Readings on L2 reading: Publications in other venues 2021-2022

This feature offers an archive of articles published in other venues during the past year and serves as a valuable tool to readers of Reading in a Foreign Language (RFL). It treats any topic within the scope of RFL and second language reading. The articles are listed in alphabetical order, each with a complete reference as well as a brief summary. The editors of this feature attempt to include all related articles that appear in other venues. However, undoubtedly, this list is not exhaustive

Comparing reading strategy measures and L2 readers’ performance on different comprehension tasks

In second language (L2) reading strategy research, two concerns need addressing: (1) the discrepancy in assessing strategy use between written surveys and verbal reports, and (2) the effect of using strategies on readers’ comprehension outcomes when different types of comprehension tasks are utilized. The present study addressed these concerns by asking five more-proficient and five less-proficient Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) university learners to read two domain-specific texts while assessing their strategy use. The results from both quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed a “gap” between the survey and verbal reports for assessing L2 reading strategy use. Additionally, the contribution of strategies to the readers’ comprehension was found to vary by comprehension task type. Similarly, the variety of strategy use had a strong association with the readers’ performance on only one of three types of comprehension tasks, free recall. The findings hold important implications on L2 reading strategy instruction

Validating an EFL Summative Test in Business English Major at a Chinese University

The research did an analysis on content validity, construct validity and concurrent validity of an summative assessment for an Advanced Business Course administered by a university in Guangdong University, China. With validity-based assessment, this study provided implications for educators and practitioners on improving quality of test papers

Trialing project-based learning in a new EAP ESP course: A collaborative reflective practice of three college English teachers

Currently in many Chinese universities, the traditional College English course is facing the risk of being ‘marginalized’, replaced or even removed, and many hours previously allocated to the course are now being taken by EAP or ESP. At X University in northern China, a curriculum reform as such is taking place, as a result of which a new course has been created called ‘xue ke’ English. Despite the fact that ‘xue ke’ means subject literally, the course designer has made it clear that subject content is not the target, nor is the course the same as EAP or ESP. This curriculum initiative, while possibly having been justified with a rationale of some kind (e.g. to meet with changing social and/or academic needs of students and/or institutions), this is posing a great challenge for, as well as considerable pressure on, a number of College English teachers who have taught this single course for almost their entire teaching career. In such a context, three teachers formed a peer support group in Semester One this year, to work collaboratively co-tackling the challenge, and they chose Project-Based Learning (PBL) for the new course. This presentation will report on the implementation of this project, including the overall designing, operational procedure, and the teachers’ reflections. Based on discussion, pre-agreement was reached on the purpose and manner of collaboration as offering peer support for more effective teaching and learning and fulfilling and pleasant professional development. A WeChat group was set up as the chief platform for messaging, idea-sharing, and resource-exchanging. Physical meetings were supplementary, with sound agenda but flexible time, and venues. Mosoteach cloud class (lan mo yun ban ke) was established as a tool for virtual learning, employed both in and after class. Discussions were held at the beginning of the semester which determined only brief outlines for PBL implementation and allowed space for everyone to autonomously explore in their own way. Constant further discussions followed, which generated a great deal of opportunities for peer learning and lesson plan modifications. A reflective journal, in a greater or lesser detailed manner, was also kept by each teacher to record the journey of the collaboration. At the end of the semester, it was commonly recognized that, although challenges existed, the collaboration was overall a success and they were all willing to continue with it and endeavor to refine it to be a more professional and productive approach

The Transferability of Reading Strategies between L1 (Arabic) and L2 (English)

