser, Greta Gorsuch, Peter Yongqi Gu, Megumi Hamada, Joann Hammadou-Sullivan, Majid Hayati, Margot Haynes, Yao Hill, Claire Ikumi Hitosugi, Tsung-Yuan Hsiao, Jan H. Hulstijn, Alireza Jalilifar, Joy Janzen, Xiangying Jiang, Jean Kirschenmann, Ailing Kong, Katsunori Kotani, Soo-Ok Kweon, Jill M. Leafstedt, Jeong-Won Lee, Michael Leeser, Jun Liu, John Macalister, Marianne, Beniko Mason, Kouider Mokhtari, Yoshiko Mori, Aek Phakiti, Leslie Reese, Thomas Robb, Steve Ross, Michael Rost, Robert Rueda, Françoise SalagerMeyer, Paul Stapleton, JoAnn Hammadou Sullivan, Etsuo Taguchi, Atsuko Takase, Stuart Webb, RoseMarie Weber, Junko Yamashita, Lawrence Jun Zhang

Copy Editors Amy Goodman-Bide, Yue Guo, HeeJin Kim, Jake Kletzien, Elizabeth Lavolette, Wenpei Long, Treela McKamey, Mar Galindo Merino, Samantha NG, Kyae-Sung Park, Leslie Reynolds, Bal Krishna Sharma, Bong-Gi Sohn, Sakol Suethanapornkul, Aya Takeda, Jae Rim Yoon

Copyright © RFL 2009

April 2009, Volume 21, No. 1 pp. i–ii

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

From the Editors This issue of Reading in a Foreign Language marks the start of its 8th 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. This issue contains two special-theme articles edited by Cindy Brantmeier and Keiko Koda on reading in languages other than English. This is a topic we hope to pursue more in the future, and we encourage any researchers in this area to keep us in mind. Also with this issue we have made a change in the journal’s format. We have changed to use of pdf formatted articles alone rather than including articles in html format as well. This change simplifies the formatting work that was previously required, and makes the articles a bit less subject to plagiaristic abuse. We hope this change does not inconvenience any of our readers. With this change in format, there is also a change in the RFL staff. Jun Nomura, who has been the RFL Web Production Editor since the October 2006 issue, has finished his doctoral studies at the University of Hawai‘i, and has resigned. We wish to thank Jun for his outstanding work with the journal and wish him well in his future endeavors. Zhijun (David) Wen continues as the Assistant Editor and, in addition, will also serve as the Web Production Editor. There has also been a change on the Editorial Board. Françoise Salager-Meyer has resigned as her major interests no longer include reading. We would like to thank her for her work with the journal. 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 like to acknowledge and thank the following external reviewers who have provided valuable comments on submitted manuscripts through March 2009: James Dean Brown, Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli, Carol A. Chapelle, Carol A. Fraser, Greta Gorsuch, Peter Yongqi Gu, Joann Hammadou-Sullivan, Majid Hayati, Yao Hill, Claire Ikumi Hitosugi, Tsung-Yuan Hsiao, Alireza Jalilifar, Joy Janzen, Xiangying Jiang, Jean Kirschenmann, Ailing Kong, Katsunori Kotani, Soo-Ok Kweon, Jill M. Leafstedt, Jeong-Won Lee, Michael Leeser, Jun Liu, John Macalister, Marianne, Beniko Mason, Kouider Mokhtari, Aek Phakiti, http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

From the Editors

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Thomas Robb, Steve Ross, Michael Rost, Françoise Salager-Meyer, Paul Stapleton, Etsuo Taguchi, Atsuko Takase, Stuart Webb, Junko Yamashita, and Lawrence Jun Zhang. We would also like to thank the following copy editors: Amy Goodman-Bide, Yue Guo, HeeJin Kim, Jake Kletzien, Elizabeth Lavolette, Wenpei Long, Treela McKamey, Mar Galindo Merino, Samantha NG, Kyae-Sung Park, Leslie Reynolds, Bal Krishna Sharma, Bong-Gi Sohn, Sakol Suethanapornkul, Aya Takeda, and Jae Rim Yoon. 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 Special-Theme Articles Eugenia Kerek and Pekka Niemi explore how Russian orthography influences the acquisition of reading skills in Russian. Christine E. Parsons and Fiona Lyddy examine the reading strategies used by children when reading Irish. Articles Lawrence Jun Zhang and Aijiao Wu assess metacognitive awareness and reading-strategy use of Chinese senior high school EFL students. İsmail Hakkı Erten and Salim Razı present research into the effects of cultural familiarity on reading comprehension. Reviews Handoyo Puji Widodo and Zhiling Wu review English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom (2nd ed.) by Barbara M. Birch. Michael Thomas Witten reviews Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power edited by Cynthia Lewis, Patricia E. Enciso, and Elizabeth Birr Moje. Alex Poole reviews Teaching Reading to English Language Learners: A Reflective Guide by Thomas S. C. Farrell.

Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2009, Volume 21, No. 1 pp. iii–iv

From the Guest Editors Cindy Brantmeier Washington University in St. Louis United States Keiko Koda Carnegie Mellon University United States

We are happy to edit a volume that focuses on second-language reading development in languages other than English. The increasing emphasis on reading across all languages and all levels of instruction in the United States has generated a demand for more theory- and datadriven evidence to support applications in the classroom. The topic is timely because interest in cross-linguistic variations in language learning and processing is escalating sharply. Empirical investigations generally support the likelihood that qualitatively different processing skills evolve through experiential exposure to linguistic input in diverse languages. In the second-language reading literature, however, little information is available about such variations. We thus know little about how second-language learners cope with different demands and requirements in learning to read in a new language particularly when their two languages are typologically different. Further, a growing number of school-age children in the United States and other industrialized nations struggle in learning to read in their second language without benefits of sufficient proficiency in that language. Given consistently high correlations between reading ability in first and second languages, prior literacy experience in the first language presumably provides substantial facilitation in learning to read in a new language. Systematic investigations of crosslinguistic relationships in reading sub-skills should yield significant insights into literacy development in a second language. It is important to note, moreover, that major claims in the current second-language reading literature have been based on data obtained almost exclusively from learners of English as a second language. Thus, scant attention has been given to learners of other languages. As noted above, the requisites for learning to read vary across languages. There is no doubt that we need more research-based information on literacy acquisition in diverse languages other that English. In view of the research paucity, this volume represents a much-needed addition to the literature. In this special-theme issue, Eugenia Kerek and Pekka Niemi detail the unique structure of Russian orthography in order to examine how it may affect the organization and acquisition of reading skills in Russian. They offer a detailed review of phonemic–graphemic correspondences http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

From the Guest Editors

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in order to highlight the difficulties beginning readers and writers may face. In the article they also study insights and viewpoints that are essential to present-day research and theory on reading. Christine E. Parsons and Fiona Lyddy provide an analysis of oral reading errors in order to examine reading strategies utilized by children studying English and Irish in different schools in Ireland. They specifically examine strategies the children use when they are faced with unfamiliar words. The detailed description of English and Irish orthographies is fundamental to the analysis, and the authors skillfully discuss findings in light of specific orthographic variations. Overall findings highlight the different strategies employed by children learning to read in English and Irish. We would like to thank our long list of reviewers who made this special issue possible: Elizabeth Bernhardt, Heidi Byrnes, Nobuko Chikamatsu-Chandler, Pierre Cormier, Megumi Hamada, Margot Haynes, Jan H. Hulstijn, Yoshiko Mori, Leslie Reese, Robert Rueda, JoAnn Hammadou Sullivan, and Rose-Marie Weber. Their invaluable and insightful comments on the many submitted manuscripts will serve as a catalyst for more research on this topic. The reviewer’s comments and suggestions were extremely valuable in the quality and final outcome of this special volume. We want to thank Richard Day and Thom Hudson for the invitation to edit this volume, and we hold enormous gratitude for the assistant editor of RFL, Zhijun (David) Wen, for his hard work and dedication.

Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2009, Volume 21, No. 1 pp. 1–21

Russian orthography and learning to read Eugenia Kerek and Pekka Niemi University of Turku Finland

Abstract The unique structure of Russian orthography may influence the organization and acquisition of reading skills in Russian. The present review examines phonemicgraphemic correspondences in Russian orthography and discusses its grain-size units and possible difficulties for beginning readers and writers. Russian orthography is governed by a hierarchical, relatively regular 3-tier system of rules, complicated by numerous exceptions. Many theorists find that the key to this regularised complexity lies in Russian morphology. This review presents the perspectives of prominent Russian linguists on what linguistic units Russian orthography represents, and it evaluates and analyses their relevance for contemporary reading research. Keywords: reading acquisition, Russian, grapheme-to-phoneme regularity, grain-size unit

The bulk of reading research has been conducted on the English language. However, understanding is growing that theoretical models of reading and reading acquisition cannot be based on properties of only one language, even the most commonly used one (for a detailed review, see Share, 2008). Cross-linguistic comparisons have become popular (Bruck, Genesee, & Caravolas, 1997; Cossu, Shankweiler, Liberman, Katz, & Tola, 1988; Wimmer & Goswami, 1994), and in multilingual communities, several studies have investigated bilinguals’ reading strategies in diverse language combinations (Comeau, Cormier, Grandmaison, & Lacroix, 1999; Durgunoglu, 1997; Wade-Wooley & Geva, 1999). Linguistic diversity serves as a natural laboratory for identifying the language-specific properties of the reading process and its core components common to all languages and orthographies. Reading instruction in shallow orthographies usually relies on basic phoneme-grapheme correspondences, and the acquisition of decoding skills in these orthographies is completed within fairly short periods of time. Deeper orthographies constitute more complexly organised systems, the mastery of which demands more time and effort (Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003). Constraints placed by the degree of regularity in phoneme-grapheme correspondences influence processing strategies in different orthographies, as has recently been described by the psycholinguistic grain-size theory (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005, 2006). This theoretical framework suggests that learning to read in regular orthographies requires reliance on “small” psycholinguistic grain-size units, whereas the reduced reliability of small grain-size units in more irregular orthographies may encourage beginning readers to develop multiple grain-size reading http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

Kerek & Niemi: Russian orthography and learning to read

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units. Consequently, reading acquisition in irregular orthographies demands more time and greater effort to develop several recoding strategies and a high degree of flexibility in reliance on grain units of varying sizes. The inventory of such units is different for specific orthographies and is the result of the interplay between the orthography’s inherent structural features, its correspondences with the phonology in question, and the dominant methods of reading instruction, which are in their turn often motivated by the nature of the orthography. A detailed explanation of how orthographic complexity may slow down reading acquisition was presented by Frost (1998). Frost’s strong phonological model suggests that during the initial phase of word recognition, a fast prelexical computation occurs, when letters or letter clusters are converted into phonemes or syllables. This procedure results in underspecified phonological representations, based on unambiguous letters. Frost suggested that the phonological code used for lexical access is more detailed in shallow orthographies and relatively impoverished in deep ones. A reader of deeper orthographies must develop grain units of the optimal size for fast conversion into preliminary phonological representations. A beginning reader then starts out with phonological recoding of single letters into phonemes and, as the process of reading acquisition continues, learns to convert larger units of letters into phonemic clusters. According to Frost, a skilled reader is defined by the speed of the assembly process, the size of the computed units, and the efficiency of lexical access using underspecified phonological information. Analyses of specific features of orthographies may be used to predict grain-size units used in reading. For example, based on findings from Danish, an orthography with multiple complexities, Elbro (2006) presented a reading acquisition model based on the principle of economy where the most reliable grapheme-phoneme correspondences are learned first, and more complex and less productive associations are learned later. Elbro suggested that all deviations from the alphabetic principle, even those linked to predictable pronunciations, have a disruptive effect on beginning reading. He suggested the following sequence of literacy acquisition in Danish: (a) learning of single letter-single sound correspondences, (b) learning of letter-sound patterns with conditional pronunciations, (c) learning of spelling based on morphemic orthographic knowledge, and (d) learning of word-specific orthographic patterns. According to Elbro, conditional pronunciations are learned primarily in the smallest possible units (vowel-consonant combinations) rather than inside bigger units (rimes). Morphemic and word-specific pronunciations take a long time to learn, even though Elbro allows for the possibility that some high-frequency morphemes or words may be recognised as whole patterns. Russian is one of the world’s most widely used languages, one of the six official languages of the United Nations. However, despite the current interest in reading strategies promoted by different orthographies, the number of publications based on Russian data is strikingly small. The attention of Russian linguists and psychologists has traditionally been directed at the difficulty of spelling in Russian, and not reading, which was considered a relatively easy skill to acquire (Inshakova, 2004). While theories dealing with the structure of Russian writing and the methods of teaching it at school have been a focal point of discussions inside the Russian linguistic and pedagogical research community, difficulties in reading acquisition for a long time remained the domain of speech therapy and special education. Despite considerable effort in studying developmental dyslexia in Russian (Kornev, 1997; Lalayeva & Venediktova, 2001), little is known about the strategies a beginning Russian reader relies on. Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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The scarcity of research is especially unfortunate because Russian phonology and orthography possess a number of unique features, making Russian an interesting test case for current theories of word recognition and reading acquisition. Russian has a rather elegant orthographic system: on the one hand, quite complex and hierarchical, and on the other hand, organised around a dominant principle and therefore, sufficiently regular and predictable, even though the number of exceptions is high. This combination of complexity and regularity is what makes Russian orthography interesting for comparative reading research. The present review aims to contribute to this research by undertaking an in-depth analysis of Russian phonological and orthographic structure and introducing the English-speaking reader to works by Russian scholars on this subject. A detailed description of Russian orthography and its possible difficulties for beginning readers have been presented in English by Grigorenko (2003, 2006). A short but informative article by Liberman (1980) is devoted to the same topic. The difference between the present review and previous similar accounts is that it puts the description of the special features of Russian orthography into the context of existing theories about the structural organization of this complex system and about reading acquisition in different types of orthographies. A discussion of the implications of the special features of Russian orthography for defining the dominant strategies used by beginning and skilled readers in Russian is the main goal of the present review.

Major Features of Russian Morphology and Phonology Unlike major European languages, where grammatical meanings are often expressed analytically, that is, by grammatical constructions rather than morphology, Russian is a synthetic language with a vast variety of affixes and endings. In contrast to other morphologically rich languages, like Finnish or Hungarian, where morphemes are glued to each other, morphemic fusion is a widespread phenomenon in Russian. Morphemic and syllabic boundaries often do not coincide, and analyzing the morphological structure of a Russian word may be a complicated task. A word in Russian may have several prefixes, suffixes, and an ending, for example, пред|на|знач|ен|н|ый (“pred|na|znach|en|nyj,” having the purpose of). 1 The Russian phonological system contains 42 phonemes (differences of opinion concerning the phonemic inventory of Russian are outside the scope of this article, but see Bondarko, 1998). The syllabic structure of Russian allows closed syllables and consonant clusters in both the onset and coda positions. A consonant cluster in Russian may contain up to four consonants, for example, встреча (“vstrecha,” meeting), and each grapheme in such clusters usually corresponds to a separate phoneme (but see exceptions in Table 1). Languages with a synthetic type of grammar often have phonological systems based on paradigmatic connections. As a result of the modifications phonemes undergo in speech, Russian phonology is characterised by a vast variety of positional vowel and consonant alternations. These paradigmatic relations between phonemes determine the system of phoneme-grapheme relations in Russian. In Russian orthography, stress is marked only in dictionaries and books for beginning readers or nonnative learners of Russian, while skilled readers are expected to assign stress on the basis of Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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their linguistic competence. However, stress constitutes a central feature of the phonetic structure of a Russian word, and stress assignment is a vital factor in reconstructing the holistic shape of a Russian word. Erroneous stress assignment hampers comprehension or may even change word meaning, for example, мук’а (“muk’a,” flour) and м’ука (“m’uka,” suffering). Table 1. Some common consonant clusters and their pronunciations Cluster Pronunciation Example Clusters with unpronounced consonant здн [зн] праздник (holiday) рдц [рц] сердце (heart) лнц [нц] солнце (sun) стн [сн] лестница (stairs) вств [ств] чувство (feeling) Other clusters жч зч сч чт чн тц дц тч дч тся ться

[щ’] [шт] [шн] [ц] [ч’] [цца]

мужчина (man) извозчик (cabman) счастье (happiness) что (what) конечно (of course) вкратце (in brief) двадцать (twenty) лётчик (pilot, flyer) докладчик (reporter) учится ((he) studies) учиться (to study)

Stress in Russian is free (can fall on any syllable in a word) and mobile (can move to another syllable). The mobility of Russian stress has a morphological motivation: it is often shifted in word formation or inflexion, for example, город (“gorod,” city) and города (“goroda,” cities). Due to its unpredictability, stress assignment in Russian demands a well-developed visual anticipation ability, which is often problematic for beginning readers whose cognitive resources are entirely focused on the task of sequential phonological recoding (see Rayner, 1986). Stress in Russian is strongly centred. The stressed syllable is pronounced with much more prominence than the remaining syllables. A Russian word is a complex unity of syllables with varying degrees of vowel intensity and length, organised around the stressed syllable. Stressed vowels increase in length and intensity, while unstressed ones undergo different types of reduction depending on their positions relative to the stressed one. Especially affected are the vowel phonemes o and e, which respectively sound like a and i when unstressed, for example, cова (“sova,” owl, pronounced as “sava”), and река (“reka,” river, pronounced as “rika”). Russian orthography does not represent vowel reduction in unstressed positions, which is one of the sources of its numerous irregularities. The Russian consonant system is much more complex than the vowel system (Bondarko, 1998), but paradigmatic consonant alternations are more systematic than the vowel alternations. One of the most fundamental characteristics of the Russian consonant system is the distinction between Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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soft (palatalised) and hard consonants. Sometimes the hardness-softness dichotomy is the only meaning-distinguishing feature, for example, вес (“ves,” weight) and весь (“vesj,” whole), брат (“brat,” brother), and брать (“bratj,” take). The most typical consonant alternations in Russian are progressive assimilations of voiced or unvoiced obstruents (“d” in “vodka” is pronounced as “t” because of the following “k”), and devoicing of voiced obstruents in word-final position, like in German. As a result, Russian contains numerous homophones, and this is known to cause difficulties for beginning writers, for example, кот (“kot,” cat) and код (“kod,” code). Language-specific features of the Russian morphological and phonological systems, as described above, influence the process of language acquisition (Ceytlin, 2000). Grigorenko (2006) pointed out that the whole Russian phonological system is characterised by extraordinary fluidity, where the quantity and quality of both vowel and consonant phonemes are highly dependent on their positions. Bondarko (1998) suggested that high variability in the phonetic form of a Russian word might require complex psycholinguistic mechanisms of speech perception and production. The existence of strongly centred stress in Russian, where the stressed syllable gains prominence at the expense of unstressed ones, results in the division of disyllabic and multisyllabic Russian words into two perceptual parts, the prestressed-stressed, and the poststressed, where sounds are sometimes totally blurred. The diminished distinctness of phonological representations of lexical items in long-term memory may cause difficulties in the development of phonological awareness and in reading acquisition (Elbro, Borstrøm, & Petersen, 1998; Elbro & Pallesen, 2002). This idea is supported by the results of experiments with prereaders and beginning readers of Russian, reported by Lepskaya (1987) and Bogomazov (2001), who showed that the indistinctness of the poststressed parts of multisyllabic words in Russian delays the development of phonological awareness for the phonemes used in those parts of the words.

Irregularities of Grapheme-phoneme Correspondences in Russian Not all language-specific features of Russian morphology and phonology are reflected in writing. As a result, the spelling of Russian words may be difficult for beginning readers and writers. This part of the review classifies the irregularities of Russian orthography from the standpoint of their predictability. Theorists of Russian writing largely accept Baudouin de Courtenay’s (1963) division of the Russian writing system into two broad levels: graphics and orthography. These terms, widely used in the Russian scientific and pedagogical literature, may be confusing for Western specialists. Instead of being used to denote a system of writing as a whole, in Russian, the term orthography is reserved for describing cases where the choice of grapheme in writing is not clear (weak positions). To make the choice, the writer must try to find a related word in which he or she can identify the phoneme in question in a strong position. For vowels, the strong position, in which the phonemic quality is at its best, is under stress; for consonants, the strong position is before a vowel. The term alphabetic rules is used to describe one-to-one phoneme-grapheme correspondences (Baudouin de Courtenay, 1963; Zinder, 1987). The combinatory possibilities of encoding phonemes within syllables are determined by the rules of graphics.

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Predictable Irregularities (I): Alphabetic Rules and Graphics Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet of 33 letters, including 2 special markers, soft sign ь and hard sign ъ, which have no phonemic values (see Table 2). Table 2. The Russian alphabet Letter Closest English letter Аа a Бб b Вв v Гг g Дд d Ее e Ёё e Жж zh Зз z Ии i Йй i Кк k Лл l Мм m Нн n Оо o Пп p Рр r Сс s Тт t Уу u Фф f Хх kh Цц ts Чч ch Шш sh Щщ shch Ъъ “ Ыы i, y Ьь ‘ Ээ e Юю iu Яя ia

Approximation of pronunciation in English father box vest get do yet yolk vision zebra yield short “yi” kinky lip mother nice song put rock soup top book fat home mats chicken shop shch silent busy, bill onion band new yuppy

Phoneme-grapheme correspondences are not always straightforward in Russian because many letters in the Russian alphabet are not bound to representing only one phoneme each. Attention must be paid to the so-called syllabic (Ivanova, 1966) or positional (Moiseev, 1987) principle of Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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Russian graphics. The essence of this is that phonemic values cannot be assigned to the consonants and vowels in a syllable without evaluating either or both the left or right context of a given grapheme. One of the most common examples is the representation of palatalised consonant phonemes: 15 consonant letters out of the 21 each correspond to two phonemes, where one letter signifies both hard and soft consonant phonemes. Russian has no diphthongs, and vowel phonemes are not divided into long and short. Six vowel phonemes are represented in writing by 10 letters (see Table 3). This includes 4 letters that each represent a combination of the original phoneme with the phoneme y (as in yes) or with a preceding soft consonant. For this purpose, the so-called combined graphemes (Kuzmina, 2005) or syllabemes (Pavlova, 2000) я, ё, ю, е, and и are used (see Table 3). Table 3. Russian vowel of their pronunciation Russian vowel letter Аа Ее Ёё Ии Оо Уу Ыы Ээ Юю Яя

letters, corresponding phonemes, and English approximations Phoneme A y+е or after a soft consonant y+o or after a soft consonant Ee O Oo I E y+oo or after a soft consonant y+a or after a soft consonant

English approximation as in father as in yes as in yoghurt as in see as in object as in look as in bill as in get as in you as in yard

In positions where a consonant is not followed by a vowel, for example, at the end of a word or before another consonant, softness is indicated by the soft sign ь. The soft sign has no phonemic value and is sometimes treated as part of a complex grapheme or a diacritic (Scherba, 1983; Zinder, 1987). The pronunciation of the consonants, depending on their hardness or softness, is illustrated in Table 4. Table 4. Rules for reading hard-soft consonants Consonants Hard (before а, о, у, ы, э, ъ) б был (was) в высота (height) г гусь (goose) д дар (gift) з роза (rose) к конь (horse) л лук (onion) м мать (mother) н новый (new) п папка (file) р рама (frame) с сумка (bag) т там (there) ф шкафы (wardrobes) х холод (cold) Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

Soft (before е, ё, и, ю, я, ь) бил ((he) beat) весна (spring) деньги (money) дядя (uncle) зима (winter) кино (cinema) люк (hatch) мел (chalk) небо (sky) песня (song) говорю ((I) speak) сестра (sister) тема (topic) физика (physics) стихи (verses)

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The application of the syllabic principle in this case is very functional because it allows encoding of the phonological opposition hardness-softness in a rational and economical way by using 4 extra vowel letters instead of 15 extra consonant letters. Some linguists see the relationship between soft and hard consonants in Russian phonology as hierarchical, where the soft consonants are the marked members of the opposition, and therefore, the vowel letters that do not signal softness are not explicitly perceived as signalling hardness (Bondarko, 1981; Kuzmina, 1981). Hardness is seen as the default attribute of a consonant letter. However, others view the use of а, у, о, э, ы, a consonant and the absence of the soft sign, or word-final position as markers of the preceding consonant’s hardness (Skoblikova, 1974). Another case of irregular phoneme-grapheme correspondence in Russian involves the soft-set vowel letters in the opposite version of the syllabic principle, when a single letter stands for two phonemes, the phoneme й and a vowel. This function is also contextual, and the reader has to analyse the context in front of the soft-set letter because it is used when й is combined with a vowel in word-initial position (e.g., юбка, “jubka,” skirt), after a vowel (e.g., моя, “moja,” my), or after ь/ъ (e.g., бельё, “beljo,” linen). This irregularity is often difficult for beginning writers, who tend to use the combination й + vowel instead of the syllabemes я, ё, ю, and е (Kuzmina, 2005). These irregularities in Russian graphics have serious implications for the practice of reading instruction. The written syllable in Russian is an inseparable unit of mutually dependent parts, which according to Ivanova (1966), is a basic reading and writing unit. The consonant-vowel (CV) segments inside different types of syllables are often used as the central reading unit by primer authors. Determining whether the consonant should be palatalised is only possible by looking at the next (vowel) letter, and therefore, approaches to reading CV syllables, especially sound blending inside a syllable, is one of the central issues in the history of reading instruction in Russia. Elkonin (1988) considered developing anticipatory orientation to the vowel the central element of the reading process in Russian and suggested that initial reading instruction should focus on the development of this orientation. Previously, Russian primers separated palatalised and non-palatalised consonants, introducing in the beginning only words that contained “hard” consonants. Today, consonant letters are presented at once as signifying both the palatalised and non-palatalised phonemes. The mechanism of decoding a CV syllable is considered to be the same for both types of consonant phonemes; it demands analysing the context to the right of the consonant letter. Most modern primers address the irregularities of Russian graphics by presenting letters in blocks to prepare young learners for the application of the syllabic principle. Children are trained to detect a CV syllable inside a word and read it as a unit, while other members of intrasyllabic consonant clusters are added on to the blended CV unit (Goretsky, Kiriushkin, & Shanko, 1988). Kornev (1997) suggested that syllables become the operative grain-size units in reading acquisition in Russian after only 3–6 months of reading instruction, whereas letters remain the main grain-size units in writing acquisition, at least during the 1st year of instruction. To sum up, although Russian graphics can often represent one-to-one phoneme-grapheme correspondences, they also contain numerous irregularities. Their rules are highly positional and Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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far from straightforward. At the same time, they are a sufficiently logical system with a high degree of regularity and predictability. Predictable Irregularities (II): Orthography The complexity of phoneme-grapheme correspondences in Russian significantly increases when, on top of the rules of Russian graphics, responsible for reflecting phonemes in their strong positions, the rules of orthography are applied to the phonemes in weak positions and many letters acquire phonemic values that are not defined by the rules of graphics. Rusakova and Ceytlin (1999) found that in a standard Russian text, 70% of graphemes are determined by graphic rules, and 30% by both graphic and orthographic rules. Russian linguists’ decades-long heated debate on the underlying principle of Russian orthography was aimed at deciding which linguistic unit is central for it, phoneme or morpheme. This debate was prompted by differing definitions of what constitutes a phoneme. Phonemically indefinite segments (weak positions) are interpreted in different ways by the Moscow and St. Petersburg phonetic schools, which has a direct impact on their choices of unit of analysis for Russian orthography. Linguists of the Moscow school (Avanesov, 1956; Panov, 1979; Reformatskij, 1955) see positionally alternating phonemic values within the same morpheme as a single unit consisting of a strong phoneme present in the strong position and other weak members of the paradigm, which appear in the positions of neutralization (weak positions). This phonemic row is, according to the Moscow school, reflected in writing through its strongposition representative. While the Moscow school emphasised paradigmatic connections between sounds, the St. Petersburg school adopted a linear approach. St. Petersburg linguists (Bondarko, 1998; Ivanova, 1971; Scherba, 1983) do not accept the idea of a phoneme as a complex of strong and weak phonemes and view cases of phonemic indistinctness in weak positions as phonemic alternations. The prevailing mechanism of writing in Russian is supposed to be morphological analogy, aiming at the visual unity of the morpheme. Both theoretical approaches describe the same phenomenon with the help of different linguistic units and levels of abstraction. The basic idea of the phonemic principle (Moscow school) is that positional alternations of sounds belong to one and the same phoneme, always reproduced in writing by the same letter, whereas the morphemic principle (St. Petersburg school) sees different phonemes alternating within the same morpheme and represented by the same letter to preserve morphological continuity. Russian linguists disagree on whether cases where graphemes represent phonemes in weak positions are part of regular phoneme-grapheme correspondences and can be seen as some kind of secondary alphabetic values (Gvozdev, 1954; Ivanova, 1971; Osipov, 1970; Scherba, 1983; Selezniova, 1981; Skoblikova, 1974). The primary source of these debates is the regularity of Russian orthography’s deviations from transparency. Grigorenko (2003) described writing in Russian as largely morphophonemic and noted a logical, regular structure underlying word alterations that may seem irregular at the surface level. Ivanova (1966) wrote that writing in Russian dissociates from pronunciation, but only at certain points such as morphemic boundaries and the absolute end of the word for consonants and inside the morphemes for vowels.

