The Bridge Hypothesis states that pleasure reading acts as a bridge between conversational and academic language, providing the competence that makes demanding texts more comprehensible. In two studies, D. Gardner argues that pleasure reading does not play a role in helping children understand academic texts, but a close look at the data shows that Gardner's evidence actually supports the Bridge Hypothesis.&nbsp

Krashen, Stephen D.

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The Bridge Hypothesis states that pleasure reading acts as a bridge between conversational and academic language, providing the competence that makes demanding texts more comprehensible. In two studies, D. Gardner argues that pleasure reading does not play a role in helping children understand academic texts, but a close look at the data shows that Gardner's evidence actually supports the Bridge Hypothesis

Krashen, S. D. (Stephen)

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Is Light Reading Enough to Fully Acquire Academic Language? the Bridge Hypothesis

eJournal Unika Atma Jaya (Universitas Katolik Indonesia)

Krashen, D. StephenIs Light Reading Enough to Fully Acquire Academic Language?The Bridge Hypothesis30IS LIGHT READING ENOUGH TO FULLY ACQUIREACADEMIC LANGUAGE? THE BRIDGE HYPOTHESISStephen D. KrashenUniversity of Southern CaliforniaAbstractThe Bridge Hypothesis states that pleasure reading acts as a bridgebetween conversational and academic language, providing thecompetence that makes demanding texts more comprehensible. Intwo studies, D. Gardner argues that pleasure reading does not playa role in helping children understand academic texts, but a closelook at the data shows that Gardner's evidence actually supportsthe Bridge Hypothesis.Keywords: Light reading, pleasure reading, academic language,vocabulary development.RECENT ACCUSATION AGAINST THE READING HYPOTHESISIn two studies, Gardner (2004, 2008) questions the claim thatpleasure reading can play a role in developing academic language. In bothcases, Gardner attacks a position I do not think anybody holds, the positionthat readers can get all the vocabulary they need from reading stories.  This"strong light reading" position insists that light reading does the entire job ofpreparing children for academic reading, that every word they will encounterin school texts will have already been acquired from stories.THE "LIGHT READING AS A BRIDGE" POSITIONMy position has always been that light reading is a bridge toacademic language, that doing lots of light reading will make academicreading more comprehensible.In other words, a secondary school student who has read a lot of lightfiction will be better prepared for a history of the world class than a studentwith a similar background who has not been a light reader.  Light reading, inother words, is the missing link.  This is supported by case histories as wellDirect all correspondence to:Stephen Krashen, 25823 Pacific Coast Highway PMB 919, Malibu CA 0265-4879 USA,skrashen@yahoo.com or skrashen@gmail.com.Indonesian Journal of English Language TeachingVolume 6/Number 1  May 201031as analyses showing that the vocabulary content of light reading falls aboutin the middle between conversation and academic prose (Krashen, 2004).Gardner's results are consistent with this "light reading as bridge" position.GARDNER (2004)Gardner (2004) examined texts written for fifth graders,approximately one million words of narrative text and 400,000 words ofexpository text, and concluded that the vocabulary content of these twokinds of texts "are largely dissimilar" (p. 17).   Thus, he concluded, readingstories will not prepare you for reading academic texts. Specifically, thenarrative texts did not provide enough academic vocabulary (sometimescalled "subtechnical" vocabulary), words such as "academic," "absorb," and"abandon."Gardner reported that only seven percent of the academic words thatappeared in the expository text also appeared in the narrative texts at leastten times, considered to be a reasonable threshold for acquisition.This is, however, only a problem if we insist that light readingprovide readers with everything they need in order to understand every wordof academic texts that they will encounter that year! In other words, Gardnerassumes that for narrative reading to be useful, it needs to provide readerswith full acquisition of every word in the academic texts they are about toread.This is not the claim of the "light reading as bridge" position, theposition that light reading helps make academic reading morecomprehensible.  