Despite extensive theoretical and empirical research, we do not have estimations of the magnitude of sensitivity to grammatical information during L2 online processing. This is largely due to reliance on null hypothesis significance testing (Plonsky, 2015). The current meta-analysis draws on data from one elicitation technique, self-paced reading,…

Professor J. Charles Alderson grew up in the town of Burnley, in the North-West of England, and is still based in the North West but in the ancient city of Lancaster. From Burnley to Lancaster, however, lies a journey and a career that took him all around the world to share his knowledge, skills, and experience in language testing and to learn…

Little research on improving second language (L2) reading comprehension of French and francophone theater has been conducted. This study provides insight into enhancing L2 comprehension of drama by combining L2 research with examples from L'accent grave by Jacques Prevert, Ton beau capitaine by Simone Schwarz-Bart (1987), Un Touareg s'est marie a…

Cross-language effects on reading skills are of particular interest in the context of foreign language immersion programs. Although there is an extensive literature on cross-language effects on reading in general, research focusing on immersion students and including different dimensions of reading acquisition such as reading fluency and reading…

Repeated reading, a procedure involving repetition of the same text, has received copious attention from first language reading research providing highly converging evidence of its potency for reading fluency, accuracy, and comprehension. In contrast, second language research on repeated reading has been scarce. The very few studies extant have,…

Presents the second part of a two-part annotated bibliography of work on extensive reading in a second language. The bibliography offers a classification that may be of value to the teacher or researcher in reading in a foreign language, and that may assist in course development. (Author/VWL)

In reading research, studies on good and poor reader characteristics abound. However, these findings remain largely scattered in applied linguistics and cognitive and educational psychology. This paper attempts to synthesize current theory and research on the topic in the past 20 years along 3 dimensions: language knowledge and processing ability,…

Describes two related experiments into the effect of prereading on the text comprehension of a population of second-language (L2) learners at three proficiency levels. Indicates that the more constraining, schemata-provision formats used in experiment one are more effective as aids to text comprehension. (MG)

Examines basic properties of selected orthographies of various languages and suggests that they play a crucial role in transferring reading ability across languages, especially if the language systems are quite different. (FL)

Finds that English-speaking students learning Japanese were most likely to obtain correct answers when interpreting novel kanji compounds (words consisting of two or more Chinese characters) when both words in isolation and contextual clues were available. Shows that morphological analysis is an independent strategy from guessing word meanings…

To determine whether research results in second language acquisition (SLA) is having an actual affect on students, reviews developments in the treatment of second language (L2) reading, revisits recommendations stemming from these developments, evaluates evidence of these recommendations, and evaluates evidence of recommendations in recently…

An account of a research project based on the psycholinguistic theory of reading. Its purpose was to isolate, analyze and directly compare the use of syntactic, semantic and discourse constraints by readers of French either as a first or as a second language. (AMH)

Survey of seventeen articles, with general comments on the quality of research in the area. (SP)

Studies the development of accurate and fast reading processes in 66 children learning to read simultaneously in English and Hebrew. Finds that steps associated with development of English reading efficiency apply to the development of word recognition skills in Hebrew, and specific linguistic features may interact with more global Hebrew…

First-language (L1) reading research has had a major impact on second language (L2) reading research. There was a substantial lag, however, before these L1 theories were adapted and proposed for L2 reading. This article introduces the L2 researcher to the relevant and current L1 test comprehension issues and theories to help close this gap.…