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Unpredictable Irregularities: The Traditional Principle Russian orthography, like many others, is not based exclusively on one principle, but rather on a combination of several. According to Liberman (1980, p. 54), “Russian spelling is phonemic to a point, very morphological and largely traditional.” Russian linguists disagree on exactly how many principles are at work. Most definitions take into account the regularity of the rules upon which a principle is based (Selezniova, 2004; Zinder, 1987). Predictable irregularities are verifiable; a phoneme in the weak position can be checked by finding a related word with a different stress pattern where the same phoneme is in the strong position, for example, вода (“vod’a,” water) and водка (“v’odka,” vodka). If a phoneme in the weak position cannot be related to a phoneme in the strong position, the spelling of the word simply has to be memorised, for example, собака (“sobaka,” dog), where the phonemic quality of o is blurred, and no other word or word form has it in the strong position (under stress). Often, these are words of unclear etymology or loan words from other languages. Sometimes the written form of such a word will adequately represent its phonemes, and sometimes not. These spellings are often grouped together as the traditional principle. Ivanova (1977) described the traditional principle as one where phonemes in weak positions are represented by one of the phonologically possible letters. Though the choice of a grapheme is arbitrary, the number of available graphemes is, in fact, limited. Besides, some common consonant clusters in Russian have a pronunciation that traditionally deviates from each consonant's respective representation in writing. Some examples are presented in Table 1. Words spelled according to the traditional principle are often problematic for beginning writers. However, it is not clear whether the unpredictable nature of orthographic irregularities in the spelling of these words affects their reading in any way.

Educational Practice Varying definitions of the underlying principles of Russian orthography, even though these definitions are not always stated explicitly, determine to a large extent the structure and the choice of reading instruction materials in Russian schools. Several types of reading and writing programs with supplementary materials, based on different principles and approaches to reading acquisition, are available for use in Russian schools. Most programs are phonics-based, but they differ in their presentation of irregularities of Russian orthography. Traditionally, most of the reading and writing instruction programs used in Russian schools have been based on the ideas of the St. Petersburg school. Reading instruction in Russia does not deal explicitly with the grapheme-phoneme irregularities on the orthographic level after the basic grapheme-phoneme correspondences and the rules of graphics have been learned. Instead, the rules of Russian orthography are extensively covered during writing lessons and supplemented by training in stress assignment, the blending of phonemes into syllables, morphological analysis, and lexicology (the study of lexical meanings and derivational patterns of words). Since the 1970s, reading and writing instruction programs of a new type have been created by groups of researchers interested in the ideas of the Moscow school and the possibility of guiding Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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students in their discovery of the underlying phonological principles of Russian. Such programs (Elkonin, Tsukerman, & Bugrimenko, 1995; Repkin, Levin, Timchenko, & Zhedek, 1994; Soloveichik, 2008) draw the attention of students to positional changes in phonemes inside words rather than to morphological connections between words. These programs are of an experimental nature and aim at helping students to see the phonology and orthography of Russian as complex but logically organised systems. The spelling exercise shown in Figure 1 demands that the learner make a choice between two possible letters based on the position of the sound that they signify.

Figure 1. A spelling exercise from Soloveichik’s (2008) textbook K tainam nashego jazyka [Towards the mysteries of our language].

According to Share (2008), the predominant emphasis on reading accuracy is the result of the anglocentric focus in reading acquisition research. Goswami (2006) pointed out that for children learning to read in most European languages, the main challenge is to achieve fluency rather than accuracy (see also Wimmer & Mayringer, 2002). Reading instruction in Russian schools is speed-focused and dominated by reading aloud from Grade 1; teachers traditionally measure students’ success in reading acquisition twice a year by counting the number of words each child can read per minute. Reading instruction in Russian schools focuses mainly on introducing children to basic phoneme-grapheme correspondences and to blending sounds inside CV syllables, whereby special attention is paid to vowels as the main actors in contextual effects inside CV syllables (Kostromina & Nagayeva, 1999; Omorokova, 1997; Starzhinskaya, 1988). Beginning readers in Russian schools are expected to reach the stage of accurate syllabic reading by the end of the first grade. After a child has achieved the stage of syllabic reading, he or she gets little help from the teacher in reaching complete fluency. At the same time, the demands placed on the beginning readers’ fluency at school are quite high, often prompting parents to prepare for the pressures of the school program by teaching children to read prior to school entry. Recently, the educational standards have been changed to include not only the quantity of words read per minute but also reading comprehension.

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Learning to Read Russian: Possible Grain-Size Units Share (2008) noted that any orthography in effect can be seen as an attempt to compromise between providing beginners with an efficient self-teaching mechanism and at the same time providing distinctive word- or morpheme-specific visual orthographic configurations needed for automatised skilled word recognition. Orthographies differ in the emphasis they put on different parts of this dual function. Grigorenko (2006, p. 319) wrote that the Russian language is “heaven for experts and hell for novice writers and readers.” Indeed, many features of Russian orthography, such as letter-sound patterns with conditional pronunciations, morphemic spellings, and word-specific orthographic patterns, are the same as those described by Elbro (2006) as disruptive for the process of reading acquisition in deeper orthographies. According to the psycholinguistic grain-size theory (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005, 2006), beginning readers in deeper orthographies develop multiple reading strategies to cope with the irregularities presented by such writing systems. The structure of Russian orthography, which is at the same time both sufficiently complex and quite consistent in its complexity, presupposes the existence of several grain-size units. On the basis of our analysis of Russian orthography as a system and of Russian linguists’ ideas about its internal structure, we discuss possible grain-size units for reading in Russian and research questions, which in our opinion are relevant for international reading research and could be explored using Russian-language material. Obviously, this discussion is of a speculative nature, and the suggestions made must be verified by experimental results. As shown above, Russian linguists from different schools of thought hold conflicting views on the nature of Russian orthography. The most disputed problem in the linguistic theory of Russian orthography, whether its regularised complexities are motivated by morphological or by phonological factors, has relevance for choosing possible grain-size units of reading in Russian. If the description of Russian writing as phonemic-morphological (Selezniova, 1997) is accepted, reading acquisition in Russian should logically at a certain point involve morphemes as grainsize units. If, on the other hand, Russian readers rely on the type of phonemes suggested by the Moscow school, which views the sounds in weak positions as positional variants of the original phoneme in the strong position, the focus might shift from morphemes to Moscow-school type phonemes (i.e., abstract phoneme-sized units, which can be read in different ways depending on their positions in words). Decoding in this case proceeds in a relatively linear way as the reader copes with cases of phonemic indistinctness (weak positions) without needing to access the morpheme inside of which this phoneme is read. At the same time, different types of literacyrelated processes and tasks may require different types of grain-size units. Bogomazov (2005) came up with a hypothesis, supported by experimental data, which can be considered an elegant compromise between the conflicting views on the nature of Russian orthography and the phonological units it encodes. Bogomazov suggested that Russian children gradually develop a two-level phonological system, starting with phonemes of the St. Petersburg school, which mainly serve the processes of speech perception (and reading), and then adding a more abstract level of Moscow-school phonemes, which are used in speech production (and writing). Bogomazov noted that the development of Moscow-school phonemes occurs primarily Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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inside the consonant system, responsible for expressing lexical meanings, while vowels mainly serve to produce grammatical forms. If a morpheme is located in the prestressed part of the word, as is often the case with morphemes carrying lexical meaning in Russian, the formation of Moscow-school-type phonemes in this part of the word occurs more rapidly. In terms of reading acquisition, the implication of this theory is that beginning readers of Russian rely on graphemephoneme correspondences, whereas skilled readers often use morphemes as grain-size reading units. Bogomazov noted that adult foreigners learning to read and write in Russian might in some cases develop a two-level phonological system in reverse because they are primarily influenced by the written variant of Russian, so they tend to pronounce Russian words the way they are written, without applying the required phonetic modifications. There is yet another candidate for the role of a larger grain-size unit in Russian. Besides basic phonemic recoding, reading in Russian requires constant attention to the intrasyllabic structure because the quality of the consonant phoneme depends on the following vowel letter. The CV syllable in Russian orthography is an especially tightly cohesive unit, and most reading instruction programs include special exercises aimed at promoting syllabic reading. While positionality is a structural feature in Russian graphics, and the syllabic principle is entirely based on syntagmatic relations, the morphological principle emphasises the vertical, paradigmatic connections. How the skill of using and coordinating these two operational units is acquired and developed has not been investigated experimentally. This dual task might require considerable attentional resources and complicate the process of reading skill automatisation. The processing costs of attending in parallel to different grain-size units (phoneme, syllable, and morpheme) can be expected at different points of reading acquisition in Russian. Still, some Russian linguists disagree with the traditional division of the Russian system of writing into graphics and orthography. Kuzmina (1981) of the Moscow school argued that writing in Russian does not presuppose consecutive stages where the rules of graphics are applied first, and then the initial draft is corrected according to the rules of orthography. The process has one stage, taking into account two types of conditions for the choice of grapheme: phonological (graphic) and morphological (orthographic). Linguists of the St. Petersburg school do not accept that the division between graphics and orthography presupposes dual coding. Selezniova (1981) noted that a distinction should be made between the acquisition of rules, which is indeed done in two stages, and their application, which is a unitary process. Kuzmina (2005) studied beginning writers’ errors and concluded that spontaneous acquisition of rules of graphics and orthography does not occur in a linear sequence. After the initial stage, when children only use one-to-one phoneme-grapheme correspondences, graphic and orthographic rules seem to be acquired in parallel. A presentation of all of the principles applicable to written Russian can be found in Table 5. Lexical stress is another important aspect of Russian phonology that might influence the development of reading strategies in Russian. Stress patterns in Russian words vary greatly, and stress assignment is vital for reconstructing the spoken form of the written word. In particular, the place of stress determines the type of position (strong or weak) of the vowel phonemes in a word. On the other hand, stress dependencies in multisyllabic words span over several syllables, and therefore, the place of stress in a word cannot be determined by looking at a part. This is a bit like the chicken-and-egg problem: you cannot read the word accurately unless you know the Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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stress pattern, but you cannot know the stress pattern unless you read the word. That is why in Russian primers and other books for beginning readers, stress is marked by a special diacritic ( ́) above the stressed vowel. However, because stress in Russian is often located far from a word’s beginning, finding the stressed syllable is not effortless for beginning readers. Table 5. The most important principles of the Russian writing system Level Regularity Phonemica 1:1 phoneme-grapheme correspondences No

Irregularity

Syllabic

Vowels or softness-hardness markers determine the softness-hardness of the preceding consonant; some letters are syllabemes

Exceptions: ж, ш, ч, щ, ц, й

Morphologicalphonemicb principle

Preserves the unity of morphemes and represents a phoneme in a weak position

Morphemes and phonemes in positions that have no other verifiable counterparts

Traditional (vocabulary words)

Words are spelled in a way that does not follow any of the above principles

Item-based irregularity

Note. aSt. Petersburg school phonemes or Moscow school phonemes in strong positions. bMoscow school phonemes in weak positions for which there are counterparts in strong positions.

Skilled Reading in Russian: Possible Grain-Size Units Ziegler and Goswami (2005) argued that reading development is a continuum stretching well into adulthood, with skilled reading bearing developmental footprints of the constraints imposed by the orthographic system. From this point of view, an analysis of language-specific features of the Russian orthography may help in defining processing strategies that skilled readers in Russian might use. According to the minimality principle postulated by Frost (1998), in word recognition, skilled readers initially rely on minimal phonological representation, where prosodic information and segments containing phonological ambiguity are not available prior to lexical access and can be activated later. What kind of minimal representation, sufficient for lexical access, can be produced by skilled readers without knowing the place of stress in a word in Russian? Because knowing the place of stress is affected primarily by the reader’s knowledge of the quality of vowel phonemes, their representation in the initial phase of word recognition cannot be complete. At the same time, vowel letters in Russian are involved together with soft and hard signs in contextual effects, signalling the softness-hardness of the preceding consonant. Therefore, they cannot be completely absent from the initial phonological representation, unless we suppose that information about consonant softness-hardness is not important at this stage. In Russian linguistic theory, soft and hard consonants are considered to be separate phonemes; consequently, some information about the vowel letter or the soft or hard sign following the consonant is plausibly present in this preliminary phonological representation. This might be very general, such as letters signalling softness (or hardness). Voicedness is one more characteristic of consonant phonemes, which depends on the quality of the preceding or following phoneme. The reader needs to know if the following phoneme is a vowel and if the Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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preceding or the following consonant is voiced or voiceless. This information should probably also be present in the unspecified representation. Initial representations for skilled readers in Russian can thus take the form of syllables or morphemes with unspecified phonemic values for those consonant and vowel letters that do not represent the phonemes in the spoken form of the word. These values can be assigned after lexical access has occurred and information about lexical stress has become available. Skilled readers in Russian, just like skilled writers, might then apply the Moscow type of phonemes (phonemic rows) in the prelexical access stage and specify the phonemic values for phonemically indistinct word segments at a later stage of reading recognition on the basis of the information about strong and weak positions derive from stress assignment. This concerns primarily the vowel phonemes, because, as shown above, the identity of the consonantal skeleton of the word can be more or less defined already in the initial representations. Frost (1998) described his own experiments in Hebrew and of his colleagues in English (Berent & Perfetti, 1995), which showed that initial unspecified representations at the prelexical access stage in these languages have a consonantal basis, where the vowel information is supplied in the second cycle of processing. The same might be true for skilled reading in Russian. In Russian, consonants are more informative than vowels (Bogomazov, 2001; Silchenkova, 2002); for example, vowels are the first to be omitted when words are shortened. However, the strong degree of positionality inherent in Russian orthography makes extracting at least some information about the vowel letters indispensable even for skilled readers. Note that word recognition processes in silent reading and reading aloud are not identical (Frost, 1998; Share, 2008). In particular, while for silent reading, minimal preliminary phonological information might suffice, reading aloud demands well-specified phonological representations. Consequently, grain-size units for reading aloud and silent reading might also be different. Reading aloud demands much more detailed representations for vowels and precise and welltimed assignment of stress.

Conclusion In the present review, the Russian writing system has been described as a complex yet sufficiently consistent system that presents a beginning reader with several levels of complexity and consistency to cope with. Other researchers who have written on the topic share this viewpoint (Grigorenko, 2006; Liberman, 1980). In this article, the writing system has been examined from the point of view of possible grain-size units involved in both beginning and skilled reading in Russian. This approach has been prompted by recent suggestions of Ziegler and Goswami (2005, 2006) that differences in orthographic systems result in differences in reading strategies developed by beginning readers. The discussion of principles of writing in Russian and the controversies related to their definitions highlight the possibility of multiple grain-size units not only in writing, which is widely acknowledged, but also in reading. A detailed analysis of the phonological and morphological structure of Russian words serves as a basis for a prognosis of the possible complexities of learning to read in Russian. Such specific traits of Russian phonology as differentiation between soft and hard consonants, which is Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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signalled in writing by the following letter, demand special attention and long-term strategic training in blending syllable components by beginning readers. The fact that Russian phonotactics allows complex onsets does not make this task any easier. Morphemic (phonemic, according to the Moscow school) continuity in written Russian demands well-developed morphological awareness. However, analyzing a Russian word into its constituent morphemes is often difficult because of wide-spread morphemic fusion. The development of morphological awareness is also hampered by suprasegmental features such as the extreme variability of Russian stress patterns and the fact that distinctiveness in the pronunciation of different parts of Russian words is dependent on their positions in relation to the stressed syllable. Phonetic modifications in the quality of Russian consonants also prevent a Russian speaker from retaining an image of a morpheme as a distinct perceptive unit. In many ways the difficulties that beginning readers in Russian encounter might be similar to the ones outlined for Danish learners by Elbro (2006), for example, letter-sound patterns with conditional pronunciations (syllables), spellings based on morphemic orthographic knowledge, and word-specific orthographic patterns (traditional spellings). Danish is one of the deeper European orthographies, and its complexities slow down the process of reading acquisition, as shown by Seymour, Aro, and Erskine (2003). However, the comparable degree of complexity in Russian does not necessarily mean that it will bring about the same results as in Danish. The reason for this optimism is the predictability of many irregularities in written Russian words. Coping with complexities, of course, demands more training, but because many of them obey certain rules, eventually mastering them could bring about a qualitative change in reading strategies and an emergence of multiple grain-size units, which beginning readers learn to rely on. These hypothetical suggestions should, of course, be verified experimentally. Some topical research questions concerning reading acquisition in Russian are the following. How does the high variability in the phonological and morphological structure of Russian lexical items influence learning to read in this language? How do the irregularities of the Russian writing system influence reading acquisition? How are reading accuracy and fluency in Russian related to the complexities of Russian orthography? What is the developmental progression in terms of grain-size units in reading aloud? How is the lack of congruency between syllables and morphemes in the structure of Russian words resolved at different stages of reading acquisition? Future studies could explore these issues. An investigation of the process of reading in Russian should include lexical items of different complexity levels, for example, the ones containing and not containing different types of irregularities. A longitudinal study could reveal the dynamics of the development of reading skills and the changes in the influence of the item complexity on the rate of progress in reading acquisition. The possible grain-size units in skilled reading in Russian, discussed above, might serve as a basis for silent reading—the most common reading activity for advanced readers. Researchers concerned with skilled reading might be interested in answering the following questions. What is the prevailing mechanism of skilled reading aloud in Russian? Is it a process occurring in several stages, involving the build-up of well-specified phonological representations on top of the initial minimal ones? If so, what do these minimal phonological representations look like? Does skilled Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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reading involve dissecting syllables or morphemes as larger grain-size units? What are the developmental footprints of the language-specific traits of Russian orthography in the reading strategies of skilled readers of Russian? The answers to these complex questions could inform reading instruction in Russian. Finding out what grain-size units are operative at different stages of reading acquisition and for different types of reading activity in Russian will help to develop effective instruction methods for achieving reading accuracy and fluency and setting balanced reading proficiency norms for Russian primary school students. Moreover, investigating the development of reading skills in Russian will contribute to cross-linguistic reading research in answering questions about the relationship between the regularity of an orthography and predictability of its complexities and progress in reading acquisition.

Acknowledgments This research was supported by grant No. 53432 from the Research Council for Culture and Society, Academy of Finland, to Pekka Niemi. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Note 1. In all examples from Russian, the word within quotation marks is not a phonetic transcription of the actual pronunciation of the Russian word, but the representation of the word spelled with Latin letters, unless specifically mentioned otherwise.