In other words, the question to ask is whether narrativereading contains enough "acquirable" words in it to help make academictexts in general more comprehensible, not necessarily those the children areexpected to read right away.The answer is yes. There were 338 acquirable academic words in thenarrative texts in Gardner's sample. This is an impressive amount. Itsuggests that a year of reading stories (one million words) will result in theacquisition of 338 academic words.  That's a real contribution, whether ornot these words also appeared in the expository texts the children will readthat year. (1)There are other problems with Gardner's conclusion.Krashen, D. StephenIs Light Reading Enough to Fully Acquire Academic Language?The Bridge Hypothesis32ARE THE NARRATIVE TETXS CHOSEN WHATCHILDREN ACTUALLY READ?The texts Gardner used may not be representative of the texts youngreaders actually read.  The fiction she analyzed consisted of winners of theNewbury Award winners. Adult critics value these books, but children aretypically not enthusiastic about them (Ujiie & Krashen, 2006).NOT NARROW READINGIn addition, the books chosen were in "different fictional registers"(p. 10).  Analyses of children's self-selected reading over time show thatchildren typically do not select widely different books, but tend to readnarrowly, and gradually expand their interests as they mature (Labrant,1958).  Gardner's second study, discussed below, addresses this issue, andprovides even more evidence for the power of reading.GARDNER (2008)In a second study, Gardner (2008) analyzed the frequency ofoccurrence of "specialized" words, words that do not appear in the 1,000most frequently appearing word families, in several kinds of texts.His major claim is that narrative texts (stories) are less effective thanexpository texts in contributing to vocabulary acquisition, even when"narrow" reading is done.  The crucial data is the number specialized wordsappearing at least six times in the first 5,000 words of the texts selected foranalysis.  Narrow narrative reading (in this case books by a single author ona single theme) did not produce as many acquirable words as narrowexpository reading (single theme) did, although narrow reading was moreefficient than ordinary reading.Once again, the real question is whether narrative texts can help thecomprehension of academic texts, whether they can serve as a bridge toacademic reading. Gardner used three sets of narrow texts. If we eliminateproper names, the corpus of narrow reading Gardner analyzed contains atotal of 119 acquirable words, that is, words appearing at least six times (seeAppendix). Of these, only six appeared in more than one series.  Thus,Gardner's corpus of 60,000 words (three sets, each with 20,000 words)contained 113 individual acquirable words. This extrapolates to about 1900academic words per year (assuming one million words read), a strongcontribution.  If we limit the analysis to words appearing at least ten times,as in Gardner (2004), there are 47 acquirable words in the corpus of 60,000words, which extrapolates to 783 words per year, about double the figureIndonesian Journal of English Language TeachingVolume 6/Number 1  May 201033estimated for academic words from the texts in Gardner (2004), confirmingthe advantage of narrow reading.Children tend to engage in narrow reading, preferring series books(Ujiie & Krashen, 2006), which suggests that the 783 per year figure basedon narrow reading is a more accurate estimate of vocabulary growth fromnarrative texts than is the 338 figure (Gardner, 2004), which was based onnon-narrow reading. In addition, children gradually expand their readinginterests as they mature (LaBrant, 1958), which suggests that the wordsencountered in narrow reading will be somewhat different as children readmore.In conclusion, both Gardner studies, contrary to the statements madeby the author, show that reading narratives can make a substantialcontribution to the development of academic vocabulary.NOTE:The entire corpus contained 823 different acquirable academic wordsthat occurred only in narrative or only in expository texts (Gardner, 2004,table 7). It