Relationships between learners’ languages were usually studied in the form of tracing transfer of linguistic items from one language to the other. This study explored the Libyans university students’ transferability of reading strategies from the first language (Arabic) to the foreign language (English) and vice versa. In a foreign language environment, textbooks are usually the only medium for practising reading in that language. Reading textbooks prescribed in Basic Education and Secondary Education were explored to highlight the reading strategies the students practised and to answer the following research questions: (1) What reading strategies are presented in first language (L1) reading textbooks and in English as foreign language (L2) reading textbooks? Are there any differences in the reading strategies introduced in L1 reading textbooks and L2 reading textbooks? Results of comparing the strategies addressed in L1 and L2 reading textbooks indicated that some of the strategies were presented in one language’s reading textbooks rather than in those of the other language. Based on textbook analyses, two Cloze tests (one in Arabic and the other in English) were developed and administered to first year university students in three colleges in North West Libya. These tests were used to define good and poor readers and used as a basis for providing a reading environment in which they might use their reading strategies. In each college, and after defining good and poor achievers in the Cloze test, two subjects from each group were interviewed. These interviewees were selected through stratified sampling and random sampling, respectively. The first group of interview questions investigated the reading strategies used during the Cloze tests while the second group sought to examine the reading strategies mentioned by the subjects in suggested reading situations based on the data collected from the textbooks. This procedure was carried out to answer the following research questions: What reading strategies does a representative sample of first year university students use in L1 reading and in L2 reading? Do the participants transfer any reading strategies (presented in the textbooks) from L1 to L2 or vice versa? If yes, what L1 reading strategies do good and poor readers transfer to L2 reading comprehension? And what L2 reading strategies do good and poor readers transfer to L1 reading comprehension? Results from the interviews indicated that good and poor readers alike transferred certain reading strategies between the two languages (Arabic and English). These strategies were mainly local, i.e. relevant to single words and sentences. However, some strategies were transferred only by good readers. These strategies were holistic i.e. they required awareness and account of the discourse. These results indicate that transferability is affected not only by readers’ ability but also by the kind of strategy he or she uses, i.e. whether it is local or universal. Moreover, it can be concluded that textbooks are not the only source of learning reading strategies. This study suggests there may be a far wider potential than within one country where more than one language are learned for reviewing reading strategies, implicit or intentional, in L2 textbooks and the extent to which learners are able to respond to them

Readability in reading materials selection and coursebook design for college English in China

This thesis studies the application of readability in reading materials selection and coursebook design for college English in an EFL context in China. Its aim is to develop rationales which coursebook writers can utilise in selecting materials as texts and as a basis for designing tasks. This study, through a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods, argues that readability is applicable in the EFL Chinese context, and readability plays a important role in determining the selection of materials and the task design for college English. As the term readability is used in a more comprehensive sense which includes text factors as well as reader factors, existing measures of readability should be critically examined. Objective and statistical measures such as readability formulae need to be refined in line with recent research into the relationship between lexico-grammar and discourse organisation, and with recent research into second language/ foreign language acquisition. Ease of reading can be manipulated by highlighting the use of discourse signals in the text, and by raising high order questions. It is argued that high-order-tasks such as "thinking skill" activities facilitate students' interaction with the text and the development of language awareness. The application of three highly regarded formulae and the analysis of language features of the chosen texts indicate that word difficulty and sentence complexity are significant in materials selection. However, the findings in the questionnaires and interviews show that readability formulae in use today ignore the critical functions of discourse signals and organisation. Nor do they consider cognitive processing factors such as exercise design, readers' interest, motivation and prior knowledge which play an equally important part as word difficulty and sentence length. Consequently, the suggestion is that both objective and subjective research methodologies are necessary in setting up new criteria. Objective statistics gained from appropriate readability formulae serve as an index to the difficulty of a text in terms of language. However, subjective opinion from experienced teachers on reader factors functions as an aid, and exercise design functions as an adjustment to students' comprehensibility. Among the three, exercise or task design deserves more exploration and experimentation from coursebook writers. Process-based and activity-centred approaches are suggested in raising questions and designing tasks, because they focus on the reader and emphasise developing students' interpretation of the relations between forms and meanings. It is argued that they lead students into the process of learning - learn to learn, which is the ideal goal of English teaching, to which coursebook writers of college English have so far paid insufficient attention. Therefore, new criteria for materials selection and coursebook design for college English are proposed: • The textbooks have to meet the requirement stated in the National English Syllabus. • The chosen passages have to be authentic. • The chosen texts have to be interesting in topic, and substantial in content. • The texts have to be right in difficulty level from the linguistic point of view. • The tasks designed should provide students with opportunities to make use of their prior knowledge to interact with the text. • The exercises should lead the students to deeper, more personal engagement. It is hoped that these criteria will function as basic guidelines for future coursebook writing in college English

An Analysis of Reading Miscues in Three Genres of English Texts for Junior High School Students