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Bondarko, L. V. (1998). Fonetika sovremennnogo russkogo jazyka [Phonetics of modern Russian language]. St. Petersburg, Russia: St. Petersburg University. Bruck, M., Genesee, F., & Caravolas, M. (1997). A cross-linguistic study of early literacy acquisition. In B. A. Blachman (Ed.), Foundations of reading acquisition and dyslexia (pp. 145–162). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Ceytlin, S. N. (2000). Jazyk i rebenok: Lingvistika detskoj rechi [Language and child: Linguistics of child language]. Moscow: Vlados. Comeau, L., Cormier, P., Grandmaison, E., & Lacroix, D. (1999). A longitudinal study of phonological processing skills in children learning to read in a second language. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 29–43. Cossu, G., Shankweiler, D., Liberman, I., Katz, L., & Tola, G. (1988). Awareness of phonological segments and reading ability in Italian children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 9, 1–16. Durgunoglu, A.Y. (1997). Reading in two languages. In A. M. B. de Groot & J. F. Kroll (Eds.), Tutorials in bilingualism: Psycholinguistic perspectives (pp. 255–276). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Elbro, C. (2006). Literacy acquisition in Danish: A deep orthography in cross-linguistic light. In M. Malatesha Joshi & P. G. Aaron (Eds.), Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 31–45). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Elbro, C., Borstrøm I. B., & Petersen D. K. (1998). Predicting dyslexia from kindergarten: The importance of distinctness of phonological representations of lexical items. Reading Research Quarterly, 33, 36–60. Elbro, C., & Pallesen, B. R. (2002). The quality of phonological representations and phonological awareness: A causal link. In L. Verhoeven, C. Elbro, & P. Reitsma (Eds.), Precursors of functional literacy (pp. 17–32). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Elkonin, D. B. (1988). How to teach children to read. In J. A. Downing (Ed.), Cognitive psychology and reading in the USSR: Advances in psychology, 49 (pp. 387–426). Amsterdam: North-Holland. Elkonin, D. B., Tsukerman, G. A., & Bugrimenko, E. A. (1995). Bukvarj [Primer]. Moscow: Prosveshchenije. Frost, R. (1998). Toward a strong phonological theory of visual word recognition: True issues and false trails. Psychological Bulletin, 123, 71–99. Goretsky, V. G., Kiriushkin, V. G., & Shanko, A. F. (1988). Uroki obuchenia gramote [Literacy lessons]. Moscow: Prosveshchenije. Goswami, U. (2006). [Review of the book The science of reading: A handbook]. European Psychologist, 11, 157–158. Grigorenko, E. L. (2003). The difficulty of mastering reading and spelling in Russian. In N. Goulandris. (Ed.), Dyslexia in different languages: Cross-linguistic comparisons (pp. 92– 111). London: Whurr Publishers. Grigorenko, E. L. (2006). If John were Ivan, would he fail in reading? In M. Malatesha Joshi & P. G. Aaron (Eds.), Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 303–320). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Gvozdev, A. N. (1954). Osnovy russkoj orfografii [Basics of Russian orthography]. Moscow: Uchpedgiz. Inshakova, O. (2004). Problems of dyslexia in Russian. In I. Smythe, J. Everatt, & R. Salter (Eds.), International book of dyslexia: A cross-language comparison and practice guide Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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(pp. 173–178). London: John Wiley & Sons. Ivanova, V. F. (1966). Sovremennyj russkij jazyk. Grafika i orfografija [Modern Russian language. Graphics and orthography]. Moscow: Prosveshchenije. Ivanova, V. F. (1971). Teoreticheskije osnovy russkoj orfografii. ADD [Theoretical basics of Russian orthography. Summary of doctoral dissertation]. Leningrad, Russia: Leningrad University. Ivanova, V. F. (1977). Princypy russkoj orfografii [Principles of Russian orthography]. Leningrad, Russia: Leningrad University. Kornev, A. N. (1997). O kognitivnyh aspektah usvojenia pis’ma det’mi. [About cognitive aspects of writing acquisition by children]. In S. N. Ceytlin (Ed.), Problemy detskoj rechi—1997 [Problems of child language—1997] (pp. 25–27). St. Petersburg, Russia: Herzen Pedagogical University. Kostromina, S. N., & Nagayeva, L. G. (1999). Kak preodolet’ trudnosti v obuchenii chteniju [How to overcome difficulties in reading instruction]. Moscow: OS’-89. Kuzmina, S. M. (1981). Teorija russkoj orfografii [Theory of Russian orthography]. Moscow: Nauka. Kuzmina, T. V. (2005). Funkcional’nyj analiz fonemno-grafemnyh sootvetstvij v pismennoj rechi detej: na materiale soglasnyh. Kandidatskaja dissertacija [Functional analysis of phoneme–grapheme correspondences in children’s written speech: Based on consonant material]. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Hertzen Pedagogical University, St. Petersburg, Russia. Lalayeva, R. I., & Venediktova, L. V. (2001). Diagnostika i korrekcija narushenij chtenija i pis’ma u mladshih shkolnikov [Diagnosis and treatment of younger school-aged children’s reading and writing difficulties]. St. Petersburg, Russia: Sojuz. Lepskaya, N. I. (1987). O “sterzhnevoj” i “periferijnoj” chastiah slova (na materiale detskoj rechi). Detskaja rech kak predmet lingvisticheskogo izuchenija [About the “kernel” and the “peripheral” word parts (on child language material). Child language as the subject of linguistic exploration]. Moscow: Moscow University. Liberman, A. (1980). Orthography and phonemics in present-day Russian. In J. Kavanagh & R. Venezky (Eds.), Orthography, reading and dyslexia (pp. 51–55). Baltimore, MD: University Park Press. Moiseev, A. I. (1987). Zvuki i bukvy, bukvy i cyfry [Sounds and letters, letters and numbers]. Moscow: Prosveshchenije. Omorokova, М. I. (1997). Sovershenstvovanie chtenia mladshih shkol’nikov [Improvement of younger school-age children’s reading]. Мoscow: ARCTI. Osipov, B. I. (1970). Grafiko-orfograficheskij analiz teksta [Graphic-orthographic text analysis]. Barnaul, Russia: Barnaul University. Panov, M. V. (1979). Sovremennyj russkij jazyk. Fonetika [Modern Russian language. Phonetics]. Moscow: Vysshaja shkola. Pavlova, N. P. (2000). Sposoby peredachi zvuchashchej rechi na pis’me det’mi-doshkol’nikami (lingvisticheskij mechanism). AKD [Ways of representing speech in writing by preschool children (the linguistic mechanism). Summary of PhD dissertation]. Cherepovets, Russia: Cherepovets University. Rayner, K. (1986). Eye movements and the perceptual span in beginning and skilled readers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 41, 211–236. Reformatskij, A. A. (1955). Vvedenije v jazykoznanije [Introduction to linguistics]. Moscow: Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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Uchpedgiz. Repkin, V. V., Levin, V. A., Timchenko, L. I., & Zhedek, P. S. (1994). Bukvar’ [Primer]. St. Petersburg, Russia: Ariadna. Rusakova, M. V., & Ceytlin, S. N. (1999). On strategies of Russian spelling processing and acquisition. In I. Austad & E. T. Lyssand (Eds.), Literacy—Challenges for the new millennium. Selected papers of the 11th European Conference on Reading (pp. 151–160). Stavanger, Norway: Norwegian Reading Association. Scherba, L. V. (1983). Teorija russkogo pi’sma [Theory of Russian writing system]. Leningrad, Russia: Nauka. Seymour, P. H. K., Aro, M., & Erskine, J. M. (2003). Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies. British Journal of Psychology, 94, 143–174. Selezniova, L. B. (1981). Sovremennoje russkoje pis’mo. Sistemnyj analiz [Modern Russian writing system. System analysis]. Tomsk, Russia: Tomsk University. Selezniova, L. B. (1997). Russkaja orfografija. Algoritmizirovammoje obuchenije [Russian orthography. Teaching through algorithms]. St. Petersburg, Russia: Special’naja literatura. Selezniova, L. B. (2004). Kategorii i jedinicy russkogo pis’ma [Categories and units of writing in Russian]. Moscow: Vysshaja Shkola. Share, D. L. (2008). On the Anglocentricities of current reading research and practice: The perils of overreliance on an “outlier” orthography. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 584–615. Silchenkova, L. C. (2002). Svojstva russkoj grafiki i formirovanije pervonachal’nogo navyka chtenija [Properties of Russian graphics and development of the initial reading skills]. Krasnoyarsk, Russia: State Pedagogical University. Skoblikova, E. S. (1974). Russkaja grafika. Cykl lekcij [Russian graphics. A collection of lectures]. Kujbyshev, Russia: Kujbyshev University. Soloveichik, M. S. (2008). K tainam nashego jazyka [Towards the mysteries of our language]. Moscow: Associatsia XXI vek. Starzhinskaja, N. S. (1988). Formirovanije sinteticheskogo chtenia u detej 6 let [Development of synthetic reading in 6 year olds]. Voprosy Psihologii, 5, 54–62. Wade-Woolley, L., & Geva, E. (1999). Processing inflected morphology in second language word recognition: Russian-speakers and English-speakers read Hebrew. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 11, 321–343. Wimmer, H., & Goswami, U. (1994). The influence of orthographic consistency on reading development: Word recognition in English and German children. Cognition, 51, 91–103. Wimmer, H., & Mayringer, H. (2002). Dysfluent reading in the absence of spelling difficulties: A specific disability in regular orthographies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94, 272–277. Ziegler, J. C., & Goswami, U. (2005). Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia and skilled reading across languages: A psycholinguistic grain size theory. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 3–29. Ziegler, J. C., & Goswami, U. (2006). Becoming literate in different languages: Similar problems, different solutions. Developmental Science 9, 429–453. Zinder, L. R. (1987). Ocherk obshej teorii pis’ma [A sketch of the general theory of the writing system]. Leningrad, Russia: Nauka.

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About the Authors Eugenia Kerek is a doctoral student at the University of Turku, Finland. She is a native Russian speaker, and her PhD research deals with reading acquisition in Russian and preliteracy skills of bilingually reared children. Pekka Niemi is a professor of psychology at the University of Turku, Finland. His main research interest is development of cognitive processes, particularly reading acquisition and difficulties associated with it. Address for correspondence: Department of Psychology, University of Turku, Turku, FIN-20014, Finland. E-mail: [email protected]

Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2009, Volume 21, No. 1 pp. 22–36

Early reading strategies in Irish and English: Evidence from error types Christine E. Parsons and Fiona Lyddy National University of Ireland Maynooth Ireland

Abstract For the majority of people in Ireland, Irish is a second language acquired primarily through the schooling system. This study examined the reading strategies children used in response to English and Irish words (presented in isolation), through an analysis of their oral reading errors. Children in their 4th year of schooling attending English-medium schools, immersion schools, and Irish-medium schools in Irish-speaking (Gaeltacht) regions participated. The English-medium school children scored significantly below the other 3 groups on the Irish task; the Gaeltacht school children scored below the other 3 groups on the English task. Overall, the children made significantly more real-word errors on the English task compared with the Irish task and significantly more nonword errors on the Irish task compared with the English task. These findings suggest that children learning to read in English and Irish may adopt different strategies when faced with unfamiliar words from each language. Keywords: reading, minority language, immersion education, Irish, orthography

This special-theme issue examines reading in languages other than English; this article considers reading of Irish by children schooled through Irish or English. Notwithstanding the name of this journal, Irish is not a foreign language for our sample. While Irish is constitutionally recognised as the first official language of the Republic of Ireland, for the majority of the population, it is a second language (L2) acquired primarily within the schooling system. Most children attend English-medium schools and are taught Irish as a compulsory school subject. However, in recent decades, the Irish-medium schooling sector has expanded rapidly, with an increase from 17 schools in 1972 to 135 schools in 2007 and with an enrolment of about 30,000 pupils. Children attending Irish-medium schools generally come from English-speaking homes (Ó Muircheartaigh & Hickey, in press). In addition to those attending Irish-medium schools within English-speaking regions, slightly less than 10,000 children attend 143 schools within designated Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) regions (MacDonnacha, Ní Chualáin, Ní Shéaghdha, & Ní Mhainín, 2005). In both Irish-medium and Gaeltacht schools, Irish is the medium of instruction for all subjects (with the exception of English as a school subject). Irish reading instruction varies considerably across English-medium, Irish-medium, and Gaeltacht schools. For English-medium schools, the Revised Primary School Curriculum (National Council for Curriculum and Assessment [NCCA], 1999) recommends that formal http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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reading in Irish should not commence before Second Class (i.e., the 4th year of schooling), by which point children are expected to have mastered basic English reading and have attained some oral Irish proficiency. The curriculum provides no explicit guidelines for Irish-medium or Gaeltacht schools regarding the sequencing of English and Irish formal reading instruction. Consequently, there is no consensus on best practice, and sequencing (i.e., the order in which Irish and English reading instruction occurs) differs from school to school. Some Irish-medium schools initially commence reading in Irish, others introduce English first, and a minority simultaneously commence reading in both languages. While no figures are available as to the order and timing of sequencing of formal reading in Gaeltacht schools, MacDonnacha et al. (2005) noted that most schools begin formal reading in Irish and English before the end of the 2nd year of schooling. The Gaeltacht regions of Ireland are primarily rural regions in the west of the country that are largely Irish speaking. The highest concentration of first language (L1) Irish speakers can be found within these regions (Reagan & Osbourne, 2002). Schools operating within these regions are required to accommodate children with mixed Irish language ability (MacDonnacha et al., 2005): Children whose L1 is Irish are typically mixed with L2 learners from English-speaking homes. Furthermore, the number of children coming to school with high levels of Irish language competency in Gaeltacht regions is declining (NCCA, 2007). As a result, Irish has declined as the medium of instruction in a number of schools (Ó Murchú, 2001).

The English and Irish Orthographies Children in the Republic of Ireland learn to read in both English and Irish at varying points in their schooling. The English orthography is complex, with numerous inconsistencies in its grapheme–phoneme correspondences and, consequently, many exception or irregular words, such as have, shoe, or one (Spencer & Hanley, 2003). Standardisations of Irish spelling have resulted in a relatively good correlation between writing and sound mappings (Ó Laoire, 1997), although inconsistencies remain (see Ó Laoire, 2005). Irish orthography is not as deep as that of English (Hickey, 2006, 2007); however, it is not a transparent language. The Irish alphabet consists of 18 letters: 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and 13 consonants (b, c, d, f, g, h, l, m, n, p, r, s, t), representing about 50 basic sounds. Vowels are either long or short, with a stroke (síneadh) over a vowel indicating that it is long. Syllables may be open or closed. In general, stress is placed on the first syllable of the word if no long vowel or diphthong occurs in any other syllable. The Irish syllable structure permits consonant clusters in both syllable onsets and codas. A distinction is made between consonants that are slender (caol) or broad (leathan) and indicated by surrounding vowels (e.g., bád with a broad /d/, “boat,” and báid with a slender /d/, “boats”). Irish shows some of the characteristic features of Celtic languages, including inflectional morphology. Two main types of grammar-dependent initial mutations feature prominently in the Irish orthography: lenition and eclipsis. Lenition alters the sound attributes of a consonant and in writing places an h after an initial consonant; for example, the /b/ sound in bord (meaning “table”) becomes /w/ or/v/ in bhord. Eclipsis adds a letter or letters to the start of the word and changes the initial phoneme. For example, after the possessive my, bord (table) becomes mo bhord (my table). With the possessive our, it reads mbord, where mb is pronounced /m/ in ár Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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mbord (our table). In Irish, while such changes modify the original phoneme, the eclipsed letter is retained in the spelling. Morphological transparency is thereby evident, but phonological transparency is lacking in such forms. The mb in mbord is pronounced /m/, with no remaining /b/ sound. Other Celtic languages (e.g., Welsh) overwrite the spelling, maintaining phonological transparency.

Examining Children’s Reading Strategies The word-reading strategies children adopt when reading different orthographies have been the focus of much recent research. One way in which children’s early reading strategies have been investigated is through the analysis of oral reading errors. The types of errors children make when encountering an unfamiliar word can be informative regarding the word recognition strategies adopted. For instance, reading errors that are phonologically similar to the target word suggest that a grapheme–phoneme assembly strategy is used. That is, when grapheme–phoneme assembly goes wrong, the probable result is a nonword (Ellis & Hooper, 2001). If children are using a phonological recoding strategy, they are also more likely to attempt to read a word (Hoxhallari, van Daal, & Ellis, 2004). Pronunciations that are phonologically dissimilar from the target suggest the use of non-phonological strategies. According to Ellis and Hooper, when lexical retrieval is erroneous or when partial phonetic cueing is used, the error type is likely to be a word. A number of studies have found that orthographies that differ in terms of their regularity elicit different patterns of errors. Wimmer and Hummer (1990) demonstrated that children reading German, a regular orthography, tended to make nonword reading errors; children reading English, a more irregular orthography, tend to make whole-word errors (Seymour & Elder, 1986; Stuart & Coltheart, 1988). In a cross-language study, Ellis and Hooper (2001) examined the error types made by young readers of the orthographically regular Welsh language and the more irregular English on frequency-matched tests in the two languages. Children were presented with single words in order of decreasing frequency, and the errors made were categorised as nonwords, realword substitutions, or failures to read. The Welsh readers tended to produce more nonword errors, while the English readers produced more real-word errors and omissions (i.e., failures to read or non-attempts). On the basis of their findings, Ellis and Hooper suggested that the regularity of an orthography can influence the type of reading strategy adopted. The Welsh readers were more reliant on a grapheme–phoneme conversion strategy than the English readers. The English readers, in contrast, relied to a greater extent on lexical retrieval through partial visual analysis of the target words. Hoxhallari et al. (2004) compared the reading performance of beginner readers of Albanian with the Welsh and English readers from Ellis and Hooper’s (2001) study. The Albanian orthography is fully consistent for both grapheme–phoneme and phoneme–grapheme mappings, and thus is even more regular than Welsh. Like the Welsh readers, nonword reading errors predominated all error types for the Albanian readers. In addition, the Albanian group produced fewer failure-toread errors than either the English or Welsh readers. Again, Hoxhallari et al. implicated the role of the orthographic transparency of Albanian: The highly consistent orthography invites a grapheme–phoneme assembly strategy, and children tend to attempt more items. Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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Spencer and Hanley (2003) examined the reading performance of children in Wales learning to read in Welsh with that of children learning to read in English in their 1st year of schooling and again 1 year later. At both time points, the Welsh readers made significantly more phonologically based nonword errors, whereas real-word errors were more common for the English readers. Similarly, Spencer and Hanley conducted an analysis of the error types made by Welsh and English readers at three stages in their 1st year of formal reading instruction. Relative to the Welsh readers, the English readers made a large number of failure-to-read errors. Across the 2nd and 3rd time points, the English readers made significantly more real-word errors than the Welsh readers, who tended to produce nonword errors. Spencer and Hanley suggested that the disparity in error types for the two groups indicates different approaches to reading unfamiliar words.

Children Learning to Read in Two Languages Considering the reading strategies children adopt is further complicated when children are learning to read in more than one language. In addition to the depth of the orthographies, an influential factor is a child’s proficiency in the languages. Geva and Siegel (2000) examined the reading development of L1 English speakers learning to read concurrently in their L1, English, and their L2, Hebrew. Children from Grades 1 to 5 were tested on measures of word recognition in the two languages. Even though Hebrew was their L2, the children demonstrated more accurate word recognition in that language than in their L1, English. Orthography-specific patterns of error were found. The children made significantly more real-word errors when reading the English test items than when reading the Hebrew items, particularly at the younger grades. The analysis of error categories for Hebrew word recognition indicated that the children engaged in a linear left-to-right phonological decoding strategy. Geva and Siegel suggested that the children were more likely to make real-word errors in English than Hebrew because it was their L1. Geva and Siegel proposed that when an orthography is highly consistent, children may develop their word-reading skills, even without adequate linguistic competence. They argue that for a very regular L2, basic reading skills may be less contingent on language proficiency than for a more irregular orthography. To date, no systematic quantitative analysis of error patterns exhibited by children reading Irish has been reported. Hickey (2005, 2007) provided some examples of the errors typically made by children from English-medium schools in their 4th year of schooling commencing Irish reading. The children in the lower half of the ability range were unsure of some of the most regular grapheme–phoneme correspondences, such as the long vowel sound, and consequently, encountered difficulty with some of the most frequent Irish words. The word sí (she) was commonly read as sé /s’e:/ (he), and í (her) was commonly decoded as /e:/. Other typical errors included reading tharraing (pulled) in place of tháining (came), the nonword trasid for tsráid (street) and the English word fetch for féach (look). The latter error type reflects the influence of the children’s L1, English, on Irish reading. Hickey (2007) suggested that the children were engaging in only partial analysis of the Irish words and were over-reliant on initial or salient letters.

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The present study was designed to investigate the reading strategies children use when reading in the Irish and English languages, through an analysis of their oral reading errors. Children attending different school types in Ireland engage in different amounts of Irish reading. To reflect the diversity of experience, a number of school types within one region of Ireland were included: Irish-medium, Gaeltacht, and English-medium schools. Two Irish-medium schools were included: one that commenced formal reading in Irish, and another that began with formal reading in English. Children from the participating Gaeltacht school were primarily from Irishspeaking backgrounds. Children from the other three types of schools began to acquire Irish, their L2, only once they started to attend school. All of the children were in their 4th year of schooling (Second Class within the Irish system) and had commenced formal reading in both languages. The selected groups provide a comparison of English-speaking pupils who have recently commenced Irish reading with bilingual or Irish-language proficient children who have experienced Irish reading in the previous 2 years of schooling. Error types are predicted to vary as a function of language, with the English language likely to be associated with more real-word errors, and the Irish language associated with more nonword errors. Error types are also predicted to vary as a function of reading skill. More proficient readers of Irish are expected to make more nonword errors than other error types compared with less skilled Irish readers.

Method Participants The participants were drawn from four schools in County Galway. The region has the highest number of primary school children attending Gaeltacht schools in Ireland (MacDonnacha et al., 2005) and has a number of demographically comparable Irish-medium and English-medium schools outside of the Gaeltacht regions. Galway is home to the strongest Irish-language area in Ireland, with 22,377 Irish speakers in the Galway county Gaeltacht alone (76.8% of the total population of the area) and a further 6,878 Irish speakers in the other Galway regions (Central Statistics Office, 2007). The majority of the Irish speakers within the Galway county Gaeltacht report daily use of the language (66.4%). Consequently, many children attending the Gaeltachtbased schools in Galway experience good levels of Irish language support at home. This region was therefore selected to examine reading performance across Irish-medium, Gaeltacht, and English-medium schools. The principals of 28 schools within the selected region were contacted, and 17 replied indicating their willingness to participate in the study. From these 17 schools, 4 schools (2 Irish medium, 1 English medium, and 1 Gaeltacht) were selected for participation in this study, based on their reading instruction practices and similarity in classroom size, sex ratio, and socio-economic status. Two Irish-medium schools were selected: One began reading instruction in English (English reading first, ERF), and another commenced reading instruction in Irish (Irish reading first, IRF). Children in the ERF school were introduced to reading in English in Senior Infants (2nd year of schooling) and Irish reading in the initial months of First Class (3rd year of schooling). The policy of the IRF school was to introduce reading in Irish between the end of Junior Infants (the 1st year of schooling) and the start of Senior Infants. The children were introduced to English reading towards the end of Senior Infants. The policy of the Gaeltacht Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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school was to commence Irish reading between the end of Junior Infants and Senior Infants. Children began reading in English between the end of Senior Infants and the initial months of First Class. In the English-medium school, children were formally introduced to reading in English in Senior Infants. Reading instruction in Irish commenced in Second Class, consistent with the Revised Primary School Curriculum (NCCA, 1999). The sequencing of the reading instruction across the school samples are summarised in Table 1. Across the four schools, parental consent was received for 90 children to participate, 8 of whom did not participate due to behavioral, academic, linguistic, or practical issues. The participants were 82 Second Class pupils, 43 boys and 39 girls (18 in the ERF school, 21 in the IRF school, 18 in the Gaeltacht school, and 25 in the English-medium school). The ages of the participants were between 7 and 9 years (M = 7.8 years, SD = 0.42). Table 1. Sequencing of reading instruction across the school samples School Irish-medium—English reading first

English reading Senior Infants (2nd year of schooling)

Irish reading rd Early First Class (3 year of schooling)

Irish-medium—Irish reading first

End of Senior Infants

End of Junior Infants/Early Senior Infants

Gaeltacht

End of Senior Infants/Early First Class

End of Junior Infants/Early Senior Infants

English-medium

Senior Infants

Second Class

The majority of children attending the participating Gaeltacht school reported using the Irish language at home. Only 3 came from English-dominant homes. Of the 18 children, 10 reported speaking “more Irish than English” at home, 3 children reported sole use of Irish in the home, and 2 children used Irish and English equally within the home. Of the 3 English-dominant children, 1 spoke only English at home, and 2 spoke “more English than Irish.” As is the case in the majority of Gaeltacht schools (see MacDonnacha et al., 2005), a number of children had arrived at the school with very little English, others had varying levels of Irish and English ability, and some children had no Irish at all. All of the children attending the Irish-medium and English-medium schools came from English-speaking homes. For Irish reading, a mixture of the available Irish textbooks was used, with instruction emphasizing both reading aloud and independent reading. The teachers at the Irish- and Englishmedium schools reported following a mixed method of instruction (phonics and whole-word strategies) for English reading. Similar textbooks were used in all schools for English reading. In summary, the four participating schools were all within one county in Ireland, were administered by the same local educational authorities, followed similar curricula, and used similar teaching methods. Word Reading Tests Task equivalence is a recurrent methodological issue in bilingual research (Geva & WadeReading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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Woolley, 2004; Koda, 1994). In a series of studies of reading acquisition in Wales, Hanley and colleagues (e.g., Hanley, Masterson, Spencer, & Evans, 2004; Spencer & Hanley, 2003, 2004) used translational equivalents for their English and Welsh word sets to ensure that words from the two sets were of comparable familiarity. A similar approach was undertaken here. English and Irish single word reading tasks were used that each included 50 words, presented singly in large black font in lower case on a computer screen. The English words were between 2 and 11 letters long, with word frequencies of between 2 and 36,411 occurrences per million, with a mean rating of 1,323 occurrences per million (SD = 5,256.54) using the Kucera-Francis (1967) written frequency ratings. The English words were taken from a number of studies of emergent literacy (e.g., Hanley et al., 2004; Masterson, Laxon, & Stuart, 1992; Patel, Snowling, & DeJong, 2004; Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003; Spencer & Hanley, 2004) and additional (more difficult) items were selected using the Kucera-Francis ratings for written frequency. Because it was considered important that the English and Irish words were of similar familiarity, the words in the Irish set were translations of the English words. This method of matching items across languages has been used in a number of recent studies in the Welsh–English context (e.g., Hanley et al., 2004; Spencer & Hanley, 2003, 2004). In the absence of established measures of frequency and age of acquisition for Irish words, translational equivalents were considered the most appropriate method for matching the English and Irish word sets in terms of familiarity. The English and Irish word lists were also matched as much as was feasible for word length, number of syllables, and number of phonemes. All of the English and Irish words were between 2 and 11 letters in length. There was no significant difference between the number of letters in the words in the English (M = 4.88, SD = 2.01) and Irish sets (M = 4.86, SD = 2.07), t(49) = 0.17, p = .87. The number of phonemes in the English word set ranged from two to eight, and in the Irish set, from one to eight. Again, there were no significant differences in the number of phonemes in the English set (M = 3.76, SD = 1.56) and the number of phonemes in the Irish set (M = 3.78, SD = 1.45), t(49) = 0.14, p = .89. The English word set included 33 monosyllabic, 14 disyllabic, 2 trisyllabic, and 1 quadrasyllabic word. The Irish word list contained 33 monosyllabic, 14 disyllabic, and 3 trisyllabic words. No significant difference was found between the number of syllables in the English (M = 1.42, SD = 6.7) and Irish word sets (M = 1.4, SD = 6.1), t(49) = 0.44, p = .66. The participants were required to read up to 50 words in each language. The order of the words on the Irish list was the same as the order of their translations on the English list. The words were placed in order of increasing difficulty to ensure that the youngest children were reasonably familiar with the initial words on the list. Procedure All of the children were tested in the language of their school, and each child was tested individually at the back of the classroom. The order of the administration of the English and Irish tasks was counterbalanced across participants. The word reading tasks were discontinued if a child consecutively gave five incorrect responses. Self-corrections were marked as correct responses. The children were encouraged to attempt to answer even if they were unsure and were praised periodically. They were given a short break between the two language tests. The maximum obtainable score for the word reading tasks was 50 for each language. Scoring

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The errors made by the children were recorded for both the English and Irish tasks and were sorted using categories consistent with a number of previous studies (Ellis & Hooper, 2001; Spencer & Hanley, 2003, 2004; Hoxhallari et al., 2004). The error categories were (a) null response or failure-to-read, (b) whole-word substitutions, (c) attempts that resulted in nonword responses, (d) Irish items read as English words, and (e) English items read as Irish words. A real-word reading error was made when the child said a real word in the target language instead of the target word. Real-word substitutions in the Irish language included reading glac (accept) as glas (green) or seanathair (grandfather) as sneachta (snow). The real-word substitutions in the English language included reading bull as ball or spear as spare. A nonword reading error was made when a child said a nonword instead of the target word. Irish nonword substitutions included responding with [sil] for síl or [tarb] for tarbh. For the English tasks, nonword substitution responses included responding with [hig] for high or [hom] for home. Examples of Irish items read as English included reading cé as see or cuid as could. The failureto-read category included failed attempts to blend (giving just letter sounds), non-responses, and simply naming letters.

Results The children from the four school groups made 604 errors in total on the English word reading task and 1,477 errors on the Irish word reading task (see Table 2). Figure 1 summarises the reading accuracy of the children from the four school types on the Irish and English tasks. There was a significant interaction between the school type attended and the language of the test, F(3, 78) = 41.83, p < .01. The main effect of school type, F(3, 78) = 6, p < .01, and the main effect of the language of the test, F(1, 78) = 211.24, p < .01, were also significant. 50 45 40 Mean Score

35 30

English

25

Irish

20 15 10 5 0 ERF

IRF

Gaeltacht

English-Medium

School Type

Figure 1. The mean number of words read correctly by school type and language.