included 78 acquirable academic words that were in both (Table8). Thus, it contained a total of 901 acquirable academic words. Of the 901,260 were only in narrative texts. Thus the total number of acquirableacademic words in narrative texts was 260 + 78 = 338.THE AUTHORStephen D. Krashen is Emeritus Professor of Education, the University ofSouthern California. He is best known for his work in establishing a generaltheory of second-language acquisition, as the cofounder of the NaturalApproach, and as the inventor of sheltered subject matter teaching. He is theauthor of numerous books, including Condemned Without a Trial: BogusArguments Against Bilingual Education (1999), Every Person a Reader: AnAlternative to the California Task Force Report on Reading (1997), andUnder Attack: The Case Against Bilingual Education (1997), all availablefrom Heinemann.REFERENCESGardner, D. (2004).  Vocabulary input through extensive reading: Acomparison of words found in children’s narrative and expositoryreading materials. Applied Linguistics, 25(1), 1-37.Krashen, D. StephenIs Light Reading Enough to Fully Acquire Academic Language?The Bridge Hypothesis34Gardner, D. (2008). Vocabulary recycling in children's authentic readingmaterials:  A corpus-based investigation of narrow reading. Readingas a Foreign Language, 20 (1), 92-122.LaBrant, L. (1958). An evaluation of free reading. In C. Hunnicutt & W.Iverson (Eds.), Research in the Three R’s New YorK (pp. 154-161).Harper and Brothers.Ujiie, J. & Krashen, S. (2006). Are prize-winning books popular amongchildren? An analysis of public library circulation. Knowledge Quest,34(3), 33-35.APPENDIXFrequency of  Appearance of Academic Words Appearing in NarrowNarrative texts (from Gardner, 2008; Appendix B).Westword Mystery Mummywagon 87brown 23path 23tall 23feet 19 20 7edge 18legs 18slowly 15log 14chapter 13yellow 13clean 12tiny 12roof 12climbed 11hair 11thick 11flat 11stove 11fat 10noses 10 7 (nose)bare 9warm 9smoke 9Indonesian Journal of English Language TeachingVolume 6/Number 1  May 201035tired 9bit 8empty 8snug 8thin 8tin 8bottom 8hole 8pork 8quickly 8 10shut 8tight 8climb 7curved 7pale 7pan 7plate 7slope 7wet 7overhead 6washed 6crack 6foot 6hurried 6mittons 6quiet 6suddenly 6 12cat 99breath 62bone 60club 49diamond 38baseball 18police 17fur 14project 13kids 13probably 12parents 12nose 11 7Krashen, D. StephenIs Light Reading Enough to Fully Acquire Academic Language?The Bridge Hypothesis36whispered 10notebook 11extra 9vocabulary 9undersigned 8whereas 8apartment 8locked 8pet 8afternoon 7hurried 7nodded 7pocket 7removed 7tail 7kitchen 7lot 7 19telephone 7quit 6relief 6sorry 6fun 6desk 17finally 12liked 12tea 12job 11bit 10gray 10corner 10nice 10clock 9funny 9hall 9hit 9kitchen 9mysterious 9slowly 9chair 8Indonesian Journal of English Language TeachingVolume 6/Number 1  May 201037tower 8cream 8worried 8chapter 7gonna 7odd 7sick 7leather 7radio 7grinned 6angry 6cap 6chess 6hair 6scared 6sigh 6Westward MovementWilder, L. I. (1971a). Little house in the big woods (rev. ed.). New York:Harper & Row.Wilder, L. I. (1971b). Little house on the prairie (rev. ed.). New York:Harper & Row.Wilder, L. I. (1971c). Farmer boy (rev. ed.). New York: Harper & Row.Wilder, L. I. (1971d). On the banks of Plum Creek (rev. ed.). New York:Harper & Row.MysteryKehret, P. (1995a). Frightmares: Cat burglar on the prowl. New York:Pocket Books.Kehret, P. (1995b). Frightmares: Don’t go near Mrs. Tallie. New York:Pocket Books.Kehret, P. (1996a). Frightmares: Backstage fright. New York: PocketBooks.Kehret, P. (1996b). Frightmares: Screaming eagles. New York: PocketBooks.MummyBellairs, J. (1978). The treasure of Alpheus Winterborn. New York:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Bellairs, J. (1983). The mummy, the will, and the crypt. New York: DialBooks for Young Readers.Krashen, D. StephenIs Light Reading Enough to Fully Acquire Academic Language?The Bridge Hypothesis38Bellairs, J. (1984). The dark secret of Weatherend. New York: Dial Booksfor Young Readers.Bellairs, J. (1996). The curse of the blue figurine (rev. ed.). New York:Puffin Books.

Is light reading enough to fully acquire academic language? The bridge hypothesis

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Is light reading enough to fully acquire academic language? The bridge hypothesis

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