The purpose of the present research is to compare and analyze eighth graders’ English reading performance in the three different genres, including the Comparison/Contrast, the Process, and the Cause/Effect by reading miscue analysis. After the individual interview, the participants read the three different texts, and then retell the three texts. At last, through the reading miscue inventory (Goodman, Watson, & Burke, 1987), the participants’ English oral reading miscues and retelling in these three different genres are analyzed and compared.According to the repeated measure ANOVA, there are two significant differences in the reading miscues in these three genres for the participants, including the meaning construction and the grammatical relationship of reading miscues. In terms of the retelling scores in these three different genres, there are also significant differences among these three different genres. On the other hand, according to the descriptive statistics, the participants get the best performance in the Cause/Effect, but they get the lowest retelling scores in the Comparison/Contrast

Text Complexity Levels and Second Language Reading Performance in Indonesia

This study examined the effect of text complexity on L2 reading performance of Indonesian students with different language proficiency levels. Four passages consisting of two low complexities and two high complexities were given to participants. Text complexity levels were analysed using Flesch’s reading ease index or grade level formula (Flesch, 1948, 1951, 1979),Text-Evaluator designed by Education Testing Service (2013), and Coh-Metrix version 3.0 indexes (McNamara, Louwerse, Cai & Graesser, 2013). Additionally, Pearson’s correlation, regression and one-way ANOVA were employed. There were 1054 university EFL students participating in this study. The findings revealed that text complexity had a moderate correlation and significantly contributed to L2 reading. Keywords: text complexity, reading comprehension, readabilit

EFL Teachers’ Reconciliation with Moral Forces Brought into Curriculum

This paper presents EFL teachers’ strategies when reconciling with moral forces underpinning Indonesian curricula: School-based curriculum and character education policy. While School-based curriculum allows teachers to develop more flexible EFL classes, the character education policy promotes such controlled EFL classes that the teachers are required to focus on students’ moral behaviour. The moral forces of the school-based curriculum resonate with communicative language teaching regarding the teachers’ opportunity for developing teaching materials to meet learners’ needs. This paper suggests that the EFL teachers have particular dilemmas as they attempt to embrace the moral forces of two curricula. Keywords: EFL teachers, character education, curriculum reform, moral forces, pedagogic practic

Readability in reading materials selection and coursebook design for college English in China

This thesis studies the application of readability in reading materials selection and coursebook design for college English in an EFL context in China. Its aim is to develop rationales which coursebook writers can utilise in selecting materials as texts and as a basis for designing tasks. This study, through a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods, argues that readability is applicable in the EFL Chinese context, and readability plays a important role in determining the selection of materials and the task design for college English. As the term readability is used in a more comprehensive sense which includes text factors as well as reader factors, existing measures of readability should be critically examined. Objective and statistical measures such as readability formulae need to be refined in line with recent research into the relationship between lexico-grammar and discourse organisation, and with recent research into second language/ foreign language acquisition. Ease of reading can be manipulated by highlighting the use of discourse signals in the text, and by raising high order questions. It is argued that high-order-tasks such as "thinking skill" activities facilitate students' interaction with the text and the development of language awareness. The application of three highly regarded formulae and the analysis of language features of the chosen texts indicate that word difficulty and sentence complexity are significant in materials selection. However, the findings in the questionnaires and interviews show that readability formulae in use today ignore the critical functions of discourse signals and organisation. Nor do they consider cognitive processing factors such as exercise design, readers' interest, motivation and prior knowledge which play an equally important part as word difficulty and sentence length. Consequently, the suggestion is that both objective and subjective research methodologies are necessary in setting up new criteria. Objective statistics gained from appropriate readability formulae serve as an index to the difficulty of a text in terms of language. However, subjective opinion from experienced teachers on reader factors functions as an aid, and exercise design functions as an adjustment to students' comprehensibility. Among the three, exercise or task design deserves more exploration and experimentation from coursebook writers. Process-based and activity-centred approaches are suggested in raising questions and designing tasks, because they focus on the reader and emphasise developing students' interpretation of the relations between forms and meanings. It is argued that they lead students into the process of learning - learn to learn, which is the ideal goal of English teaching, to which coursebook writers of college English have so far paid insufficient attention. Therefore, new criteria for materials selection and coursebook design for college English are proposed: • The textbooks have to meet the requirement stated in the National English Syllabus. • The chosen passages have to be authentic. • The chosen texts have to be interesting in topic, and substantial in content. • The texts have to be right in difficulty level from the linguistic point of view. • The tasks designed should provide students with opportunities to make use of their prior knowledge to interact with the text. • The exercises should lead the students to deeper, more personal engagement. It is hoped that these criteria will function as basic guidelines for future coursebook writing in college English