Follow-up comparisons using post-hoc Tukey tests indicated that for the English word reading Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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task, the accuracy scores of the children in the Gaeltacht sample were significantly lower than those of the children in the other three groups (p < .01). There were no other significant differences between the groups. For the Irish word reading task, the post-hoc tests differentiated the English-medium sample from the remaining three school groups (p < .01). Again, the remaining three groups performed similarly. The error types made by children in each school group for the English and Irish tasks are presented in Table 2. Overall, real-word errors predominated in response to the English word targets (31.8%), while nonword errors were less common (24.5%). The opposite pattern was evident for the Irish task: Nonword errors were more frequent (25%) than real-word errors (8.3%). The number of failure-to-read errors was high for both the English task (43.7%) and the Irish task (55%). Table 2. The types of errors made by each school group for the English and Irish tasks English task School group ERF (N = 18) IRF (N = 21) Gaeltacht (N = 18) English-medium (N = 25) Mean (N = 82)

n 29 41 73 49 192

Failure to respond

Nonword

Real-word % 25.89 39.42 28.85 38.28 31.78

n 12 32 55 49 148

% 10.71 30.77 21.15 38.28 24.50

n 71 31 132 30 264

Total

% 63.39 29.80 50.77 23.44 43.71

112 104 260 128 604

Irish task School group

Irish real-word n

%

Nonword

Failure to respond

n

n

%

n

%

224 77 172 339 812

72.26 38.12 55.84 51.59 54.98

18 32 37 86 173

5.80 15.84 12.01 13.09 11.71

%

ERF (N = 18) 15 4.80 53 17.09 IRF (N = 21) 18 8.91 75 37.13 Gaeltacht (N = 18) 38 12.34 61 19.81 English-medium (N = 25) 52 7.91 180 27.39 Mean (N = 82) 123 8.33 369 24.98 Note. ERF = English reading first; IRF = Irish reading first.

English realword

Total 310 202 308 657 1,477

A three-way mixed ANOVA was performed to examine the relationships among school type, language of test, and error type. The focus of the first analysis was on the three error types common to the two language sets (nonword reading errors, real-word reading errors in the correct language, and failure-to-read errors). A second analysis was then conducted including the English word substitution errors, reported below. The dependent variable in each analysis was the number of occurrences of each error type. There was a significant School Type × Language × Error Type interaction, F(6, 154) = 6.27, p < .01. The performance of the specific school groups for each language is summarised in Table 2. For the English word reading task, the ERFschooled children made significantly more real-word errors (M = 1.61, SD = 1.24) than nonword Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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errors (M = 0.67, SD = 0.77), t(17) = 4.99, p < .01. Conversely, for the Irish task, the same children made significantly more nonword errors (M = 2.94, SD = 1.83) than real-word errors (M = 0.83, SD = 0.51), t(17) = 5.58, p < .01. For the IRF school group, the difference between the number of nonword and real-word errors made on the English word reading task did not reach significance, t(20) = 1.12, p = .27. For the Irish task, the IRF-schooled children generally made more nonword reading errors (M = 3.57, SD = 2.5) than real-word reading errors (M = 0.86, SD = 1.35), t(20) = 4.26, p < .01. The error patterns for the Gaeltacht school group followed the same general trend as the other school groups: Real-word errors were more common than nonword errors on the English test, whereas nonword errors were more frequent than real-word errors for the Irish test. However, these differences in error types did not reach significance for the English task, t(17) = 1.62, p = .12, or the Irish task, t(17) = 1.89, p = .07, for this group. Children from the English-medium school group made significantly more nonword substitutions (M = 7.88, SD = 2.18) than real-word substitutions (M = 2.08, SD = 1.71) on the Irish task, t(24) = 8.64, p < .01. There was no significant difference between the number of realword errors and nonword errors this group made on the English task, t(24) = 0.64, p = .49. The interaction between school group and error type across the two languages is shown in Figure 2. 100

ERF

Percentage of Total Errors

90 80

IRF Gaeltacht

70

English Medium

60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Real-Word Errors

Nonword Errors

English Task

Real-Word Errors

Nonword Errors

Irish Task

Figure 2. Mean percentage of real-word and nonword errors for the Irish and English tasks across the four school groups.

The interaction between the language of the test and error type was significant, F(6, 154) = 7.45, p < .01. Overall, the children made more real-word errors than nonword errors on the English task, but more nonword errors than real-word errors on the Irish task. There was a significant interaction between school type and test language, F(3, 78) = 40.57, p < .01. The children taught through Irish made fewer errors on the Irish task on average than the English-medium schooled children. There was a significant interaction between error type and school type, F(6, 154) = 7.45, p < .01. Overall, the children from the English-medium school made more failure-to-read errors than the other school groups. The main effects of test language, F(1, 78) = 156.03, p < .01, error type, F(2, 77) = 78.41, p < .01, and school type, F(3, 78) = 5.65, p < .01, were all significant. Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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In the Irish task, the children made a number of English real-word substitutions. These errors were grouped with the Irish whole-word reading errors to form a total-word errors category. A three-way ANOVA was conducted to examine the relationships between school type attended, language of the test, and error type. The Language × Error Type interaction, F(2, 77) = 36.3, p < .01, the Language × Error Type × School Group interaction, F(2, 77) = 36.3, p < .01, the Error Type × School interaction, F(6, 156) = 4.16, p < .01, and the Language × School Type interaction, F(3, 78) = 37.22, p < .01, were all significant. In addition, the main effect of language, F(1, 78) = 166.34, p < .01, and the main effect of error type, F(2, 77) = 39.24, p < .01, were significant. Overall, the children made more nonword errors than total-word errors on the Irish task, while children made more real-word errors than nonword errors on the English task. Error Types in Irish Reading by Quartile Group The individual variation in Irish word reading accuracy scores was considerable, even within each class group. To disentangle the effect of reading proficiency from that of the orthography of the Irish language, the sample was divided into four quartile groups based on their accuracy scores on the Irish reading task. Group 4 was the top 25% (best readers); Group 3, the second 25%; Group 2, the third 25%; and Group 1, the fourth 25% (worst readers). Table 3 summarises the error types and accuracy scores of each quartile group. Table 3. Error types and accuracy scores (out of 50) for each quartile group for the Irish task Mean accuracy Nonword Failure-toReal-word English substitution Group score errors read errors errors errors 1 17.24 (4.99) 5.76 (2.68) 20.67 (6.38) 2.90 (1.79) 3.43 (1.63) 2

27.50 (3.35)

5.35 (3.07)

12.70 (4.16)

1.50 (1.43)

2.95 (2.14)

3

38.00 (2.22)

4.75 (2.31)

4.80 (2.63)

0.95 (0.89)

1.50 (1.43)

4 45.29 (2.92) 2.19 (1.60) 1.33 (1.35) Note. Standard deviations are in parentheses.

0.62 (0.87)

0.57 (0.60)

A mixed ANOVA was conducted to examine the relationships between the error types on the Irish task and the quartile groups. There was a significant interaction between quartile group and error type, F(9, 185) = 15.74, p < .01. The main effect of error type, F(3, 76) = 145.24, p < .01, and the main effect of quartile group, F(3, 78) = 250.85, p < .01, were both significant. Group 4, the most proficient readers, scored above 84% on the Irish reading task. Contrasts indicated that the children in this group made more nonword reading errors than real-word errors, F(1, 20) = 16.93, p < .01, or English word substitutions, F(1, 20) = 22.49, p < .01, or failures to read, F(1, 20) = 4.93, p < .05. When both English substitutions and Irish real-word errors are grouped together to form a total-real-word error category, nonword errors still predominate for this group. Contrasts again confirmed that the children made more nonword errors than total-real-word errors, F(1, 20) = 20.36, p < .01, or failure-to-read errors, F(1, 20) = 4.93, p < .05. The children in the lowest quartile group scored between 18 and 46% on the Irish task. The children in this group made significantly more nonword reading errors than real-word reading errors, F(1, 20) = 14.49, p < .01, or English word substitutions, F(1, 20) = 19.6, p < .01, and significantly more failure-to-read errors than nonword errors, F(1, 20) = 71.78, p < .01. When Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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the English word substitutions and Irish real-word errors are grouped together, there is no significant difference between the number of real-word errors and nonword errors, F(1, 20) = 0.37, p = .55. The children made significantly more failure-to-read errors than nonword errors, F(1, 20) = 71.78, p < .01. The Gaeltacht Children: Controlling for Home Language Variability Three of the children from the Gaeltacht sample were from English-dominant homes. When these children were excluded from the analyses, the mean scores of this group were similar on the Irish task (M = 62.23, SD = 21.44, for the 15 children, compared to M = 68.4, SD = 24.33, for the 18 children) and the English task (M = 68.4, SD = 24.33, for the 15 children, compared to M = 71.2, SD = 23, for the 18 children. The pattern of error types was the same for the English and Irish tasks as previously reported. The children made similar numbers of real-word errors and nonword errors on the English task, t(14) = 2.13, p = .06, and similar numbers of real-word and nonword errors on the Irish task, t(14) = 1.28, p = .22, as did the full Gaeltacht group.

Discussion Generally, real-word errors were more common than nonword errors in response to the English targets, consistent with previous studies (e.g., Ellis & Hooper, 2001; Spencer & Hanley, 2003, 2004). For the Irish items, conversely, nonword errors were more frequent than real-word errors. This pattern remained when both English substitutions and Irish real-word errors were grouped to form a whole-word error category. The trend towards nonword errors found for the Irish task is comparable to that found for young readers of Hebrew (Geva & Siegel, 2000), Welsh (e.g., Ellis & Hooper, 2001; Spencer & Hanley, 2003, 2004) and German (Wimmer & Hummer, 1990). The incidence of failure-to-respond errors was high for both languages across all school groups, however, and the overall higher error rate for Irish words must also be considered. Children from all four school groups made a number of English word substitutions in response to the Irish items, reflecting interference from the English language. While the poorest readers demonstrated the highest proportion of English word substitution errors, the best readers also experienced some interference from English. This type of intrusion from the English language in Irish reading is consistent with the error patterns described by Hickey (2007). No cross-language errors were made in response to the English items. This finding may be related to the status of the English language relative to the Irish language within the Republic of Ireland: English is far more dominant. For children from English-speaking homes, exposure to Irish text is largely limited to within the classroom. Even for those children from Gaeltacht homes, levels of Irish literacy-related activities can be low. For instance, Hickey (1997) found that Gaeltacht parents of preschoolers did not frequently read children’s books aloud to their children and engaged in low levels of Irish reading in general. Further to this, Denvir (2003) suggested that Gaeltacht children, when given a choice, will read in English, a finding that may be related to the dearth of appropriate Irish reading materials. Children from all language backgrounds generally engage in more English reading than Irish reading, and this may be reflected by the unidirectional crosslanguage interference found here.

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All groups in the current study made fewer real-word errors on the Irish task than on the English task. Geva and Siegel (2000), in their study of bilingual readers, suggested that the children may have been more inclined to make real-word errors on the English task because English was their L1. Similarly, for three of our participating school groups, Irish is an L2. Children from the Irishmedium and English-medium schools may have been more likely to make real-word errors on the English test because it was their L1. These children have a smaller vocabulary in Irish than English and consequently, have fewer words available to them for lexical retrieval strategies in that language. The children generally performed more poorly on the Irish task than the English task. While there were no significant differences between the mean Irish word reading scores of the children attending the Irish-medium schools and those attending the Gaeltacht school, word reading proficiency varied considerably within each school group. To disentangle the effects of the orthography from those of reading proficiency, the error types of the best and worst readers were examined. The best Irish readers (top 25%) in the current sample tended to make more nonword reading errors than all other error types. Therefore, the most successful readers appear to use a phonological decoding strategy to read unfamiliar Irish items. The more regular orthography of Irish may support the successful sounding out of items. The poorest readers, on the other hand, produced a similar number of real-word and nonword errors. While the Gaeltacht school children made nonword errors more frequently than real-word errors on the Irish task, this difference was not statistically significant. The children in this group may have used both whole-word reading and grapheme–phoneme assembly strategies for Irish word recognition. The children in this group were all living within an Irish-speaking community, and all but one reported home use of the language (and only three children came from Englishdominant backgrounds). This group might have had a better Irish vocabulary than those children attending the Irish-medium schools. However, previous studies have reported low levels of literacy-oriented activities and typically low levels of Irish reading in Gaeltacht homes (see Hickey, 1997). Despite their oral language proficiency, the children in this group may have had less written Irish language experience, which may explain, to some extent, the mixed strategies that they appear to have used. In conclusion, the findings suggest that children learning to read in English and Irish may adopt different reading strategies when faced with unfamiliar words from each language. Irish word reading skill varied substantially, resulting in differences in the quantities of error types across individual learners. While the best readers made few errors of any type, those that they did make were primarily nonword errors. Based on the data from single word reading, the conclusion drawn is that the best decoders of Irish use a phonological decoding strategy (which generates nonword pronunciation errors). These “successful” readers have acquired the grapheme– phoneme correspondences of Irish more readily than other readers, and their errors (when they occur) suggest a phonological recoding strategy. Whether instructional practices that promote using such a strategy would benefit beginning readers of Irish remains to be seen.

Acknowledgments This paper is based on PhD research conducted by the first author and supervised by the second author. The research was supported by funding from An Chomhairle um Oideachas Gaeltachta & Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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Gaelscolaíochta (COGG), the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and a John and Pat Hume Scholarship from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. The authors gratefully acknowledge this support and thank the school principals, parents, and children involved in this study. The views expressed are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of COGG.

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scoileanna Gaeltachta/A study of Gaeltacht schools 2004. Dublin, Ireland: COGG. Masterson, J., Laxon, V., & Stuart, M. (1992). Beginning reading with phonology. British Journal of Psychology, 83, 1–12. National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (1999). Revised primary school curriculum. Dublin, Ireland: Government Publications. National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (2007). Language and literacy in Irish medium schools: Supporting school policy & practice. Dublin, Ireland: Government Publications. Ó Laoire, M. (1997). The standardization of Irish spelling: An overview. Journal of the Simplified Spelling Society, 22, 19–23. Ó Laoire, M. (2005). The language planning situation in Ireland. Current Issues in Language Planning, 6, 251–314. Ó Murchú, H. (2001). Irish: The Irish language in education in the Republic of Ireland. Ljouwert/Leeuwarden, The Netherlands: Regional Dossier Mercator Education. Ó Muircheartaigh, J., & Hickey, T. M. (in press). Academic achievement, anxiety, and attitudes in early and late immersion in Ireland. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Patel, T., Snowling, M. J., & DeJong, P. (2004). Learning to read in Dutch and English: A crosslinguistic comparison. Journal of Research in Reading, 27, 141–151. Reagan, T., & Osborn, T. (2002). The foreign language educator in society: Toward a critical pedagogy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Seymour, P. H. K., & Elder, L. (1986). Beginning reading without phonology. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 3, 1–36. Seymour, P. H. K., Aro, M., & Erskine, J. M. (2003). Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies. British Journal of Psychology, 94, 143–174. Spencer, L. H., & Hanley, J. R. (2003). The effects of orthographic consistency on reading development and phonological awareness: Evidence from children learning to read in Wales. British Journal of Psychology, 94, 1–28. Spencer, L. H., & Hanley, J. R. (2004). Learning a transparent orthography at five years old: Reading development of children during their first year of formal reading instruction in Wales. Journal of Research in Reading, 27(1), 1–14. Stuart, M., & Coltheart, M. (1988). Does reading develop in a sequence of stages? Cognition, 30, 139–181. Wimmer, H., & Hummer, P. (1990). How German speaking first graders read and spell: Doubts on the importance of the logographic stage. Applied Psycholinguistics, 11, 349–368.

About the Authors Christine Parsons recently completed her PhD at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Her doctoral research examined the development of reading skills in the Irish and English languages in children from different schooling and home language backgrounds. Fiona Lyddy is a senior lecturer in Psychology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Her research interests include word recognition and reading development in Irish and English. Address for correspondence: Department of Psychology, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland. E-mail: [email protected] Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2009, Volume 21, No. 1 pp. 37–59

Chinese senior high school EFL students’ metacognitive awareness and reading-strategy use Lawrence Jun Zhang Nanyang Technological University Singapore Aijiao Wu Hainan Senior High School China

Abstract This paper reports findings from a study that assesses metacognitive awareness and reading-strategy use of Chinese senior high school students who are learning English as a foreign language (EFL). A total of 270 students responded to a 28-item survey of reading strategies (SORS). The strategies were classified into 3 categories: global, problemsolving, and support. The results showed that the students reported using the 3 categories of strategies at a high-frequency level. Both the main effect for strategies and the main effect for learners’ proficiency were significant. The high-proficiency group outperformed the intermediate group and the low-proficiency group in 2 categories of reading strategies: global and problem-solving; but no statistically significant difference was found among the 3 proficiency groups in using support strategies. Pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the changing Chinese society. Keywords: metacognitive awareness, EFL reading, reading strategies, Chinese EFL learners of English

The importance of reading for second language (L2) acquisition has been widely acknowledged (Day & Bamford, 1998, 2002; Grabe, 2004), and the use of reading strategies is regarded as being conducive to successful reading comprehension despite the complex nature of the reading process, which invokes both the L2 reader’s language ability and reading ability (Alderson, 1984; see also Bernhardt, 2005; Hudson, 2007). In reviewing over 3 decades of L2 reading research, Bernhardt (2005) maintained that necessary components of a contemporary L2 reading model should consider readers’ first language (L1) literacy levels, L2 knowledge levels and the interactions of vocabulary levels, processing strategies, background knowledge, relationships between and among various cognate and non-cognate L1s and L2s, and the need to examine emerging L1 and L2 readers in addition to adult L2 readers. She argued for a compensatory processing model for L2 reading, which recognizes knowledge sources acting in an interactive and synergistic fashion in contributing to reading comprehension success. Koda’s (2007) http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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synthesis of recent advances in L2 reading research emphasized similar importance, recognizing crosslinguistic constraints on L2 reading development. Taken together, L2 reading research indicates that reading is an interactive meaning-making process (Alderson, 1984, 2005; Anderson, 1999; Carrell, 1988; Hudson, 1998; Zhang, Gu, & Hu, 2008) in which readers capitalize on various available sources and utilize a multitude of strategies to achieve the goal of comprehension. Therefore, L2 researchers have made attempts at identifying a variety of reading strategies (e.g., Anderson, 1991; Block, 1986; Hudson, 2007). It needs to be pointed out, however, that most of the comprehension activities of efficient readers take place at the metacognitive level, as shown by recent research on the reading strategies used by successful and less successful readers (e.g., Carrell, Gajdusek, & Wise, 1998; Hudson, 2007). Researchers have begun to recognize the significant role of metacognitive awareness in reading comprehension. Metacognitive awareness, or metacognition, was first defined by Flavell (1979) as one’s ability to understand, control, and manipulate his own cognitive process to maximize learning. Applied to reading, such awareness entails readers’ “knowledge of strategies for processing texts, the ability to monitor comprehension, and the ability to adjust strategies as needed” (Auerbach & Paxton, 1997, pp. 240–41). This concept has offered great insights as to how learners manage their cognitive activities to achieve comprehension before, during, and after reading (Wenden, 1998). Studies on learners’ metacognitive aspects of reading-strategy use have discovered that successful readers generally display a higher degree of metacognitive awareness, which enables them to use reading strategies more effectively and efficiently than their unsuccessful peers (Carrell, 1989; Carrell et al., 1998; Hudson, 1998; Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001; Zhang, 2001; Zhang et al., 2008). Grounded in this understanding, extensive research has been conducted to examine the effects of reading-strategy instruction on reading improvement (Carrell, 1998; Macaro & Erler, 2008; Zhang, 2008). The results confirmed that reading strategies can be taught and that once students’ metacognitive knowledge about reading strategies and strategy use is developed, they will become better readers (Carrell, Pharis, & Liberto, 1989; Farrell, 2001; Zhang, 2008). Although readers’ metacognitive awareness in reading has been recognized in the available literature to be critical to successful L2 reading, very few studies in this area have been conducted in the People’s Republic of China, particularly with high school students. At present, English reading instruction in high schools in China is undergoing reforms. Teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) are encouraged to implement strategy instruction in order to “help students cultivate reading strategies and form good reading habits” (Ministry of Education of China, 2003, p. 5). However, due to various reasons, instruction of reading strategies at high school level is still characterized by the traditional comprehension-testing model (Anderson, 1999). As this study has witnessed, a typical English reading lesson in high schools usually goes through pre-, while-, and post-reading procedures, in which students are required to do various kinds of comprehension-testing exercises that implicitly require a limited number of EFL reading strategies. It is assumed that students will naturally acquire the target strategies through implicit learning. However, problems arise. Students complain that they do not see improvement in their reading ability. Neither do they know what strategies to use. Teachers complain that students just cannot use their learned strategies to cope with new reading tasks. Just as Cohen (1998) and Macaro (2001) put it, only when teachers know what strategies Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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students are using and how they are using them in different contexts can they better understand the sources of students’ problems with reading strategies and be able to decide on students’ learning needs and adjust teaching procedures accordingly. Therefore, knowledge about what goes on in students’ minds during reading is a prerequisite for teachers’ decision-making in strategy-based instruction. For this reason the present study examines the metacognitive awareness of a group of Chinese senior high school EFL students and their perceived use of EFL reading strategies. The findings from this study are expected to generate some practical implications for EFL reading-strategy instruction in high schools in China or in other similar contexts where EFL reading instruction is conducted with students from China.

Reading Strategies Over the last 2 decades, most research on L1, L2, and foreign language (FL) reading has focused on the strategies that readers deploy in processing written input. According to Cohen (1990), reading strategies are “those mental processes that readers consciously choose to use in accomplishing reading tasks” (p. 83). Garner (1987) saw it as an action, or a series of actions that a reader employs in order to construct meaning in the reading process (see also Hudson, 2007). Hence, using reading strategies indicates how readers conceive a task, what they do to make meaning from texts, and what they do when comprehension breaks down (Block, 1986, 1992; Macaro, 2001; Macaro & Erler, 2008; Zhang, 2001). So far, L1 and L2 reading researchers have profiled a wide array of reading strategies used by readers. These range from the more traditionally well-known ones like skimming, scanning, and inferring to the more recently recognized ones such as activating schemata, recognizing text structure, using mental imagery, visualizing, generating questions, monitoring comprehension, evaluating strategy use, etc. (Anderson, 1991; Carrell, 1989; Block, 1986; Cohen, 1990; Pressley, 2002; Zhang et al., 2008). However, researchers such as Cohen (2003, 2007), Grabe (2004), Hadwin, Winne, Stockley, Nesbit, and Woszczyna (2001), Paris (2002), and Zhang (2003) pointed out that strategies themselves are not inherently good or bad, but they have the potential to be used effectively or ineffectively in different contexts. Readers’ use of reading strategies is informed by their metacognitive awareness of the strategies and how these strategies can be maximized for optimal effects in solving comprehension problems (Carrell, 1998; Carrell et al., 1998; Cohen, 2007; Hudson, 2007; Wenden, 1998; White, 1999; Zhang, 2008).

Metacognitive Awareness The term “metacognitive awareness” or “metacognition” is often defined simply as “cognition about cognition” (Flavell, 1979, 1987) in cognitive psychology and in learning theories in the instructional sciences. It is used to refer to one’s understanding of and control over his or her own cognitive processes (Carrell, 1998; Carrell et al., 1998; Flavell, Miller, & Miller, 1993; Hartman, 2001; for recent reviews see Hudson, 2007; Veenman, Van Hout-Wolters, & Afflerbach, 2006). Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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According to Flavell (1979), metacognitive awareness consists of both metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulation. Metacognitive knowledge is one’s knowledge of the cognitive process in relation to three variables that affect the outcomes of the cognitive enterprises, namely, person variable (beliefs about oneself or others as a cognitive processor), task variable (understanding of the nature and demand of tasks), and strategy variable (perceptions about strategies and strategy use that facilitate learning). To put it simply, people’s metacognitive knowledge is reflected in their belief that they, unlike other people, should use Strategy A rather than Strategy B in Task X rather than Task Y to achieve a learning goal (Hadwin et al., 2001; Paris & Winograd, 1990). While metacognitive knowledge is very consciousness-focused, metacognitive regulation is executive in nature, working on the basis of the metacognitive knowledge and referring to people’s management of their cognitive processes to ensure realization of learning goals. This management involves planning, monitoring, evaluating, and manipulating the cognitive processes to obtain optimal learning outcomes (Flavell, 1979, 1987; Paris, 2002; Veeman et al., 2006). Applied to reading, metacognitive awareness includes readers’ conscious awareness of strategic reading processes, of the reading-strategy repertoires, and of their actual utilization of the strategies to maximize text comprehension (Carrell et al., 1998; Forrest-Pressley & Waller, 1984; Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001; Zhang, 2001). Therefore, readers with stronger metacognitive awareness display hints to interpret a reading task based on context requirements. They select reading strategies in relation to reading purposes, task demands, and their own cognitive style. They monitor the process of comprehension, evaluate the effects of the selected strategies, and adjust strategies when needed (Cohen, 1998; Hudson, 2007; Paris, Lipson, & Wixson, 1994; Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995; Zhang, 2008).

Metacognitive Awareness and Reading Comprehension Over the last decade, numerous studies have been conducted to investigate the use of reading strategies in L1 contexts, either using think-aloud protocols or questionnaires and comprehension tests. After examining 38 published studies that used think-aloud protocols to explore native speakers’ strategy use, Pressley and Afflerbach (1995) discovered that efficient readers are constructively responsive readers, who are able to use strategies more effectively and flexibly than inefficient readers. The finding establishes a direct relationship between metacognitive awareness and reading proficiency. Research has also shown that while generalized knowledge about reading processes and strategies may be necessary, it is not sufficient for proficient reading comprehension. Forrest-Pressley and Waller (1984) found that skilled readers not only know that there are different ways of reading but also know how to monitor the efficiency and to regulate the use of different techniques (see also Paris, 2002; Paris et al., 1994; Paris & Winograd, 1990). Hadwin et al. (2001) explained that students use different strategies in different contexts and that context-free measures do not accurately reflect strategy use for any of those contexts. Given that the present study was conducted independently of any specific task, it is necessary to provide this background information so that the limitation of the study is made explicit at the very beginning. Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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Besides, this information is also important for interpreting the results. Research in L2 and FL contexts has focused much on the differences in reading-strategy use among learners of different language proficiency levels. Anderson (1991), for example, concluded from his study that both advanced and low L2 readers may use the same kind of strategies, but the more proficient readers tend to use a higher number of different strategies and are able to orchestrate their use more effectively. Studies conducted in other Chinese EFL contexts have brought about similar findings (e.g., Yang, 2002; Zhang, 2001, 2002; Zhang et al., 2008), further confirming the role of metacognitive awareness in successful L2 reading. Differences in metacognitive awareness of reading strategies among native and nonnative readers have also been investigated in a number of studies. The major findings are (a) nonnative readers bring with them their L1 knowledge of the reading process and strategies and apply them to L2 or FL reading contexts (Block, 1986), (b) L1 and L2 readers use similar kinds of reading strategies, (c) proficient L1 and L2 readers display comparably higher degrees of metacognitive awareness than non-proficient readers (Anderson, 1999; Block, 1986, 1992; Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Hudson, 1998; Macaro & Erler, 2008; Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001). Researchers who conducted these studies maintained that metacognitive awareness is crucial to proficient reading. In addition, insights from such studies have been useful for reading teachers in helping struggling readers to become strategic readers. Auerbach and Paxton (1997), for example, conducted an intervention study that was specifically designed to apply findings of such studies to classroom practices; and they reported great success in helping problematic readers to become high-ability readers. Similar findings were reported by Zhang (2008), who conducted strategy-based reading instruction at a tertiary institution in Singapore with young adults from China who were required to take the English-for-academic-purposes (EAP) courses. Working within Flavell’s (1979) framework of metacognition and Vygotskyan (1986) thinking of constructivism, Zhang integrated clusters of reading strategies in the reading curriculum and conducted the reading instruction systematically for 2 months. Generally, the studies on the metacognitive aspects of reading have indicated a need to increase understanding of readers’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies to gain insights into effective strategy instruction. However, most of the studies so far either have been conducted in contexts other than China or have dealt with students at primary or tertiary levels; thus, the contexts in which these studies were conducted are quite different from the high school context in which the data of the present study were collected. Chamot (2005), Cohen (1998), and Zhang (2008) pointed out that the contexts of the learning situation may have a strong influence on learners’ choice of language learning strategies. Therefore, the present study attempts to fill the gap by assessing the metacognitive awareness of Chinese senior high school students and their perceived use of reading strategies, through a questionnaire survey, while they are engaged in reading school-related English materials (e.g., textbooks, passages for exams, and supplementary readings in newspapers and magazines). The aim is to find out what reading strategies Chinese senior high school students deploy to approach EFL reading and whether there are differences in strategy choice among high-, intermediate-, and low-proficiency students. Three specific questions are addressed in this study: Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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1. How often do the students use the designated strategies? 2. What kind of strategies are they using most? 3. Is there any difference among high-, intermediate-, and low-proficiency students in their proneness of strategy choice and frequency of strategy use?

Method Participants Participants in this study were randomly selected from a population of about 2,000 second-year students at a senior high school in Hainan province of China. A total of 270 students were invited to respond to the questionnaire, but only 249 responses were valid. The 249 participants were divided into three proficiency groups (high, intermediate, and low) according to their average scores of three English exams administered among the whole population pool. These exams were standardized mid-term and final English tests designed by English teachers of the school to assess students’ overall English proficiency. These exams reliably measured students’ reading proficiency by virtue of their strong emphasis on reading comprehension and vocabulary, as has been the practice in FL instruction in senior high schools in China. The scores of the highproficiency group ranged from 73 to 91, those of the intermediate from 63 to 71, and those of the low-proficiency group from 31 to 62. Materials The data for this study were collected through a questionnaire (see Appendix A) adapted from the survey of reading strategies (SORS) by Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002) that was developed to measure the metacognitive awareness and perceived use of reading strategies of adolescent and adult learners of English as a second language (ESL) “while reading school related materials in English” (p. 2). It comprises 30 items measuring three broad categories of reading strategies: global reading strategies (henceforth “GLOB”), problem-solving strategies (henceforth “PROB”), and support strategies (henceforth “SUP”). A 5-point Likert scale following each item indicates the frequency of strategy use ranging from 1 (never do) to 5 (always do). Taking into consideration of the participants’ EFL proficiency level as well as feedback from the pilot study, this study made several adaptations to SORS to increase feasibility of the present study. Firstly, it was decided that the questionnaire be administered in Chinese, the native language, which the participants were most proficient in and comfortable with. This was to guarantee successful data collection and avoid comprehension difficulties that participants might encounter when given the English version, as some students reported having difficulty in understanding the contents of some of the terms in English. A university faculty member of the Nanyang Technological University, who had a PhD in applied linguistics and was highly proficient in both English and Chinese, was invited to review the translated Chinese version for clarity, readability, and appropriacy. Secondly, for more complete data analysis, a background Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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information section was added to elicit information about participants’ name, gender, age, and the class and school they were attending. After the first Chinese version was pilot-tested, revisions on individual questionnaire items were made as delineated below. Firstly, Item 14 was deleted because it was considered ambiguous and repetitive of item 25. Secondly, Items 4 and 8 were incorporated into one in response to respondents’ comment that these two strategies were always used at the same time. Thirdly, Items 2, 3, and 21 were rephrased and further elaborated on so that the statements became more comprehensible for the students. Finally, in light of the observation as well as students’ suggestions, the sequence of items in the original SORS were rearranged, with strategies under the same category put together, so that it would be easier for students to understand and differentiate some of the relevant and similar strategies. The finalized questionnaire consisted of 28 items, with 12 items falling into the GLOB category, 7 into PROB category, and 9 into SUP category (see Table 1). The internal consistency of the revised SORS for the study was proven to be acceptable. The internal reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha) for the three strategy categories were as follows: GLOB (α = .780), PROB (α = .790), and SUP (α = .720). The overall reliability coefficient (α = .85) ensured the general reliability of the study (see Glass & Hopkins, 1996). Table 1. Categorization and description of EFL reading strategies Category Description Example Global reading The intentional, carefully planned Having the purpose strategies (GLOB) techniques by which learners monitor or in mind; previewing manage their reading the text

Item 1–12

Problem-solving strategies (PROB)

The localized, focused techniques used when problems develop in understanding textual information

Adjusting reading speed; rereading the text

13–19

Support strategies (SUP)

The basic support mechanisms intended to aid the reader in comprehending the text

Using dictionaries; taking notes

20–28

Note. Adapted from Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002, p. 4).

Procedure Seliger and Shohamy (1989) suggested that a pilot study “will significantly improve the quality of the data obtained” (p. 173). Therefore, it was decided that the first Chinese version of the questionnaire be pilot-tested with a group of 10 students from the same population pool but in a different class. The purpose was to check clarity and comprehensibility of the items. In addition, the amount of time needed to answer the questions was calculated. Some modifications to the questionnaire were made in response to problems arising from the pilot test. Later, the revised questionnaire was re-piloted on the same students to further minimize the possibility of misinterpreting the questions. Eventually, the finalized questionnaire was administered to 270 students in five classes, assisted by the class English teachers. The administration was conducted in the evening self-study period, Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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and the researcher was present to deal with questions that students may pose. Students were informed of the purposes and requirements of the survey, and they were asked to provide honest responses. Most students were able to finish the questionnaire within 10 minutes. Later, all the completed questionnaires were examined; and after discarding 21 unnamed or incomplete ones, only 249 valid questionnaires were used for statistical analysis. Data Analysis Methodologically, the present study is quantitative in nature. It helps measure the extent of students’ awareness of reading strategies through an examination of the frequencies and variances of strategy use. Therefore, the collected data were analyzed quantitatively to obtain descriptive and inferential statistics. The data were subjected to a two-factor ANOVA with repeated measures to compare the differences among the three proficiency groups. The patterns of strategy choice in relation to individual strategies, types of strategy, and overall strategy use were analyzed by examining the means and the standard deviations within the whole participant group. Similar procedures were adopted to ascertain the variance of strategy use among the three proficiency groups. Then ANOVA was used to check whether these differences were statistically significant. In examining students’ strategy use in terms of the Likert scale that ranges from 1 to 5, this study employed three levels of usages, as suggested by Oxford and Burry-Stock (1995) for strategy use in language learning, that is, high (mean of 3.5 or higher), moderate (mean of 2.5 to 3.4), and low (mean of 2.4 or lower).

Results and Discussion Overall Pattern of Reading-Strategy Use by Chinese High School Students With regard to the first two research questions (i.e., “How often do the students use the designated strategies?” and “What kind of strategies are they using most?”), Table 2 presents descriptive statistics for students’ perceived use of individual strategies and the overall mean frequency of each of the three categories of strategies in EFL reading. The results showed that students on the whole reported using the available reading strategies at a high-frequency level (M = 3.5, SD = 0.61). Among the 28 strategies, 15 strategies (54%) fell into the high-usage level (M ≥ 3.5), and 13 strategies (46%) went to the medium level (M ≥ 2.5). No strategy was reported at the low-usage level (M ≤ 2.4). As far as the three categories of strategies are concerned, students showed a moderate to high usage, with problem-solving strategies (M = 3.78, SD = 0.59) as their prime choice, followed by global strategies (M = 3.63, SD = 0.59) and support strategies (M = 3.06, SD = 0.64). The top five strategies that were most favored by the students were under the PROB and GLOB categories, while the bottom five mainly went to the SUP category. Within the category of problem-solving strategies, 6 of the total 7 strategies (82%) were reported of frequent usage, indicating that students were generally conscious of their comprehension process and were able to take actions when comprehension breaks down. For example, when losing concentration, they “tried to get back on track” (Item 19, M = 4.10, SD = 0.87). When a text became difficult, they “re-read to increase understanding” (Item 17, M = 4.07, SD = 1.03) or Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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“adjusted reading speed” (Item 14, M = 3.90, SD = 0.95). Table 2. Chinese high school EFL student’ perceived use of reading strategies (N = 249) Item M (SE) SD Global strategies 1 3.59 (.071) 1.12 2 2.78 (.077) 1.21 3 3.51 (.076) 1.19 4 3.26 (.075) 1.18 5 4.08 (.061) .96 6 3.83 (.077) 1.21 7 4.12 (.058) .92 8 3.86 (.072) 1.14 9 3.43 (.072) 1.13 10 4.23 (.054) .85 11 3.83 (.065) 1.03 12 3.07 (.067) 1.06 3.63 (.037) .59 Overall Problem-solving strategies 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Overall

3.28 (.069) 3.90 (.060) 3.55 (.062) 3.53 (.069) 4.07 (.065) 4.00 (.062) 4.10 (.056) 3.78 (.037)

1.08 .95 .98 1.09 1.03 .98 .89 .59

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Overall

3.08 (.072) 3.48 (.077) 2.99 (.082) 3.35 (.075) 2.70 (.075) 3.53 (.064) 2.49 (.065) 2.57 (.080) 3.35 (.067) 3.06 (.408)

1.14 1.22 1.29 1.18 1.19 1.01 1.03 1.27 1.06 .64

Support strategies

While displaying ability to detect comprehension difficulty and adjust strategies accordingly, students also demonstrated capacity of planning for reading. This is seen from their frequent use of some global strategies like “setting goals for reading” (Item 1, M = 3.59, SD = 1.12), “previewing” (Item 3, M = 3.51, SD = 1.19), “using prior knowledge” (Item 5 M = 4.08, SD = 0.96), and “predicting text content” (Item 10, M = 4.23, SD = 0.85). They also showed involvement in comprehension monitoring through use of “confirming prediction” (Item 11, M = 3.83, SD = 1.03) and “checking understanding” (Item 9, M = 3.43, SD = 1.13). In addition, their frequent use of “deciding what to read or ignore” (Item 4, M = 3.26, SD = 1.18) and “using context clues” (Item 7, M = 4.12, SD = 0.92) showcased their ability of on-line decision-making Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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to facilitate understanding and to improve their reading speed. Support strategies like “underlining” (Item 21, M = 3.48, SD = 1.22) and “going back and forth in text” (Item 25, M = 3.53, SD = 1.01) were also quite espoused by the students, indicating their ability to utilize possible aids to enhance understanding and memorizing. Other support strategies (e.g., reading aloud, paraphrasing, asking oneself questions, and translating from English to Chinese) were among the least favored on the list. Since the effectiveness of these strategies depends largely on the context of use (e.g., translation is considered slowing reading speed but helping with clarifying meaning when comprehension breaks down, Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995), it is not surprising to find them bearing a less frequent usage. In fact, such results seem to suggest that students were flexible in their strategy selection. If a frequency of 3.5 and above is taken as indicating high strategy use, 2.5 to 3.4 as medium, and 2.4 and below as low, then another look at Table 2 can give us sufficient information about the overall tendency of the participants’ reported frequency of individual strategy use. As can be seen, out of the 15 strategies reported to be used with high frequency, 8 strategies (53%) were under the dimension of GLOB, 6 under PROB, and 1 under SUP, suggesting that the use of global and problem-solving strategies may be closely associated with students’ overall EFL proficiency level. Nevertheless, due to the design of the study, it is difficult to indicate the directionality of the relationship. The high-proficiency group’s reported high frequency of these particular strategies may be due to their high proficiency as readers, and the same applies to the low-proficiency group. The above analysis showed that the students on the whole displayed characteristics of active strategic readers. They were conscious of their cognitive process during reading and were able to utilize a wide array of EFL reading strategies to achieve comprehension. These findings support many other studies (e.g., Block, 1986, 1992; Hadwin et al., 2001; Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001; Zhang, 2001; Zhang et al., 2008), which asserted that effective or successful L2 and FL readers, like their native counterparts, were aware of a multitude of reading strategies available for use. Given that a comprehension-testing model is often adopted in EFL reading lessons (Anderson, 1999), Chinese senior high school teachers might be engaged in similar practices without knowing it. The Chinese students might have acquired these strategies through frequent practice of the target strategies embedded in the comprehension exercises conducted by their teachers, even if they were not taught the strategies explicitly (Paris et al., 1994; Pressley, 2002). Although the effects of comprehension testing needs to be further investigated, it is reasonable to believe that comprehension testing is beneficial to some extent and should not be totally rejected as a teaching strategy. The learning of English in the Chinese context itself can be another explanation for the students’ clearer metacognitive awareness of strategies than usually assumed. The students in this study generally approached EFL reading after they had learned their L1, Chinese, for some years and developed an awareness of Chinese reading strategies. As a result, it is natural that they would transfer some of their Chinese reading strategies to EFL reading (Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Zhang, 2008). Furthermore, teachers’ explicit explanations that are focused on teaching vocabulary, grammar, and discourse structure of the English language in classroom instruction could help Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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students develop awareness about English and English learning. This factor might have also contributed to facilitating students’ improvement in metacognitive awareness of L2 reading strategies (Hudson, 2007). Chinese Senior High School EFL Students’ Reading-Strategy Use and Their EFL Achievements To answer the third research question (“Is there any difference among high-, intermediate-, and low-proficiency students in their proneness of strategy choice and frequency of strategy use?”), a two-factor ANOVA with repeated measures was conducted. The dependent variable was the rating of reading strategies from 1 to 5. The within-subject factor was strategy category (global, problem-solving, and support); the between-subject factor was the learners’ proficiency level (low, intermediate, high). The main effect for strategies, F(2, 492) = 182.15, p < .001, the main effect for learners’ proficiency, F(4, 492) = 3.27, p < .05, and the interaction between strategies and learners’ proficiency are all statistically significant, F(4, 492) = 12.98, p < .001. Tests of simple effects were conducted to follow up the significant interactions. To control for family-wise error rate across these tests, the Holm’s sequential Bonferroni approach was adopted. The mean ratings of strategies by the low-proficiency group showed significant differences between the global and problem-solving strategies, t = -3.53, p = .001, between the global and support strategies, t = 3.23, p = .002, and between the problem-solving and support strategies, t = 5.09, p < 001. The mean ratings of strategies by the intermediate-proficiency group also showed significant differences between the global and problem-solving strategies, t = -3.41, p < .001, between the global and support strategies, t = 9.15, p < .001, and between the problem-solving and support strategies, t = 10.48, p < .001. Similarly, the mean ratings of strategies by the highproficiency group differed significantly between the problem-solving and support strategies, t = 12.68, p < .001, and between the global and support strategies, t = 11.59, p < .001. No significant differences were found between the global and problem-solving strategies, t = - .97, p > .05. Table 3 shows the means and standard deviations of the participants’ perceived use of reading strategies across three proficiency groups. As can be seen, there does exist some significant difference among the three groups. Generally, the high-proficiency group outperformed the intermediate- and low-proficiency groups in overall strategy use, and this difference was statistically significant. The three proficiency groups ranked PROB as the most important, followed by GLOB and SUP. However, although all the three groups reported frequent use of the first two categories of strategies, the high-proficiency group demonstrated the most frequent use of them. Table 3. Means (standard deviations) for the high-, intermediate-, and low-proficiency EFL readers’ perceived use of reading strategies (N = 249) Proficiency Strategy Low Intermediate High Global 3.407 (.572) 3.631 (.582) 3.855 (.529) Problem-solving 3.597 (.685) 3.821 (.580) 3.912 (.450) Support 3.179 (.652) 3.023 (.577) 2.979 (.687)

While the ANOVA results revealed the differences in reading-strategy choice among students of Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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different EFL proficiency levels, a correlation analysis further confirmed the relationship between students’ reading-strategy use and their general EFL proficiency despite the non-causal nature (see Appendix B for detailed correlation statistics). The results show that altogether 8 strategies (5 from the GLOB category) bear a close positive correlation to students’ English achievement, with the correlation coefficient (r) ranging from .225 to .507, p < .001. Item 26 (r = -.160, p = .011) and 27 (r = -1.20, p < .001) actually revealed a negative correlation between strategy use and students’ EFL proficiency level, corresponding to the difference in strategy use between the three proficiency groups discussed earlier. In sum, the above analysis has shown that the high-, intermediate-, and low-proficiency students were different in strategy choice, and the effective use of global strategies was found to be correlated with the students’ higher English achievements. These findings are consistent with those of previous studies, which revealed a relationship between global strategy use and language proficiency level (Anderson, 1991; Block, 1992; Zhang, 2002). It has to be highlighted, however, that the issue of whether reading in an L2 is a reading problem or a language problem has always been a contentious one. Some argue that it is a language problem, whereas others argue that it is a reading problem, meaning that students perform poorly in reading in an L2 because they do not have good reading skills or strategies in their L1. Alderson (1984), for example, posited that reading in an L2 is both a language problem and a reading problem. Carrell’s (1991) findings further lent support to Alderson’s position. This implies that, in the long run, informed training in the use of global strategies for problem-solving in reading comprehension for unsuccessful readers can be useful in helping them improve their reading ability, with a potential of leading to improvement in their overall English proficiency. Alternatively, reading instruction focusing on developing FL students’ decoding skills can be conducted concurrently with strategy-based instruction so that provision of reading strategies is possible in the process of their learning to read.

Conclusion The study set out to investigate the degree of Chinese high school students’ metacognitive awareness of EFL reading strategies, which was measured through their reported use of EFL reading strategies. By examining the students’ responses to the questionnaire, the study revealed that Chinese senior high school students are also active EFL reading-strategy users and that their pattern of strategy use is closely related to their overall EFL achievement. Such findings generally lend support to the published research of this field conducted in other contexts (e.g., Anderson, 1991; Block, 1986; Carrell, 1989; Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001; Zhang, 2002; Zhang et al., 2008). The study has some practical implications for EFL reading-strategy instruction in Chinese high schools or other educational settings that share similar characteristics. First, the results of this study suggest that although students on the whole frequently use a wide range of strategies, good learners seem to be distinguished from their low-proficiency counterparts in strategic knowledge. Good learners are better at planning for reading, monitoring their comprehension, and selecting appropriate strategies. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that low-proficiency learners will benefit from an informed metacognitive strategy training course that guides them to think about Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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their reading processes, identify their weaknesses, and take remedial measures, as suggested by some researchers who have concluded positive effects of strategy training on EFL and ESL learning (e.g., Carrell et al., 1989; Hudson, 1998; Rasekh & Ranjbary, 2003). Secondly, the finding of this study that high-, intermediate-, and low-proficiency learners have knowledge of a range of strategies at a moderate to high level is contradictory to some teachers’ assumption that senior high school students know little about reading strategies. This implies that students might know various EFL strategies that are useful for achieving comprehension by virtue of their high motivation and frequent exposure to English in various modalities nowadays, including hypertext, print, non-print, visual, and multimedia English materials. This change in the learning environment from one of poor language input to that of richer exposure might have given these learners many opportunities to read in English. Necessarily, this would affect their way of learning and the cultures of learning with which they were strongly associated. Therefore, what teachers need to do is to find out how effectively students are using different strategies and give them guidance accordingly. As suggested by the findings from this study, poor high school EFL readers need more help in increasing their knowledge about global strategies, as reading in a FL is not only a language problem but also a reading problem (Alderson, 1984, 2005; Hudson, 1998; for recent reviews, see Bernhardt, 2005; Hudson, 2007; Koda, 2007). Since many high school English teachers employ a comprehension-testing type of teaching strategy, it is possible that students develop EFL reading strategies through their experience of doing comprehension-testing exercises (Grabe & Stoller, 2002); and the strategies they use are mainly test-taking strategies, which are different from reading comprehension strategies for effective meaning-making. These test-taking strategies could have helped them become test-wise, but their ability for in-depth understanding of the reading material at hand might not have improved (Cohen, 1998). Although such a tentative conclusion needs further investigation, the comprehension-testing strategy should not be totally rejected or discarded. After all, comprehension exercises offer opportunities for students to practice using various reading strategies. These practices have much to do with the way teachers perceive language teaching and the various facets of language teacher preparation (Zhang, 2000, 2003, 2004). Therefore, teacher training programs might need to take into consideration language teaching methodologies that involve the use of strategy-based approaches to reading comprehension (Anderson, 1999; Chamot, 2005; Macaro, 2001; Hudson, 2007). Necessarily, this does not mean that comprehension-testing type of teaching is good enough. What should be advocated is an incorporation of explicit strategy training into the usual reading instruction procedures (Chamot, 2005; O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Zhang, 2008; see also Zhang, 2003, for a review of research on Chinese ELF learners, especially in relation to strategy-based instruction). For example, teachers can adopt a “comprehension exercise plus strategy evaluation” teaching method, where more focus is ascribed to the evaluation of strategy use. In this way, students will increase their knowledge or awareness of strategies and strategy use through reflecting on and verbalizing their use of the strategies at the beginning. Gradually, they can develop a higher degree of autonomy in using these reading strategies in different contexts. This recommendation is supported by findings from the studies by Cohen (1990, 2007), Zhang (2001), and Zhang et al. (2008), which suggest that being able to verbalize and evaluate strategy use is a sign of high metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. In the long run, however, developing students’ interest in reading in the way extensive reading activities are organized will Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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be an effective means to achieving reading efficacy in these EFL learners, given that strong relationships between extensive reading and reading achievement have been firmly established (see Day & Bamford, 1998, 2002, for a delineation on these issues and rich extensive reading activities; for recent findings of the benefits of extensive reading in developing various aspects of L2 language proficiency, see Renandya, 2007; Yamashita, 2004, 2008). Although the study has revealed some interesting findings that might inform EFL reading instruction, it has a number of limitations, especially in connection with the research method adopted (see Brantmeier, 2002, for a review of such issues). The first limitation is about the reliability of the questionnaire responses. Although students reported use of some strategies, it is difficult to know whether they are actually using these strategies. Future research should incorporate on-line think-aloud protocols or interviews to further examine students’ actual strategy use. The other limitation is related to the way that metacognitive awareness is assessed in the scoring in this study. It is obvious that awareness of vocabulary in EFL reading is not assessed in this study despite research findings that scores on vocabulary size and depth of vocabulary knowledge are highly and positively correlated to reading comprehension and that scores on depth of vocabulary knowledge can make a unique contribution to the prediction of reading comprehension levels (Qian, 1999, 2002; Zhang & Annul, 2008). Qian (2002) called for recognizing the importance of improving learners’ depth of vocabulary knowledge in language learning. Finally, given that the participants in the study were from a key senior high school in China, their overall EFL proficiency may be relatively higher than those in other senior high schools, which might have indirectly contributed to their overall high usage of strategies. Therefore, findings from the study should be interpreted with caution. Further studies are needed to examine how students’ awareness of reading comprehension strategies interacts not only with their perceived use of the strategies but also with their actual use of reading strategies, as well as with their use of vocabulary-handling strategies and their vocabulary size and vocabulary depth, in relation to gains in reading scores.

Acknowledgments We are indebted to all the participants for their ready participation in this study and their teachers for assistance in the data collection. We are also obliged to Professors Kouita Mokhtari and Ravi Sheorey for granting us permission to adapt and translate their reading questionnaire, SORS, into Chinese and use it with our participants in this study. We are obliged to one anonymous reviewer for the comments and suggestions on the relationship between metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension, which were incorporated into the final version of this article. We also record our gratitude to the other three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback, which has helped us in clarifying several points. Our thanks also go to Dr. Youyan Nie for her assistance in statistical analysis. Any error or inaccuracy that still remains in the paper is our responsibility.

References Alderson, J. C. (1984). Reading in a foreign language: A reading problem or a language problem? Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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Appendix A The Revised Survey of Reading Strategies (Chinese version) 英语阅读策略调查问卷 亲爱的同学们: 为了帮助我们及时发现英语阅读教学中存在的问题，我们需要了解同学们在阅读与英语学习 相关的文章（如课文、阅读理解短文、同步阅读资料等）时常用的阅读技巧和策略。这将帮助我 们深入理解同学们的英语阅读行为，为改进英语教学提供依据。本调查仅供学术研究参考使用， 我们将会对同学们所提供的一切个人资料绝对保密。因此，请同学们放心提供尽可能准确的资 料。非常感谢你们的参与和帮助！ 个人简况 姓名__________ 性别_____ 年龄_____ 学校_____________ 班级_____________ 问卷说明 以下是人们阅读与英语学习相关的文章（如教材中的课文、试题中的阅读理解短文、报刊杂 志中的同步阅读或补充阅读资料等）时使用的技巧和策略。每个句子后面有五个数字表示不同的 含义： 1 表示”我从不这样做” 2 表示”我偶尔这样做” 3 表示”我有时这样做”（频率约为 50%） 4 表示”我通常/大多数时候这样做” 5 表示”我总是/一直都这样做” 请仔细阅读每个句子，选择一个数字并圈起来，如”○ 3 “。注意，这些问题并没有标准答案，请 同学们根据自己的实际阅读情况作出恰当的选择。 全局策略 1 用英语阅读时，我有明确的阅读目的，如为了 学习，或为了获取与教材内容相关的信息等。 2 用英语阅读时，我会考虑文章的内容与我的阅 读目的是否相符。 Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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3 用英语阅读时，我通常先预览全文，了解文章 结构特征，长度和大意。 4 用英语阅读时，我会决定哪些内容该仔细读， 哪些内容该跳过或忽略。 5 用英语阅读时，我利用我已有的知识（如与文 章主题相关的知识或语法知识）来帮助理解文 章内容。 6 用英语阅读时，我会利用文章中的表格、图表 和插图来增强理解。 7 用英语阅读时，我利用上下文线索来帮助我更 好的理解所读内容。 8 用英语阅读时，我通过印刷特征如粗体、斜体 来识别重要信息。 9 用英语阅读时，我通过文章中出现的新信息来 检查自己对文章的理解。 10 用英语阅读时，我设法猜测所读内容的大意。 11 用英语阅读时，我会检查自己对文章内容的猜 测或预测是否正确。 12 用英语阅读时，我以批判性的眼光分析和评判 文章所提供的信息，而不是被动接受文章的信 息。 解决问题策略 13 用英语阅读时，我读得很慢很仔细以确保我理 解所读内容。 14 用英语阅读时，我会根据所读的内容调整阅读 速度。 15 用英语阅读时，我有时会停下来琢磨所读内 容。 16 用英语阅读时，我在脑海中描绘所读信息，使 文字信息图片化或情景化以便能记住所读内 容。 17 用英语阅读时，当文章变难的时候，我会重读 较难的部分来增强理解。 18 用英语阅读时，如果遇到生词和短语，我会设 法猜测它们的意思。 19 用英语阅读时，当我注意力分散的时候，我会 设法再次集中精神。 辅助策略 20 用英语阅读时，我将文章的关键词语或句子作 笔记来帮助我理解所读内容。 21 用英语阅读时，我会划出或圈出文章中的主要 信息以便能记住它们。 22 用英语阅读时，当文章内容变得难以理解的时 候，我读出声来帮助我理解所读内容。 Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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23 用英语阅读时，我借助相关参考书（如字典） 来帮助理解所读内容。 24 用英语阅读时，我用自己的话复述文章以便更 好的理解所读内容。 25 用英语阅读时，我会来回往复的阅读上下文以 便掌握文中前后出现的观点、大意之间的关 系。 26 用英语阅读时，我会向自己提问，并且希望能 从所读文章获得这些问题的答案。 27 用英语阅读时，我把所读内容逐词逐句翻译成 汉语. 28 用英语阅读时，我有时用英语，有时用汉语来 思考文章提供的信息。

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再次感谢你们的合作！

The Revised Survey of Reading Strategies (English translation; adapted from Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002). Survey of EFL Reading Strategies Name_________

Gender_____

Age_____

School_______________ Class___________

The purpose of this survey is to collect information about the various techniques you use when you read academic materials in English (e.g., reading textbooks for homework or examinations, reading journal articles, etc.). All the items below refer to your reading of school-related academic materials (such as textbooks, reading comprehension exercises, or other supplementary readings related to course contents). Each statement is followed by five numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and each number means the following: “1” means that “I never or almost never do this.” “2” means that “I do this only occasionally.” “3” means that “I sometimes do this” (About 50% of the time). “4” means that “I usually do this.” “5” means that “I always or almost do this.” After reading each statement, circle the number (1, 2, 3, 4, or 5) which applies to you. Note that there are no right or wrong responses to any of the items on this survey. Global strategies 1 I have a purpose in mind when I read 2 I think about whether the content of the text fits my reading purpose 3 I review the text to know about its length, organization and main idea 4 When reading, I decide what to read closely and Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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what to ignore I use my prior knowledge (e.g., knowledge about the theme of the text, or grammar knowledge) to help me understand what I read I use tables, figures, and pictures in text to increase my understanding I use context clues to help me better understand what I am reading I use typographical features like bold face and italics to identify key information I check my understanding when I come across new information I try to guess what the content of the text is about when I read I check to see if my guesses about the text are right or wrong I critically analyze and evaluate the information presented in the text rather than passively accept everything

Problem-solving strategies 13 I read slowly and carefully to make sure I understand what I read 14 I adjust my reading speed according to what I am reading 15 I stop from time to time and think about what I am reading 16 I try to picture or visualize information to help remember what I read 17 When text becomes difficult, I re-read it to increase my understanding 18 When I read, I guess the meaning of unknown words or phrases 19 I try to get back on track when I lose concentration Support strategies 20 I take note of the key expressions and ideas while reading to help me understand what I read 21 I underline or circle information in the text to help me remember it 22 When text becomes difficult, I read aloud to help me understand what I read 23 I use reference materials (e.g., a dictionary) to help me understand what I read 24 I paraphrase (restate ideas in my own words) to better understand what I read 25 I go back and forth in the text to find relationships among ideas in it 26 I ask myself questions I like to have answered in the text Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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Appendix B Pearson Correlations of Strategy Use to Students’ EFL Achievement Reading strategies 1 Set purpose for reading 2 Check how text content fits purpose 3 Preview text before reading 4 Determine what to read 5 Use prior knowledge 6 Use text features (e.g., tables) 7 Use context clues 8 Use typographical aids (e.g., italics) 9 Check understanding 10 Predict or guess text content 11 Confirm prediction 12 Critically evaluate what is read 13 Read slowly and carefully 14 Adjust reading speed 15 Pause and think about reading 16 Visualize information 17 Re-read to increase understanding 18 Guess meaning of unknown words 19 Try to stay focused on reading 20 Take note while reading 21 Underline information in text 22 Read aloud when text becomes hard 23 Use reference materials like dictionary 24 Paraphrase for better understanding 25 Go back and forth in text 26 Ask oneself questions 27 Translate from English to mother tongue 28 Think about information in both English and mother tongue GLOB (items 1–12) PROB (items 13–19) SUP (items 20–28) OVERALL (overall reading strategies) Note. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

Average exam scores .129* -.007 .042 .249*** .270*** .183** .220*** .221*** .123 .205** .226*** .181** -.116 .213** .041 .051 .275*** .263*** .171** .042 .023 -.004 -.051 -.091 .080 -.160* -.331*** -.120 .304*** .209** -.126 .170*

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About the Authors Lawrence Jun Zhang, PhD, is an associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, a post-doctoral fellow at the Oxford University, and a guest professor of Yangtze University and Yanshan University, China. He has published in British Journal of Educational Psychology, Instructional Science, Language Awareness, and Language and Education, among others. He is an editorial board member of TESOL Quarterly and Metacognition and Learning. Address for correspondence: 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 637616, Singapore. E-mail: [email protected] Aijiao Wu is a senior English teacher at Hainan Senior High School, Haikou, China. She holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the Hainan Normal University, China, and an MA in Applied Linguistics from the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. E-mail: [email protected]

Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

April 2009, Volume 21, No. 1 pp. 60–77

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

The effects of cultural familiarity on reading comprehension İsmail Hakkı Erten and Salim Razı Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University Turkey

Abstract This study investigated whether cultural familiarity influences comprehension of short stories and whether nativizing the story or using reading activities can compensate for the lack of such familiarity. The study was conducted with 44 advanced-level students of English at a state university in Turkey. In a 2 × 2 experimental research design, the 1st group of students read an original short story without any activities while the 2nd group of students read the original short story with some activities. The 3rd group read the nativized version of the text without any activities while the 4th group read the nativized version with the same set of activities as the 2nd group. The analysis of variance indicated a better comprehension of the nativized story. The activities contributed to the comprehension of the original story, but the difference caused by nativization remained intact, indicating a powerful impact of cultural schema on comprehension. Keywords: reading comprehension, schema theory, cultural schema, nativization

Readers, when engaged in reading, are believed to go through an active and interactive process (Anderson, 1999; Grabe & Stoller, 2002). Such a process presumes that readers have or should have some background knowledge about the topic of the text. Anderson, for example, explained reading as follows: Reading is an active, fluent process which involves the reader and the reading material in building meaning. Meaning does not reside on the printed page. … Synergy occurs in reading, which combines the words on the printed page with the reader’s background knowledge and experiences. (p. 1) Reading as an interactive process requires various mental operations to be performed concurrently or very closely in time. When students read, they are likely to proceed from processing the text in smaller units of language to larger conceptual units (Perfetti, 1985). In fact, readers tend to deal with both micro-level text-driven features, such as pattern recognition, letter identification, and lexical access, and macro-level reader-driven features, such as activation of prior knowledge and monitoring comprehension (Berhnardt, 1991; Brantmeier, 2004). Each of these processes requires valuable memory space and may sometimes overload the working memory, which is limited in capacity (Baddeley, 1997; McLaughlin, Rossman, & McLeod, 1983; Miller, 1956; Pulido, 2003). http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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Such limited capacity can be further overloaded by the extra efforts that students make when reading. Readers’ efforts to deal with micro-level linguistic features may place so much demand on the readers that not enough resources can be allocated to macro-level textual analysis (Afflerbach, 1990; Alptekin, 2006). It has been argued, however, that the cognitive load can be lessened by activation of the background knowledge that readers bring to the text (Carrell, 1988; Ellis, 2001; Nassaji, 2002; Pulido, 2004). When readers bring relevant background knowledge to the reading process, they can allocate more attentional space for textual analysis and interpretation. In this sense, existing background knowledge may contribute to the functioning of what are described as automatic processes by McLaughlin (1987), sparing valuable attentional space for more unfamiliar and newer elements in the text. The place of background knowledge in the reading process has been discussed within schema theory (Bartlett, 1932; Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983). Schema theory deals with “preexisting knowledge structures stored in the mind” (Nassaji, 2002, p. 444) and how readers combine their previous knowledge with the text (Ajideh, 2003; Alderson, 2000; Alptekin, 2006; Anderson, 1999; Carrell, 1983; Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983; Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Johnson, 1981, 1982; Ketchum, 2006; McKay, 1987; Murtagh, 1989). In the rest of this paper, the terms schema and background knowledge will be used synonymously and interchangeably. Background knowledge that readers make use of during their engagement with the text is thought to be of various types (Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983; Nassaji, 2002; Oller, 1995). Of the different types, the most frequently referred to and discussed are formal and content schemata. Formal schema, also called textual schema (Singhal, 1998), is defined as knowledge of language and linguistic conventions, including knowledge of how texts are organized and what the main features of a particular genre of writing are (Alderson, 2000; Carrell, 1987, 1988; Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983). Research into formal schema suggests that “texts with familiar rhetorical organization should be easier to read and comprehend than texts with unfamiliar rhetorical organization” (Carrell, 1987, p. 464). Content schema, which is described as knowledge of the content (Carrell, 1983), can further be divided into two different types: background knowledge and subject matter knowledge. The former refers to the knowledge that may or may not be relevant to the content of a particular text, and the latter is directly related to the text content and topic (Alderson, 2000). A third type of schema, which is more relevant to this study, is cultural schema (Yule, 1996). It is also called abstract schema (Nassaji, 2002; Oller, 1995), story schema (Mandler, 1984), or linguistic schema (Ketchum, 2006). Ketchum proposed cultural schema as a culture-specific extension of content schema because it refers to the role of cultural membership that is needed to fully comprehend the meaning intended by the writer. Abstract in nature, cultural schema involves cultural familiarity and helps readers to reconstruct the story line through referring to more personally and culturally relevant scripts (Oller, 1995). One effect of this is a lessened workload to reconstruct scripts and make personal interpretations, because such texts entail involvement with “real material persons, events, places, and sociocultural relations with which [readers] can identify and find some common ground” (Oller, Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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1995, p. 299). This is probably because different concepts may have different referents in different cultural contexts and may thus generate different expectations on the reader’s part. Such cultural specificity can be seen in the example of breakfast (Alptekin, 2008). Although most people from the same society will understand similar things about having breakfast, Turkish and British readers may have different expectations about breakfast. Turkish readers may often expect to have cheese, olives, jam, honey, tomatoes, cucumber, and brewed tea (with no milk at all) for breakfast. British readers may expect to have cereal, toast, butter and jam, honey, and tea (with or without milk) or coffee; or for a cooked breakfast, to have sausages, bacon, baked beans, hash browns, fried eggs, and grilled tomatoes. Thus, cultural schema, not dependent on the surface forms utilized in the formation of the text, involves more than a mere literal comprehension of the content of the text (Alptekin, 2006). Several studies have reported positive effects of cultural familiarity on reading comprehension (Alptekin, 2006; Steffensen, Joag-Dev, & Anderson, 1979) and vocabulary learning (Pulido, 2003, 2004). Steffensen et al., for example, demonstrated that when students are familiar with cultural norms, they make a better interpretation of the text than when they are not. Further, in cases of unfamiliar cultural norms, students tend to refer to their own cultural properties, which results in poor interpretations of the text. More recently and more relevant to this study, Alptekin (2006) illustrated that when cultural elements of a short story are nativized to make the text culturally more familiar, students can make better inferences than when they read the original but culturally-remote story. Alptekin’s findings give support to Oller’s (1995) assertion that changing certain words in authentic texts with more familiar ones helps readers to achieve better comprehension. Alptekin’s (2006) work is different from other schema-related studies (e.g., Carrell, 1988) in that he did not use two texts of similar difficulty but made use of the same text only by changing some cultural elements, such as the names of people and places, and by adapting them to the students’ own cultural context. This, according to Alptekin, reduces the possible bias posed by varying levels of conceptual density and complexity in different texts. He claimed the role of cultural background knowledge . . . needs to be investigated not necessarily in the framework of two texts that are thought to be syntactically, lexically, and rhetorically equivalent, but in the context of the same text used in two different ways, one being the original and the other a culturally nativized version. Nativization refers to the pragmatic and semantic adaptation of the textual and contextual clues of the original story into the learner’s own culture, while keeping its linguistic and rhetorical content essentially intact. (p. 497) Alptekin’s (2006) approach is plausible as he attempts to minimize possible intervening variables in the experimentation process. It would be worth replicating and extending his study to achieve a better understanding of the phenomena. Further, minimizing possible intervening variables in such a procedure could also lend itself to the investigation of other elements involved in the reading process. One such element is the activities used in a reading class. Working through nativized texts may prove convenient to measure how effective the use of activities is in compensating for the lack of relevant cultural schema. Thus, this research aimed to extend Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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Alptekin’s work and to show whether activities can make up for the lack of cultural familiarity.

Reading Activities From a more pedagogical standpoint, suggestions have been made to use certain activities for activating readers’ existing schema or at least providing learners with crucial information about the topic they will be reading (Ajideh, 2003; Brown, 2001; Chastain, 1988; Chen & Graves, 1995; Grabe, 1991). The use of reading activities can promote strategic reading behaviors by students at pre-, while-, and postreading (Alyousef, 2006; Ur, 1996) stages. In turn, reading activities can promote interpretation of the text through the interaction between the reader and the text (Wallace, 1992) and thus play a vital role in schema activation in order to comprehend and interpret the text better (Chen & Graves, 1995; Grabe & Stoller, 2002). Despite the fairly well-documented impact of background knowledge on reading comprehension and a host of activities suggested, it still remains to be explored whether, or to what extent, the lack of cultural knowledge can be compensated through the use of reading activities. Erten and Karakaş (2007) noted that our knowledge on the value of these activities mainly stems from pedagogical recommendations or personal experiences and often lacks scientific scrutiny. Only a handful of studies have investigated which is more effective, using a particular activity on the same text (e.g., Karakaş, 2005) or making use of different activities on the same text with different groups of students (e.g., Chen & Graves, 1995; Erten & Karakaş, 2007; Shen, 2004). Karakaş (2005), for example, showed that a combination of previewing and brainstorming is more effective than merely using brainstorming with short stories. Along the same lines, Chen and Graves (1995) explored the effectiveness of previewing and providing background knowledge and concluded that previewing is more effective than providing background knowledge. A contrasting finding comes from Shen (2004), who found that providing background knowledge, in fact, could help learners better with their comprehension. Finally, Erten and Karakaş (2007) reported that some activities (e.g., a combination of previewing, providing keywords, scanning, skimming, clarifying, asking and answering questions, and drawing conclusions) contributed to the literal comprehension, while others (e.g., a combination of brainstorming, surveying, reciprocal teaching, evaluation, inferring, re-reading, thinking aloud, and discussion), contributed better to the evaluative comprehension of short stories. With due acknowledgment to these efforts, it is necessary to note that there has not been an attempt to compare the influence of the presence or absence of cultural familiarity with the effect of classroom activities used. It therefore remains to be investigated whether cultural schema influences reading comprehension, and more importantly, whether the use of activities can make up for the absence of cultural knowledge. This study aims to contribute to our understanding of these issues. It addresses the following two research questions: 1. Does readers’ familiarity with the cultural content of short stories affect their comprehension? 2. Do reading activities used with short stories make up for the lack of cultural schema? Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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Based on the above literature review, the study hypothesized that cultural familiarity has a significant impact on reading comprehension and that although reading activities contribute to comprehension, the impact of cultural familiarity remains a significant factor.

Method The study was conducted in the English Language Teaching Department of the Faculty of Education at a state university in the west of Turkey. The department was considered suitable for the study because the teacher training program included a short stories component. The Short Stories course, taught by a colleague of the authors, offered an appropriate medium for research as well as constant access to the students. Participants Forty-four students from the department participated in the study. The participants were young adults (aged 20–23). They were all being trained to become teachers of English. At the time of the data collection, they had studied English for 7–9 years (M = 7.5) and were in their 3rd year of university education. The participants had an advanced level of English language proficiency and thus met the minimum language requirements to be included in the study. They had been accepted into the department after a very competitive nationwide university placement exam, administered by the University Entrance and Placement Centre of the Turkish Higher Educational Council. Students enrolled in the department often fall into a very narrow band of the top 10%. Therefore, the researchers expected the participants to have similar levels of English proficiency. The participants were randomly assigned, according to their grade point average (GPA), into four groups to create a 2 × 2 experimental research design. For the sampling, the participants’ cumulative GPAs at the end of their fifth term in the department were calculated by taking account of only the English-based courses and English-medium-teacher-training courses. Once the cumulative GPAs were calculated, the GPAs were grouped into nine ranges, as illustrated in Table 1. Table 1. Ranges of participants’ GPAs Group Range 1 4.00–3.75 2 3.74–3.50 3 3.49–3.25 4 3.24–3.00 5 2.99–2.75 6 2.74–2.50 7 2.49–2.25 8 2.24–2.00 9 1.99–1.75

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Finally, 11 students from different ranges of GPAs were assigned evenly to different treatment groups so as to form homogenous groups that were later labeled Treatment 1 (original text no activities, henceforth “ONA”), Treatment 2 (original text with activities, henceforth “OWA”), Treatment 3 (adjusted text no activities, henceforth “ANA”), and Treatment 4 (adjusted text with activities, henceforth “AWA”). Table 2 shows the mean GPA values for each treatment group. Table 2. Mean GPA values for each treatment group Name of the Group N M Original text no activities 11 2.57 Original text with activities 11 2.52 Adjusted text no activities 11 2.60 Adjusted text with activities 11 2.57

SD 0.43 0.28 0.29 0.42

An analysis of variance revealed no significant differences among the treatment groups, F = 0.095, p < .96, indicating a reasonable homogeneity of these groups. Materials The reading text. The short story “The Girls in their Summer Dresses” by Irwin Shaw (2000), a popular classic first published in 1939, was chosen for the study. The story is about a couple trying to take a Sunday off in the city of New York. The story was nativized for research purposes. The nativization (Alptekin, 2006) functioned as an independent variable and provided students with a locality that they were culturally familiar with. For clarity, it needs to be noted that the terms nativized and adjusted are used synonymously and interchangeably in the rest of this paper. In the nativization process, the names of the characters were changed to Turkish names. Care was taken while adjusting the narrated city plan of New York to Çanakkale, a coastal Turkish city. All the names of the places, streets, and buildings had to make sense in readers’ minds in order to activate their schema about the city of Çanakkale. Furthermore, the sequence of actions had to conform to the original story. For example, in the original story, the couple leaves the Brevoort and starts walking towards Washington Square along Fifth Avenue. In the nativized story, the couple leaves Barışkent (a suburb in the city of Çanakkale) and starts walking towards Republic Square along Kordonboyu (the seafront). Apart from these changes, some conceptual cues also had to be changed in order to complete the nativization process. For example, in the nativized story, the characters planned to eat fish (which was steak in the original story) because Çanakkale is a coastal city along the Dardanelles. The main changes are illustrated in Table 3, and some samples from each version of the story are given in Appendix A. Reading test. A recall test (see Appendix B) was administered at the end of the reading session. The test was written for the two different versions of the story: nativized and original. The posttest included three different elicitation techniques: The first group of questions used “True/False/Not Given,” the second group of questions involved “Putting scrambled actions into Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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the correct order,” and the third group used “Open-ended short-answer questions” to test comprehension. Students were not allowed to refer to the reading text during the posttest period, nor were they allowed to use dictionaries. Table 3. Examples of differences between the two versions Original short story Character Michael (Mike) Loomis Frances The Stevensons New York/City of New York/State of New York Alice Maxwell’s house Fifth Avenue The Brevoort Washington Square Eighth Street Football game Rolls and coffee An extra five pounds of husband A steak as big as a blacksmith’s apron A bottle of wine A new French picture at the Filmarte

Nativized short story

Coşkun Umutlu Özlem Nalan & Tarık Place Çanakkale/City of Çanakkale Tarık Uyanık’s house Kordonboyu Barışkent Republic Square Golf Tea Garden/Republic Square Basketball game—Turkish women’s championship Culture Turkish baguettes and tea An extra several kilos of husband A fish as big as a man’s arm A big bottle of rakı A new Turkish picture “O Şimdi Asker” (He’s in the army now) at the AFM cinema

Reading activities. In addition to reading the text, class activities were chosen to address the three stages of a normal reading class: prereading, while-reading, and postreading. The activities were used with only two groups: the OWA group and the AWA group. The activities used in the class have been described by several authors (e.g., Chastain, 1988; Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Lazar, 1993; Ur, 1996; Wallace, 1992) as typical of classes where short stories are examined. This study did not intend to compare the effectiveness of different reading activities. Rather it aimed to compare the differences in readers’ comprehension with or without reading activities in the two reading conditions (i.e., original text and adjusted text) created for the research purposes. Therefore, we aimed to construct the typical flow of a short-story class with which participants of the study were familiar. This resulted in the use of the same activities in conditions where their use was planned. Since the students were acquainted with the activities, the researchers did not feel the need to spend extra time explaining and illustrating these activities. The activities selected will be outlined in detail below. Procedure The first group of participants was given the original text without activities, while the second group did some reading activities as the participants read the original text. The third group read Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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the nativized version without activities. Finally, the last group was asked to perform some activities while reading the nativized version. Table 4 illustrates the lesson plans for each group of students. Table 4. Procedures for each group of students Treatment 1 Treatment 2 Treatment 3 Treatment 4 ONA OWA ANA AWA Original text was Prereading activities: Nativized text was Prereading activities: given without given without Brainstorming (3’) Brainstorming (3’) activities (30’) activities (30’) Pre-questioning (3’) Pre-questioning (3’) While-reading activities: While-reading activities: Reading the story (35’) Reading the story (35’) Scanning (2’) Scanning (2’) Skimming (2’) Skimming (2’) Clarifying (2’) Clarifying (2’) Reciprocal teaching (2’) Reciprocal teaching (2’) Inferring (2’) Inferring (2’) Postreading activities: Postreading activities: Thinking aloud (2’) Thinking aloud (2’) Asking and answering Asking and answering questions (2’) questions (2’) Posttest (15’) Posttest (15’) Posttest (15’) Posttest (15’) Total 45’ Total 60’ Total 45’ Total 60’ Note. ONA = Original text with no activities; OWA = Original text with activities; ANA = Adjusted text with no activities; AWA = Adjusted text with activities. ’ = minutes.

At the prereading stage, the participants were first asked to brainstorm on expectations in a relationship. They were then guided to some questions that they could answer by referring to their background knowledge, such questions as how they would plan a free Sunday with their girl or boy friends. Approximately 3 minutes was allocated for each activity of this stage. Although the timings were not strictly controlled, care was taken not to allocate uneven amounts of time for a particular activity with the two activity groups. This was also true for activities at the other two stages of reading. After the prereading activities, the participants were instructed to move onto the while-reading stage during which they were asked to read the short story silently. This period took approximately 35 minutes, during which the silent reading process was interrupted by a number of while-reading activities. For example, the participants were asked to explain the relationship between Michael and Frances (Çoşkun & Özlem in the adjusted text) by skimming the text. Since this relationship can be inferred in the very early parts of the story, this activity was completed in nearly 2 minutes. Similarly, participants were required to scan the short sections of the text within very short periods of time. For example, the participants scanned the first paragraph of the story to find out where the couple lived. Clarifying was done when the need arose. As participants read the text, they were encouraged to indicate any confusion that prevented understanding the text. When needed, other participants were encouraged to make clarifications. The class teacher provided clarifications where other Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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participants could not. Thus, clarifying was done as a separate activity that preceded reciprocal teaching rather than being a component of it. Following this, the participants were involved in the other three components of reciprocal teaching: summarizing, questioning, and predicting. These were teacher-led activities for research purposes. Within a short period of time they were asked to summarize and ask questions about what they have read and predict what might happen later in the story. As the last activity in the while-reading stage, the participants were asked to say what could be inferred from particular parts of the story. During the postreading stage, the participants were asked to think aloud on the text to identify possible comprehension problems and then answer questions such as “Why did Frances (Özlem in the adjusted text) cry?” Data Analysis Marking the papers. Two independent raters marked the students’ papers for comprehension only and ignored the grammatical mistakes in their answers to the open-ended questions in order to minimize the effect of any variation among the students’ writing skills, as otherwise they would have been assessing writing skills rather than reading comprehension. The ordering part of the posttest was marked according to the Weighted Marking Protocol (Razı, 2005), which enabled partial evaluation. The marking procedure in this protocol is based on correcting the wrong order of events provided by the participants and reducing their marks with reference to their mistakes. This protocol works on the basis of giving some marks to students even if they do not put all the events in the right order, thus awarding partial success rather than giving no marks at all. Interrater reliability for marking the papers. The marks given to the students’ papers by the two independent raters were analyzed through the Pearson Correlation Coefficient Test. A high correlation coefficient was found between the two sets of marks, r = 89, p < .01, which was considered to be consistent enough to proceed with further statistical analysis. Statistical analysis. The participants’ posttest scores were analyzed by using ANOVA, and a post-hoc LSD (least significant difference) test was employed to find out where the group differences occurred. Cohen’s d was also used to calculate the effect size.

Results The descriptive statistics are presented in Table 5. As can be seen, considerable differences existed between the groups’ performances. The two groups that received the nativized version of the story scored higher than the other two groups, with the AWA group being the most successful. The differences observed between different treatment conditions were statistically significant, F = 6.85, p < .001. Group differences were examined through a post-hoc LSD Test. The results are illustrated in Table 6.

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Table 5. Mean scores of groups Treatment condition N M SD AWA 11 79.18 9.98 ANA 11 69.91 10.28 OWA 11 64.55 10.25 ONA 11 60.45 13.03 Note. ONA = Original text with no activities; OWA = Original text with activities; ANA = Adjusted text with no activities; AWA = Adjusted text with activities. Table 6. Results of the post-hoc LSD test on group differences Conditions Mean Difference Cohen’s d p ONA vs. OWA -5.00 .277 0.35 ONA vs. ANA -10.36* .028 0.81 ONA vs. AWA -19.64** .000 1.61 OWA vs. ANA -5.36 .244 0.52 OWA vs. AWA -14.64** .003 1.45 ANA vs. AWA -9.27* .048 0.92 Note. ONA = Original text with no activities; OWA = Original text with activities; ANA = Adjusted text with no activities; AWA = Adjusted text with activities. *p < .05. **p < .01.

As can be seen in Table 6, highly significant differences existed between the treatment groups. The first hypothesis of this study (that cultural familiarity has a significant impact on reading comprehension) was sufficiently supported by the between-group differences, which confirmed that cultural familiarity did influence the students’ comprehension. The ANA group outperformed (M = 69.91) the ONA group (M = 60.45), with a considerable effect size (d = 0.81). The second pairing yielded even bigger differences: The AWA students (M = 79.18) did significantly better than the OWA students (M = 64.55), indicating a large effect size (d = 1.45). The second hypothesis (that although reading activities contribute to comprehension, the impact of cultural familiarity remains a significant factor) was also supported by the results obtained from the cross-comparisons between the groups. As expected, the AWA students (M = 79.18) outperformed the ANA students (M = 69.91), showing the effects of reading activities on reading comprehension. The difference also indicated a large effect size (d = 0.92). Similarly, the AWA students also did much better than the ONA students (M = 60.45), with a large effect size (d = 1.61). However, the difference between the OWA and ONA students was not statistically significant (d = 0.35), implying that the activities did not help comprehension much with the original text. Similarly, no significant difference was observed between the OWA students and the ANA students (d = 0.52). The students who read the original text with some activities (M = 64.55) did not perform significantly better than the students who read the adjusted text with no activities (M = 69.91). Conversely, they did slightly worse.

Discussion The present study aimed to investigate the effects of cultural familiarity on reading comprehension as well as to discover whether activities can make up for possible gaps in Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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students’ relevant cultural schema, which is a common suggestion in the field. With regard to the first question, the results confirmed what has been widely acknowledged as the positive effect of background knowledge and cultural familiarity on reading comprehension (e.g., Alderson, 2000; Alptekin, 2006; Ketchum, 2006; Oller, 1995; Pulido, 2003; Steffensen et al., 1979). The difference between the two groups’ performances in comprehension suggested a strong possibility that the students who read the nativized version of the story possessed relevant cultural background knowledge, which reduced the cognitive load imposed by the complex reading procedures (Perfetti, 1985) on the memory system (Baddeley, 1997; Ellis, 2001; Kintsch, 1998; McLaughlin et al., 1983), as opposed to the students who had to deal with unfamiliar cultural content and visualize the script in their minds. In the culturally familiar version, where the text was nativized, the students seemed to find it easier to allocate attentional resources to more linguistic elements and construct mental representations of the familiar context. In contrast, it was much more difficult for the students to create mental representations of the unfamiliar context, which prevented the economical use of attentional resources. The effect of cultural familiarity may also be related to motivational issues, although studies in this area are few. Recent work on attitudes and motivation has shown that motivation is related to achievement (e.g., Dörnyei, 2003), involving many factors such as ownership and interest (Williams & Burden, 1997). In the realm of reading research, two types of interest have been proposed as contributing to motivation, namely, personal interest and situational interest (Alexander & Jetton, 2000). The first is related to one’s general approach to reading while the latter is generated by the text. The latter category can be of practical value in explaining the variable performances of the students in this study. The students in the nativized story group might have enjoyed the situational interest aroused by the text. Tomlinson (1998), for example, maintained that when students see elements of their local culture in classroom materials, they feel much more engaged and identify themselves with the context of the text. Such a personal appeal has also been shown as one of the sources of situational interest (Schraw, Bruning, & Svoboda, 1995). Thus, students in the nativized-story groups might have found the version much more appealing than those in the original-version groups, which had no local reference at all. Such an appeal might, in turn, have contributed to higher levels of motivation (Dörnyei, 2003, 2005; Harter, 1981; Williams & Burden, 1997) and thus led to a better reading comprehension (e.g., Guthrie, Wigfield, Metsala, & Cox, 1999; Wigfield, 1997). As for the effects of the activities, one cannot deny their value in the process of reading comprehension, though this study did not aim to compare the effectiveness of the activities as such. In fact, the activities did contribute to comprehension significantly; however, this effect varied noticeably. The differences between the ANA and AWA groups pointed to the positive effects of reading activities. The insignificant difference between the ONA and OWA groups and the inferior performance of the OWA group compared to the ANA group were interesting. Further, there was a considerable difference between the OWA and ANA groups. The activities used in this study were probably not adequate in compensating for the gaps in cultural familiarity between the two groups. Nor did they make the OWA group’s comprehension better than that of the ONA group, or even that of the ANA group, as compared to the significant difference Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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observed in between the AWA group and the ANA group. This was probably because the gaps in cultural knowledge were so big that the activities used with the OWA group did not make much difference in activating the necessary schema. Contrary to the groups that read the original story, the significant difference observed between the AWA group and the ANA group can be attributed to the activities that built on an already active conceptual infrastructure (or macro-level features). With such available schematic resources, the activities could fulfill the functions ascribed to them, which were not possible with the original story groups. The nativized version of the story is very likely to have facilitated the mental representation so that the students did not need extra activities to activate the background knowledge. This enabled optimum allocation of attention to micro-level features.

Conclusion and Implications Two conclusions, with some caveats described below, can be drawn from this study. Firstly, cultural familiarity facilitates comprehension. Secondly, although reading activities do activate schematic knowledge and promote strategic reading behaviors, the influence of cultural familiarity remains intact. Therefore, if readers lack the relevant cultural schema, reading activities cannot fully compensate for the discrepancy or help readers comprehend a text. This study is not without limitations. Firstly, this study was not designed to measure the effectiveness of individual reading activities. Instead, the use of reading activities was instrumental in investigating the influence of cultural schema on reading comprehension. Further, the selection of the activities used in this study was not based on experimental scrutiny; rather, it was based upon pedagogical descriptions provided in the field. Therefore, different activities aiming at providing more background knowledge and further elaboration on texts may yield different results. Care also needs to be taken in interpreting the results of this study. Although efforts were made to homogenize the groups on the basis of their GPA scores, more standardized tests of proficiency such as TOEFL or IELTS could have contributed to more homogeneous sampling of the groups. Further, recent research on reading processes and the variables involved suggests motivational and attitudinal factors are related to reading comprehension. These elements were not taken into account in this study. A better-controlled measurement could shed further light on the phenomenon. Finally, the study was conducted with a small sample of students. A larger sample could tolerate individual variations better in statistical analysis. Despite these limitations, the results of this study have important pedagogical implications. Given the fact that the scores were higher with the nativized version of the story, materials that contain references to local elements or have personal relevance can produce a facilitative influence and can be useful in language classes. However, it may not always be possible, nor is it always desirable, to use texts only with direct local or personal references. Thus, one cannot underestimate the importance of activities in the process of reading. This study did not investigate the efficiency of a single pedagogical intervention in promoting reading comprehension. Rather, it focused on whether the use of a set of activities could Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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contribute to comprehension. Therefore, the study cannot endorse one activity over another. However, the fact that the groups that read the text and also did the activities performed better than the groups that did not do the activities suggests that the reading teacher should make use of class activities. Related to the scope of this study, it would not be unwarranted to propose that activities that can tap into cultural knowledge or provide cultural knowledge, such as using visual aids, previewing, pre-questioning, and brainstorming, can help readers comprehend better. More research is needed to see whether such activities or combinations of such activities can help readers in foreign language reading classes. A related issue concerned the teacher dominance during the activities for this research. Because of the whole-class fashion in conducting the reading class, this study could not observe how individual learners performed in the activities and what cognitive processes they went through. Future research that implements introspective research methods for data collection may obtain a clearer picture of the interactions between cultural familiarity and comprehension as well as the contributions of individual activities to the reading process. Finally, it would be useful to learn how instruction can be adjusted to encourage more reader autonomy so that readers can take responsibility for comprehension of culturally familiar or unfamiliar texts.

Acknowledgments We would like to express our gratitude to Professor Cem Alptekin, our colleague Ece Zehir Topkaya, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the earlier versions of the paper. We also thank İbrahim Aksu for proofreading the text.

References Afflerbach, P. (1990). The influence of prior knowledge on expert readers’ main idea construction strategies. Reading Research Quarterly, 25, 31–46. Ajideh, P. (2003). Schema theory-based pre-reading tasks: A neglected essential in the ESL reading class. The Reading Matrix, 3 (1), 1–14. Alderson, J. C. (2000). Assessing reading. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Alexander, P. A., & Jetton, T. (2000). Learning from text: A multidimensional and developmental perspective. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research, Vol. 3 (pp. 285–310). Mahwah, NJ: Earlbaum. Alptekin, C. (2006). Cultural familiarity in inferential and literal comprehension in L2 reading. System, 34, 494–508. Alptekin, C. (2008, May). Multicompetence revisited: From EFL to ELF. Plenary speech presented at the 5th ELT Research Conference—Bridging the gap between theory and practice in ELT. Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey. Alyousef, H. S. (2006). Teaching reading comprehension to ESL/EFL learners. Journal of Language and Learning, 4, 63–73. Anderson, N. J. (1999). Exploring second language reading. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle. Baddeley, A. (1997). Human memory. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bartlett, F. (1932). Remembering: A Study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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England: Cambridge University Press. Bernhardt, E. B. (1991). Reading development in a foreign language. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Brantmeier, C. (2004). Building a comprehensive theory of adult foreign language reading: A variety of variables and research methods. The Southern Journal of Linguistics, 27, 1–7. Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy. New York: Longman. Carrell, P. L. (1983). Some issues in studying the role of schemata, or background knowledge, in second language comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, 1, 81–92. Carrell, P. L. (1987). Content and formal schemata in ESL reading. TESOL Quarterly, 21, 461– 481. Carrell, P. L. (1988). Some causes of text-boundedness and schema interference in ESL reading. In P. L. Carrell, J. Devine, & D. E. Eskey (Eds.), Interactive approaches to second language reading (pp. 101–113). New York: Cambridge University Press. Carrell, P. L., & Eisterhold, J. C. (1983). Schema theory and ESL reading. TESOL Quarterly, 17, 553–573. Chastain, K. (1988). Developing second-language skills (3rd ed.). San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brave Jovanocich. Chen, H. C., & Graves, M. F. (1995). Effects of previewing and providing background knowledge on Taiwanese college students’ comprehension of American short stories. TESOL Quarterly, 29, 663–686. Dörnyei, Z. (2003). Attitudes, orientations, and motivations in language learning: Advances in theory, research and applications. Language Learning, 53, 3–32. Dörnyei, Z. (2005). The psychology of the language learner. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum. Ellis, N. C. (2001). Memory for language. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 33–68). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University press. Erten, İ. H., & Karakaş, M. (2007). Understanding the divergent influences of reading activities on the comprehension of short stories. The Reading Matrix, 7 (3), 113–133. Grabe, W. (1991). Current developments in second language reading research. TESOL Quarterly, 25, 375–406. Grabe, W., & Stoller, L. F. (2002). Teaching and researching reading. Harlow, England: Pearson Education. Guthrie, J. T., Wigfield, A., Metsala, J. L., & Cox, K. C. (1999). Motivational and cognitive predictors of text comprehension and reading amount. Scientific Studies of Reading, 3, 231–256. Harter, S. (1981). A new self-report scale of intrinsic versus extrinsic orientations in the classroom: motivational and informational components. Developmental Psychology, 17, 300–312. Johnson, P. (1981). Effects on reading comprehension of language complexity and cultural background of a text. TESOL Quarterly, 15, 169–181. Johnson, P. (1982). Effects on reading comprehension of building background knowledge. TESOL Quarterly, 16, 503–516. Karakaş, M. (2005). The effects of pre-reading activities on ELT trainee teachers’ comprehension of short stories. Journal of Theory and Practice in Education, 1, 25–35. Ketchum, E. M. (2006). The cultural baggage of second language reading: An approach to understanding. Foreign Language Annals, 39, 22–42. Kintsch, W. (1998). Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition. Cambridge, England: Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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Cambridge University Press. Lazar, G. (1993). Literature and language teaching. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Mandler, J. M. (1984). Stories, scripts, and scenes: Aspects of schema theory. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. McKay, S. (1987). Cultural knowledge and the teaching of reading. English Teaching Forum, 25 (2), 18–20, 28. McLaughlin, B. (1987). Theories of second language learning. London: Edward Arnold. McLaughlin, B., Rossman, T., & McLeod, B. (1983). Second language learning: An information-processing perspective. Language Learning, 33, 135–158. Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. The Psychological Review, 63, 81–97. Murtagh, L. (1989). Reading in a second or foreign language: Models, processes, and pedagogy. Language, Culture, and Curriculum, 2, 91–105. Nassaji, H. (2002). Schema theory and knowledge-based processes in second language reading comprehension: A need for alternative perspectives. Language Learning, 52, 439–481. Oller, J. W. (1995). Adding abstract to formal and content schema: Results of recent work in Peircean semiotics. Applied Linguistics, 16, 273–306. Perfetti, C. (1985). Reading ability. New York: Oxford University Press. Pulido, D. (2003). Modeling the role of second language proficiency and topic familiarity in second language incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading. Language Learning, 53, 233–284. Pulido, D. (2004). The effects of cultural familiarity on incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading. The Reading Matrix, 4 (2), 20–53. Razı, S. (2005). A fresh look at the evaluation of ordering tasks in reading comprehension: Weighted marking protocol. The Reading Matrix, 5 (1), 1–15. Schraw, G., Bruning, R., & Svoboda, C. (1995). Sources of situational interest. Journal of Reading Behaviour, 27, 1–17. Shaw, I. (2000). Short stories: Five decades. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Shen, Z. (2004). Effects of previewing and providing background knowledge on EFL reading comprehension of American documentary narratives. TESL Reporter, 37 (2), 50–63. Singhal, M. (1998). A comparison of L1 and L2 reading: Cultural differences and schema. The Internet TESL Journal, 4 (10). Retrieved on September 20, 2005, from http://iteslj.org/Articles/Singhal-ReadingL1L2.html Steffensen, M. S., Joag-Dev, C., & Anderson, R. (1979). A cross-cultural perspective on reading comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 15, 10–29. Tomlinson, B. (1998). Introduction. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Materials development in language teaching (pp. 1–24). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Ur, P. (1996). A course in language teaching. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Wallace, C. (1992). Reading. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Williams, M., & Burden, R. L. (1997). Psychology for language teachers. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Wigfield, A. (1997). Reading motivation: A domain-specific approach to motivation. Educational Psychologist, 32, 59–68. Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

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Appendix A Examples of Nativization Original short story Fifth Avenue was shining in the sun when they left the Brevoort and started walking toward Washington Square. “First let’s go see a football game. A professional football game,” Frances said, because she knew Michael loved to watch them. “The Giants are playing. And it’ll be nice to be outside all day today and get hungry and later we’ll go down to Cavanagh’s and get a steak as big as a blacksmith’s apron, with a bottle of wine, and after that, there’s a new French picture at the Filmarte that everybody says... Say, are you listening to me?” They joined hands consciously and walked without talking among the baby carriages and the old Italian men in their Sunday clothes and the young women with Scotties in Washington Square Park.

Nativized short story Kordonboyu was shining in the sun when they left Barışkent and started walking toward Republic Square. “First let’s go see a basketball game – Turkey Championship of women. A professional basketball game,” Özlem said, because she knew Coşkun loved to watch them. “Fenerbahçe are playing. And it’ll be nice to be outside all day today and get hungry and later we’ll go down to Albatros Fish Restaurant and get a fish as big as a man’s arm, with a big bottle of rakı, and after that, there’s a new Turkish picture - O Şimdi Asker - at the AFM that everybody says... Say, are you listening to me?” They joined hands consciously and walked without talking among the baby carriages and the old ANZAC tourists jogging along Kordonboyu.

“I love the way women look. One of the things I like best about New York is the battalions of women. When I first came to New York from Ohio that was the first thing I noticed, the million wonderful women, all over the city. I walked around with my heart in my throat.” “I like the girls in the offices. Neat, with their eyeglasses, smart, chipper, knowing what everything is about, taking care of themselves all the time.” He kept his eye on the people going slowly past outside the window. “I like the girls on Forty-fourth Street at lunchtime, the actresses, all dressed up on nothing a week, talking to the good-looking boys, wearing themselves out being young and vivacious outside Sardi’s, waiting for producers to look at them. I like the salesgirls in Macy’s, paying attention to you first because you’re a man, leaving lady customers waiting, flirting with you over socks and books and phonograph needles. I got all this stuff accumulated in me because I’ve been thinking about it for ten years and now you’ve asked for it and here it is.”

“I love the way women look. One of the things I like best about Çanakkale is the battalions of women. When I first came to Çanakkale from Erzurum that was the first thing I noticed, the thousands of wonderful women, all over the city. I walked around with my heart in my throat.” “I like the girls in the offices. Neat, with their eyeglasses, smart, chipper, knowing what everything is about, taking care of themselves all the time.” He kept his eye on the people going slowly past outside the window. “I like the girls at Küçümen at lunchtime, the university students, all dressed up on nothing a week, talking to the good-looking boys, wearing themselves out being young and vivacious outside Lodos Disco, trying to forget all about lessons. I like the salesgirls at Gima, paying attention to you first because you’re a man, leaving lady customers waiting, flirting with you over socks and dried fruits and cakes. I got all this stuff accumulated in me because I’ve been thinking about it for ten years and now you’ve asked for it and here it is.”

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Appendix B Examples of Recall Test Items TRUE/FALSE ITEMS Write (T) if the given statement is true; write (F) if it is false; and write (NG) if it is not mentioned in the story. …… Michael & Frances have known each other for two years. …… The Stevensons know what Michael feels for other women. …… Michael looks at other women only in the streets. …… Frances feels good all day when she has breakfast with Michael. …… The Stevensons will come to the bar to pick them up. PUT THE FOLLOWING EVENTS INTO ORDER Below are eight statements from the short story you have just read. Put them into the correct order of happening. Write number in parentheses. (…..)They walked to a bar on Eight Street. (…..)Frances began to cry, silently, into her handkerchief. (…..)Frances & Michael had slept late and had a good breakfast. (…..)They decided to call the Stevensons. (…..)They started to walk from the Brevoort toward Washington Square. (…..)Frances got up from the table and walked across the room. (…..)Frances planned a day of activities that Michael will enjoy. (…..)Frances asked Michael to stop talking about women and to keep it to himself. SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Why does Frances want to take Michael to a football match? Why does Frances feel good on that Sunday morning? How has Michael physically changed since he moved from Ohio? What does Michael do when something bad happens? What is the favor that Frances asks Michael to do for her?

About the Authors İsmail Hakkı Erten is an assistant professor in the ELT Department of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey. His main research interests include second language acquisition, vocabulary acquisition, reading comprehension, and individual differences in language learning. Address for correspondence: Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Faculty of Education, Anafartalar Campus, 17100 Çanakkale, Turkey. E-mail: [email protected]

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Salim Razı is an instructor of English and a PhD candidate. He works in the ELT Department of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey. His research interests include reading comprehension, assessing reading, and metacognitive reading strategies. Address for correspondence: Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Faculty of Education, Anafartalar Campus, 17100 Çanakkale, Turkey. E-mail: [email protected]

Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2009, Volume 21, No. 1 pp. 78–82

Reviewed work: English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom (2nd ed.). (2007). Barbara M. Birch. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pp. 236 + xiii. ISBN 0805859292. $26.96

Reviewed by

Handoyo Puji Widodo and Zhiling Wu Indiana University of Pennsylvania United States

http://www.leaonline.com/

The first edition of English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom was granted the California Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages 2004 David E. Eskey Award for Curricular Innovation. In the second edition, the author has made further changes and updates in response to ongoing reading research as well as requests from readers of the previous edition. This revised volume shows the author’s continued commitment to professional innovation in the field of second language (L2) reading, learning, and teaching. In L2 reading classrooms, as Treiman (2001) points out, bottom-up and top-down approaches and methodologies complement one another. While proponents of the whole-language approach argue that top-down processing plays an important role in reading, Barbara Birch’s book primarily aims to address insightful issues on the importance of bottom-up processing for L2 readers, as the title of the book shows. For this reason, this volume is a valuable resource for practitioners and teachers of English as a second language (ESL) or English as a foreign language (EFL) who emphasize accuracy in their reading classrooms. This review attempts to complement the previous review by Jen Tindale published by Reading in a Foreign Language in 2002 so as to help readers stay current with the new edition of the text. http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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We commence with the questions “How do the first and second editions of the volume differ?” or “What changes has the author made?” These inquiries are especially useful for readers who have already read the book or would like to complement the first edition. As the author claims, “this edition is intended to be a more reader-friendly version of the first edition. The content of each chapter is much the same, but the organization is made clearer for the student and the few errors are corrected” (p. ix). Overall, Birch has made seven main changes: (a) more detailed accounts of alphabets, writing systems, and history of written English and spelling; (b) extended discussion about the cognition of written language and reading transfer; (c) augmentation of phonemic, vocal, subvocal, and articulatory development and L2 reading processing along with instructional activities and strategies for teaching these skills in the classroom; (d) elaboration of the concepts of graphs and graphemes; (e) development of the probabilistic-reasoning section in the context of L2 reading; (f) the most recent account of brain activation studies; and (g) reading fluency. Like the first edition, this second edition of the volume comprises 10 chapters along with three main appendices (one about English graphemes, another on English phonemes and their principal spellings, and a third providing a workbook supplement). Each of the chapters starts with prereading discussions and study guide questions, which arouse interest and activate readers’ background knowledge of the topics discussed in that chapter. Furthermore, the author provides discussion questions at the end of each chapter; such questions enable readers to interact with the text and help them apply the concepts presented in each chapter. Another feature of the book is “Spotlight on Teaching” in chapters 4–9, which is aimed at helping readers design classroom activities based on the theoretical accounts discussed in the book. In chapter 1, “The Expert Decision Maker,” the author sees reading as an interactive (top-down and bottom-up) process. Reading involves information flowing upward and downward if readers are to comprehend a certain text effectively. In short, this chapter shows the complexity of proficient reading. Based on Goodman’s (1967) notion of reading as a psycholinguistic guessing game, Birch argues that it is indispensable for readers to develop their L2 linguistic knowledge and employ different reading strategies in order to become effective and interactive information processors and expert decision makers. Compared to the first edition of the book, chapter 2, “Writing Systems,” provides more elaboration on alphabets and writing systems of different languages (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Hebrew). In this respect, the author contends that the L2 reading literature gives little attention to the importance of first language (L1) writing systems. In the classroom, this issue is worth addressing, particularly when L1 and L2 do not share the same writing systems like Chinese-English or Thai-English. The author also promotes the idea that L2 writing systems play a crucial role in L2 learners’ reading development. In chapter 3, Birch addresses the compelling issue of the role of transfer from L1 to L2, and she raises the questions of whether L1 and L2 readers with different writing systems develop different knowledge and processing strategies and whether these strategies transfer from L1 to L2. The discussion of such issues is presented along with four sample cases of speakers of

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Spanish, Greek, Arabic, and Chinese. These two issues certainly remind reading teachers of the important role of the cognitive dimension of L2 reading learning and acquisition. The fourth chapter highlights the relationship between listening comprehension and reading. Birch argues that compared with accurate pronunciation, accurate listening comprehension correlates more with reading comprehension. She also argues that “pronunciation, in fact, only comes into play in oral reading” (p. 66). Further, the “Spotlight on Teaching” section following this chapter provides sample ideas about how to improve reading proficiency through listening practice. In chapter 5, the author emphasizes the need for gaining knowledge of graphemes and practicing different low-level strategies for recognizing graphs. Unlike the first edition, the current edition touches on discussions on reading speed, pattern recognition, and word recognition at the bottom-up level. Birch argues that these aspects play crucial roles in helping L2 readers to be proficient and effective at further reading levels. In the sixth chapter, Birch goes into a discussion of the English writing system, which she labels as “opaque” in that “the correspondence between graphemes and phonemes is not one-to-one” (p. 87). This opaqueness is owing to borrowings and other historical changes in English. For this reason, as she notes, some reading teachers choose not to teach the English writing system because it is inconsistent and complex. However, in doing so, they devalue how direct instruction and positive attitudes of teachers towards the English writing system can facilitate English L2 readers in enhancing their reading abilities. Another fascinating argument in this chapter concerns the use of probabilistic reasoning, the ability to take advantage of certain graphic consistencies and then use knowledge of the probability of these consistencies as a particular processing strategy to read graphs in English. As a whole, the author encourages classroom teachers, in this chapter, to see the learnability of the English writing system and the tangible benefits of direct instruction on it. The seventh chapter addresses three phonics methodologies: a synthetic method, a linguistic method, and smart phonics. From these methodologies, the author argues that phonics is eminently teachable if teachers substantially understand how learners read. More important, Birch argues that phonics instruction complements the whole-language-reading movement. The remaining sections of the chapter touch on reading strategies (i.e., meaning-based, partiallyalphabetic, and fully-alphabetic strategies). Several succinct ideas about ESL reading instruction are offered, which may fit in well for reading teachers who work with beginning learners. Chapter 8 discusses morphological processes in English; the author briefly examines different features of English morphology along with a comparison of morphology in other languages. Further, because of the differences between English morphology and that of various L1s, Birch looks into how different reading strategies are employed in L2 reading comprehension. When working with nonnative English-speaking learners, direct instruction in English morphology, even though it is time consuming, may help them understand how English words are constructed. The ultimate benefit of morphology-based instruction is that learners may use English morphological cues in reading or in guessing certain unknown words, thereby reducing readers’ cognitive loads in some way. Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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Chapter 9, “Vocabulary Acquisition,” is a crucial chapter of the book. This issue is paramount in discussing a bottom-up-oriented approach to reading even though “it is not always obvious how reading comprehension relates to vocabulary acquisition in the classroom” (p. 144). This chapter addresses various issues such as top-down strategies of vocabulary acquisition, learner variables in vocabulary acquisition, lexical variables in vocabulary acquisition, and strategies of word learning. These issues represent what novice ESL or EFL learners face in L2 reading. The author emphasizes that vocabulary should be taught efficiently in a reading class so as to “empower students to be active human word processors” (p. 163). More importantly, vocabulary should be seen as comprehensible lexical input for learners to acquire new vocabularies using different word-learning strategies and in turn to enhance their reading comprehension (Hunt & Beglar, 2005). In closing the volume, the author explores two other issues in chapter 10: (a) effects of instruction on brain activation and (b) reading fluency in English L2 reading. Such issues reflect how this edition of the book differs from the first edition and how recent research in these areas makes a contribution to further understandings of learners’ reading comprehension as a whole. Birch elaborates on silent reading fluency and fluent oral reading along with useful suggestions for improving oral reading strategies. Finally, Birch asserts that rapid reading can come more easily for learners at a later learning stage. In the process of becoming more fluent readers, due attention should be paid to the bottom-up ESL reading. These statements indicate the importance of bottom-up L2 reading instruction as the starting point for further L2 reading development. On the whole, with the additions and changes made by Birch, this current volume provides a more practical guide for ESL and EFL practitioners. However, the book focuses heavily on the linguistic and cognitive aspects of L2 reading, and it does not make clear how social dimensions of L1 and L2 co-contribute to reading development and how a reader balances lower-level with higher-level processing strategies. The second limitation of the book is that the author does not address how the bottom-up reading model may be facilitated by noticing activities. These cognitively oriented activities may complement the linguistic dimension highlighted in the book (Schmidt, 2001). Although Birch provides counterarguments to some of the widely-held ideas in the literature on reading throughout the book, it would also be valuable to see more theoretically and empiricallygrounded discussions (i.e., the relationship between listening and reading among English L2 readers). A case in point is the author’s inconclusive tone when providing suggestions on the phonemic awareness of the four hypothetical English L2 readers. Another limitation of the book is that Birch provides little space for the use of the strategies for skipping unknown words in English L2 reading. Notwithstanding these limitations, this second edition of Barbara Birch’s English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom is a good resource for teachers whose goal is to help learners improve their English L2 reading abilities through a bottom-up approach. It is a practical guide for reading teachers who wish to make use of basic linguistic knowledge to help students develop their reading skills. The notions presented are compatible with the findings of Nassaji (2003) that lower-level text processing skills are important for advanced ESL readers and, in addition, bring Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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potential benefits for beginning or intermediate English L2 readers, as Birch points out in both editions of the book.

References Goodman, K. S. (1967). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. Journal of the Reading Specialist, 6, 126–135. Hunt, A., & Beglar, D. (2005). A framework for developing EFL reading vocabulary. Reading in a Foreign Language, 17, 23–59. Nassaji, H. (2003). Higher-level and lower-level text processing skills in advanced ESL reading comprehension. The Modern Language Journal, 87, 261–275. Schmidt, R. W. (2001). Attention. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 3–32). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Tindale, J. (2002). [Review of the book English L2 Reading: Getting to the bottom]. Reading in a Foreign Language, 14, 147–150. Treiman, R. (2001). Reading. In M. Aronoff & J. Rees-Miller (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of linguistics (pp. 664–672). Oxford, England: Blackwell.

About the Reviewers Handoyo Puji Widodo, a tenured lecturer at Politeknik Negeri Jember, has taught EFL courses in Indonesia and is currently a Fulbright scholar working on an MA in TESOL at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He has published a number of articles and book reviews in refereed professional journals in the areas of ESP and language teaching methodology in Indonesia, India, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United States. Email: [email protected] Zhiling Wu is a doctoral student in the Composition and TESOL Program at the Department of English, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her professional and research interests include second language reading, sociolinguistics, and second language assessment. Email: [email protected]

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Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2009, Volume 21, No. 1 pp. 83–87

Reviewed work: Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power. (2007). Cynthia Lewis, Patricia E. Enciso, & Elizabeth Birr Moje (Eds.). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pp. 205. ISBN 080585696X. $29.95

Reviewed by

Michael Thomas Witten Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla Mexico

http://www.leaonline.com/

This volume argues that sociocultural theory does not adequately address issues of identity, agency, and power. The editors, Cynthia Lewis, Patricia E. Enciso, and Elizabeth Birr Moje, claim that these issues are highly relevant to the sociocultural practices of literacy learning and literacy research. The book primarily examines and critiques issues related to sociocultural research processes. It is divided into two parts: “Rethinking Conceptual Frameworks” and “Rethinking Knowledge and Representation.” Part 1 argues, at times rather convincingly, that concepts traditionally associated with sociocultural theory, such as identity, agency, and power, are often underconceptualized and require further theoretical consideration as well as more sophisticated analytical treatment within sociocultural research. Part 2 argues that the privileged position of the researcher as knowledge producer must become more reflexive, challenging researchers to acknowledge their “motivational relevancies” (Sarangi & Candlin, 2001, p. 19). Literacy is a concept that can be defined in broad or narrow terms, yet none of the authors of this volume provide an explicit definition for readers. This seems problematic since the title of the book leads readers to believe that literacy is one of its central themes. This may or may not be the case, depending on how one conceptualizes literacy, since the authors neglect to make a case of their own as to how literacy should be defined. However, this omission is probably intentional since the term seems to be conceptualized differently by the various authors throughout the book. Sometimes the term is referred to as “reading and writing” (p. 3) but usually left undefined and http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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elusive, seeming to take on a meaning of literacy in a very broad sense—as ways of thinking, knowing, being, experiencing, or learning. The book is influenced by the writings of a wide number of authors (Bakhtin, Bourdieu, Engestrom, Fairclough, Foucault, Gee, Lave, Volosinov, Vygotsky, and Wertsch, to name only a few) who represent a wide number of disciplines (literacy education, social and cultural psychology, educational anthropology, sociology, and applied linguistics among others). From these influences, the book adopts, adapts, and pieces together, in a complementary manner, various conceptual and analytical frameworks. It advocates attempting to provide more sensitive analyses to sociocultural research through a multidisciplinary approach to exploring the literacy practices of individuals within highly contextualized research settings. The book is divided into seven chapters, each chapter written by one or more different authors. Chapter 1 provides a rationale for the volume as the editors attempt to justify the need for reframing sociocultural research on literacy. Chapters 2–4 make up Part I of the volume and specifically address the authors’ perceptions of the shortcomings of sociocultural research regarding concepts such as “activity,” “history,” and “communities of practice” (p. 9). Chapters 5–7 make up Part II of the volume and call attention to the authors’ perceived need for a reflexive focus on research relationships, specifically examining issues of power, identity, and agency in sociocultural research and how these “elements shape the production of knowledge in literacy research” (p. 9). Most of these chapters present a sample analysis from a larger research project that the authors have conducted in an attempt to illustrate how innovative multidisciplinary methodological frameworks can address shortcomings that exist in sociocultural investigation. In chapter 1, “Introduction: Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy,” the editors establish the participating authors of the entire book as advocates of sociocultural theory, whose work is based mostly on Vygotsky (1978), but quickly move to point out the “gaps” in sociocultural research that investigators need to address and the “new directions” (p. 5) that researchers might take in order to accomplish this. The authors effectively create a niche for the following chapters to fill as they construct a convincing intellectual argument for sociocultural research to adopt a more critical lens and incorporate methodological techniques that better account for issues such as identity, agency, and power. In chapter 2, “Examining Opportunities to Learn: The Role of Critical Sociocultural Literacy Research,” Elizabeth Birr Moje and Cynthia Lewis argue that both teachers’ and students’ opportunities to learn are supported and constrained by the systems and structures within the institution of schooling. They provide a description of an innovative methodological framework that combines analytical principles from distinct perspectives including activity theory (based on Engeström, 1999), cultural studies (based on Radway, 1984; Fiske, 1994), and critical discourse theories (based on Fairclough, 1992). This framework is partially illustrated through an example from classroom data. The authors use this example to demonstrate how to examine the subjectivities of teachers and learners, identity enactments and recognitions, and moments of (non)agency that are embedded within classroom activities. In this chapter, the authors provide the kind of copious description of contexts, methodological principles, and evidence for their conclusions that permit readers to perceive the investigation as rigorous science. Furthermore, Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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the constant integration of the participants’ voices within the research allows their human qualities to remain visible, providing a strong rationale for engaging in this type of research practice. In chapter 3, “Reframing History in Sociocultural Theories: Toward an Expansive Vision,” Patricia E. Enciso argues that “too often in sociocultural research and practice, the language and imagery associated with meanings of history create the illusion of a unified, equitable, and accessible past” (p. 50), which she views as problematic since sociocultural theory “is rooted in the understanding that histories of objects, ideas, and practices are produced and remade for particular purposes in the present” (p. 50). This becomes particularly problematic when one accepts the inevitable truth that racism and discrimination are historical resources widely available in society. Drawing on various critical theories such as poststructural feminist, literary, cultural, queer, and critical race, Enciso advocates the consideration of paradoxes, absences, and incommensurable meaning in history “that are not normally accounted for in sociocultural models of teaching and learning” (p. 51). While Enciso draws on data from a research project conducted with pre-service teachers and certainly provides an intellectually stimulating argument that is well supported by academic literature, she fails to provide the appropriate amount of research context and integration of participants’ voices that would allow readers to feel confident in the conclusions that are drawn. This is probably the result of trying to do too much in too little space, resulting in a stimulating and critical review of literature, yet an unconvincing illustration of data analysis to complement it. In chapter 4, “‘As if You Heard it From Your Mamma’: Redesigning Histories of Participation With Literacy Education in an Adult Education Class,” Rebecca Rogers and Carolyn Fuller engage with Wenger’s (1998) notion of community of practice, defining it as “a unit where people share mutual engagement, a joint enterprise, and a shared repertoire (or actions, stories, and artifacts)” (p. 79). They argue that most sociocultural accounts of communities of practice fail to recognize that these units “consist of ideologically laden sets of beliefs, actions, and assumptions” (p. 79). The researcher-teachers shared data from a 1-year, collaborative, critical ethnographic research project that took place in an all-African-American General Education Development (GED) classroom. The authors claim that within this context the students’ unsuccessful past experiences with school evoke expectations of what schooling, instruction, and learning might or might not consist of. When an innovative pedagogy in the classroom conflicts with learners’ expectations, “their vision of what education is supposed to look like is challenged” (p. 95) and in many cases redesigned, providing a significant impact on the learners’ lives. This chapter provides ample description of the research process as well as intellectually stimulating argumentation for the development of the authors’ theoretical framework, while incorporating the participants’ voices throughout the sample analysis. The authors provide a convincing argument for engaging in this kind of critical, sociocultural, ethnographic research and demonstrate its relevance in society. In chapter 5, “Moving Words and Worlds: Reflections From ‘the Middle’,” Marjorie Faulstich Orellana examines the notion of “cultural mismatch” or “how children from nondominant backgrounds negotiate the discontinuities and tensions between their home and school lives” (p. 124). She argues that sociocultural research has traditionally focused on how individuals move across contexts, implying that separability of individuals from their context is possible. She Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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challenges this notion and argues that individuals and contexts are mutually constituted, and “when people move between discourse communities they bring their contexts with them, fundamentally altering the nature of the new spaces” (p. 126). While this is certainly not a new idea within the circles of critical discourse analysis (see Fairclough, 1992), Orellana goes on to suggest that, occasionally, social worlds “move in on people” (p. 128). Drawing on data gathered with immigrant youth translators and interpreters, she provides a reasonably convincing illustration of how social worlds can impose themselves on individuals—in this case, children given the unfortunate role of translator. However, the author provides very little information to readers about the research process, making it difficult to evaluate the scientific rigor of the investigation. In chapter 6, “Out of the Valley: Transcultural Repositioning as a Rhetorical Practice in Ethnographic Research and Other Aspects of Everyday Life,” Juan C. Guerra presents a discussion of “transcultural repositioning” (p. 138), which refers to the way that individuals navigate complex rhetorical situations by performing multiple or hybrid identities in shifting sociocultural contexts. He rather questionably argues that disenfranchised peoples are more likely to cultivate this ability than representatives of dominant cultures, and he reflects upon his own ability to engage in the rhetorical practice of transcultural repositioning by providing autobiographical accounts of the shifting sociocultural contexts in which he has participated over the course of his life. While the narratives are interesting, the chapter seems to lack focus as Guerra concludes by reflecting on the rhetorical challenges he faces as he prepares to undertake an auto-ethnographic study. Guerra mentions that in sharing the story of his life, he is concerned that it may seem “gratuitous” and “self-indulgent” (p. 157); and by the end of the chapter, he comes close to realizing this concern. While he raises some reasonable concerns throughout the chapter, it falls short of a convincing, coherent argument for readers. In chapter 7, “Learning to Play and Playing to Learn: Research Sites as Transactional Spaces,” Bob Fecho and Shuaib Meacham, influenced mostly by Vygotsky (1978), Rosenblatt (1994), and Bakhtin (1981), argue that “communities within which research is conducted are transactional sites where the academic and local communities mutually shape new texts” (p. 165), and this viewpoint opens researchers to learning that is “multidimensional, polyphonic, and mutually transformative” (p. 165). The authors provide a thorough description of their theoretical framework and demonstrate its relevance through an illustrative data analysis. By providing readers with a thick description of the research context and by faithfully incorporating the voices of their research participants as well as the voices of the researchers, these authors construct a strong argument for their belief that educational research is an interpretative activity, “done by humans, with humans, for humans . . . and therefore should be both humane and social” (p. 185), allowing both the research community and the researchers to construct new purpose and meaning through the transaction. The volume is well organized and contains few typographical errors. It provides two useful indexes: an author index and a subject index. The volume is clearly intended for critical scholars and researchers in the social sciences. Most of the chapters provide an intellectually stimulating yet quite challenging read, due to the sophisticated nature of the subject matter. I would recommend this book to investigators and graduate students who are interested in performing sociocultural research. Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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References Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Engeström, Y. (1999). Activity theory and individual and social transformation. In Y. Engeström, R. Miettinen, & R.-L. Punamaki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 19–38). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Fiske, J. (1994). Audiencing: Cultural practice and cultural studies. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research (pp. 189–198). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Radway, J. (1984). Reading the romance: Women, patriarchy and popular literature. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Rosenblatt, L. M. (1994). The transactional theory of reading and writing. In R. Ruddell, M. Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th ed., pp. 1057–1092), Newark, DE: IRA. Sarangi, S., & Candlin, C. N. (2001). Motivational relevancies: Some methodological reflections on social theoretical and sociolinguistic practice. In N. Coupland, S. Sarangi, & C. N. Candlin (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and social theory (pp. 350–388). London: Pearson. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, identity. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

About the Reviewer Michael Witten is a full-time professor at the School of Languages at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico. He has an MA in Applied Linguistics from Kings College, London, and is currently completing a doctorate of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney. His main interests include critical discourse analysis, literacy, and teacher education. E-mail: [email protected]

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Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

April 2009, Volume 21, No. 1 pp. 88–92

Reviewed work: Teaching Reading to English Language Learners: A Reflective Guide. (2009). Thomas S. C. Farrell. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Pp. 120. ISBN 9781412957359. $23.95

Reviewed by

Alex Poole Western Kentucky University United States

http://www.corwinpress.com/

As the director of a teaching English as a second language (TESL) program, I serve the needs of current and future teachers with disparate professional goals. On the one hand, there are those whose goal is to teach limited English proficiency (LEP) children in P-12 (i.e., preschool-12th grade) settings in the United States. On the other hand, there are students who wish to teach adults in community colleges in the United States and universities abroad. For the former group, there are scores of texts, many of which include information on curriculum issues, child development, and assessment, in addition to second language (L2) reading methods. Moreover, such texts integrate national reading standards as well as relatively new federal requirements outlined by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy. However, for the latter group, most of whom have no need to learn about P-12 issues, there are few texts that simultaneously explain the theoretical foundations of L2 literacy development and provide practical tools to implement reading instruction to adult learners of English as a second or foreign language. Fortunately, Thomas S. C. Farrell’s Teaching Reading to English Language Learners: A Reflective Guide is a resource that fills this dearth. The book contains nine chapters, the first of which touches on the variables that influence the rate and route of L2 reading development, and then summarizes all subsequent chapters. Chapter http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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2 asks readers to articulate their view of how L2 reading acquisition occurs, which leads into a discussion of various instructional models. The following four chapters concern fluency and comprehension, reading strategies, text structure, and vocabulary, respectively. Each chapter reviews the relevant literature and provides suggestions for instruction. Chapter 7 gives future teachers guidelines for developing reading lessons and curricula, while chapter 8 explains extensive reading (ER) and discusses its role in the curriculum. Finally, chapter 9 condenses the types of traditional and alternative classroom reading assessments available to teachers. In this review, rather than detailing each chapter in the entire book, I will instead point out its positive and negative features with reference to specific chapters. Overall, the text is a worthy investment because it presents essential aspects of L2 reading theory and instruction, is clearly written, contains illustrative graphics, and incorporates useful reflection questions. However, the lack of resources for further reading, commonsensical nature of some of its sections, and absence of issues related to public school children limit the text’s usefulness. First, each chapter details an essential aspect of L2 reading theory and instruction of which many new teachers are probably not aware. For instance, in chapter 1, “Teaching Reading to ELLs,” Farrell discusses the reasons why English language learners (ELLs) have difficulty reading in English, highlighting areas such as first language (L1) and L2 dissimilarities, age, learning styles, and cultural schemata. In addition, he points out that L2 learners’ reading strategies and habits will be influenced not only by the text structures in their L1 but also by their beliefs about the reading process in general. Similarly, chapter 2, “Reflecting on the Reading Process,” deals with fundamental ways in which reading is thought to occur. Specifically, Farrell shows how top-down, bottom-up, and interactive processing models account for literacy development in an L2, thereby helping to dispel the widely-held belief among novice teachers, in my experience, that there is a singular best way in which reading instruction should take place. In chapter 3, “Teaching Reading Fluency and Comprehension to ELLs,” Farrell discusses the counterintuitive fact that learners who read slowly and avoid errors are just as likely to misunderstand text as those who read rapidly with many errors. This point is especially important because experience has shown me that many new teachers believe that errors— grammatical, lexical, reading, pronunciation, or otherwise—reflect a poverty of L2 competence rather than a natural process in L2 development, which more than three decades of L2 research has taught us (Mitchell & Myles, 1998). The ninth chapter, “Authentic Reading Assessment for ELLs,” not only informs teachers about the traditional forms of assessment, such as multiple-choice, short-answer, and essay tests, but also discusses alternative and authentic types of assessment, like portfolios, peer assessments, and self-reports. Particularly strong was his explanation of how teachers can use anecdotal records to inform instruction and grading, an area which is not given enough attention in most reading and language testing texts. Second, Farrell’s treatment of the crucial features of L2 reading theory and instruction is also praiseworthy because his explanations are simple, avoid jargon that non-specialists will find Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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confusing, and are mainly free of citations of methodologically complex empirical research. In chapter 1, for instance, Farrell introduces the topic of contrastive analysis without even mentioning the term, but instead uses language that captures its essence without requiring the reader to constantly consult an applied linguistics dictionary: “Another aspect of linguistic differences between two languages that teachers of ELLs may want to consider, because it may influence second language reading comprehension, concerns the differences between the ELLs’ first language and the second/subsequent language they are learning to read, in this case English” (p. 4). Further examples of such clarity are found in chapters 3 and 4, in which he addresses the topics of schema and reading strategies, respectively. Specifically, when talking about schema, Farrell offers a clear explanation not only of what it is and how it affects students’ reading comprehension, but also of how new teachers can incorporate this information into curricula and lesson plans. With regard to reading strategies, Farrell’s account includes a theoretical rationale of why such strategies are important for successful reading, and a discussion of the goals of strategy instruction. The most notable facet of this chapter, however, concerns the guidelines he provides for teaching strategies, which minimize the use of buzzwords such as metacognition, and map out how to use specific strategies. For example, in his illustration of how to teach prediction, he defines it, shows why it is important, and supplies a step-by-step demonstration of how he taught it in Singapore. Third, Farrell’s use of graphics adds to the lucidity of his main points and thereby gives readers a concrete way of knowing how to implement certain concepts in the classroom. This quality is particularly strong in chapter 5, “Teaching Text Structure to ELLs,” which incorporates graphics, such as semantic maps, in order to elaborate on ways of making L2 students sensitive to text organization. Likewise, chapter 2 presents a visual comparison of top-down and bottom-up approaches to L2 reading instruction. A fourth, and final, positive aspect of the text is found in the reflection sections that are interspersed throughout each chapter. These reflections can be used to foster class discussions or for self-study. Moreover, such reflections can be used for various purposes. In chapter 5, for example, three reflection sections are presented, one to get readers thinking about text structures and discourse markers, one in which teachers compare their ideas about the process of teaching discourse markers with Farrell’s, and one in which they apply the discourse markers they learned about in the chapter. In chapter 8, “Promoting Extensive Reading for ELLs,” the reflections ask the reader to devise ways to motivate students to read and decide who (students or teachers) should chose reading materials and what the nature of the materials should be. These questions are preceded by a comprehensive explanation of ER and suggestions for evaluating its success such as making movie versions of books and writing letters to authors in order to highlight the positive and negative aspects of their texts. While the volume possesses these four praiseworthy features (essential aspects of L2 reading theory and instruction, clarity of prose, graphics, and reflection questions), there are some limitations. The first concerns the reflection questions. While, as noted above, they are valuable, they would have been enhanced by a list of resources that readers could look to for further reading. This would have been helpful for newcomers who want to delve more deeply into Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

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theoretical and pedagogical topics related to L2 reading yet do not know where to look. Similar texts such as Anderson’s (1999) Exploring Second Language Reading include these kinds of resources; it is curious that Farrell’s does not. A second limitation revolves around the commonsensical nature of some sections. Specifically, some passages are so obvious that their necessity is questionable. An example of this is seen in chapter 7, “Planning Effective Reading Lessons for ELLs,” in which Farrell claims that “reading classes should have a sustained period of actual reading, during which writing, speaking, and listening are not emphasized” (p. 74). To me, this statement is a truism. Finally, while Farrell does not specify whether the book is designed to train teachers for a certain age group, it is not applicable for future P-12 teachers in the United States because it makes no mention of NCLB or TESL standards, as do other introductory literacy texts by authors such as Boyd-Batstone (2006) and Cummins, Brown, and Sayers (2007). Teachers do not have the luxury of ignoring these standards and legislation, since their ability to integrate them into the curriculum will directly affect students’ success and, by extension, their own employment. Furthermore, Farrell does not address how to teach reading in content areas (math, science, social studies, language arts, etc.), which most teachers of LEP students are now required to do (Becker, 2001). Despite these limitations—and there is no one volume that can meet the needs of all future teachers—Farrell’s book is a valuable contribution. In addition, for the reasons listed above (thoroughness, clarity, graphics, and reflections), the text is worth incorporating into adult reading courses designed for future teachers of English as a second or foreign language who have little background in reading pedagogy and L2 acquisition research. In fact, the text’s weaknesses could be compensated for with journal articles, websites, and audio-visual materials. Likewise, teacher trainers, who are often asked to suggest texts for self-study, can comfortably recommend this book.

References Anderson, N. (1999). Exploring second language reading: Issues and strategies. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle. Becker, H. (2001). Teaching ESL K-12: Views from the classroom. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle. Boyd-Batstone, P. (2006). Differentiated early literacy for English language learners: Practical strategies. Boston, MA: Pearson. Cummins, J., Brown, K., & Sayers, D. (2007). Literacy, technology, and diversity. Boston, MA: Pearson. Mitchell, R., & Myles, F. (1998). Second language learning theories. London: Arnold.

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About the Reviewer Alex Poole is an assistant professor of English and TESL program director at Western Kentucky University. E-mail: [email protected]

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