Teaching Readers of English

Students, Texts, and Contexts

John S. Hedgcock, Dana R. Ferris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315465555
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Englisch

A comprehensive manual for pre- and in-service ESL, EFL, and EIL educators who work with multilingual students at the secondary and postsecondary levels, this text balances insights from reading theory and research with highly practical, field-tested strategies for teaching and assessing second-language reading that educators can readily adopt and adapt to suit their contexts and student populations.

Teaching Readers of English is a complete "go-to" source for teaching reading and promoting classroom and professional literacies in an increasingly digital world. Offering principled approaches and methods for planning and delivering effective L2 reading instruction, the text includes pedagogical features, such as questions for reflection, further reading and resources, and application activities to develop purposeful classroom reading lessons in a range of contexts.

Changes in the Second Edition:

• 
  
  

• Updated and revised chapters on formative and summative reading assessment, developing vocabulary knowledge and grammatical skill, and cultivating extensive reading and literary appreciation

• 
  
  

• Updated information on institutional settings and reader demographics

• 
  
  

• New pedagogical features in each chapter, including Chapter Summaries, Further Reading, Reflection and Review, and Application Activities

• 
  
  

• A streamlined chapter sequence to enhance the text's usability

CHAPTER 1
Foundations of L1 and L2 Literacy, Reading, and Learning to Read

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

James Russell Lowell (1849)

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• Do you have any recollection of learning to read at home or at school in your primary language or in a second/foreign language? If so, what were those processes like? How were they similar or different across languages?

• How is text-based communication similar to and distinct from speech-based communication? How is learning to read and write distinct from acquiring speech and listening skills? Why?

• What are some of the principal challenges that you associate with reading certain kinds of text? What are the main obstacles that novice readers face in learning to read?

• Why do you think it is important for novice L2 educators to become acquainted with the principles and practices of reading instruction (in contrast to other skills, such as speaking, listening, writing, or grammar)?

• How has digital technology influenced your reading habits, skills, and strategies? What roles do you think digital technology can and should play in teaching reading?

The high premium that many people place on literacy skills, including those necessary for succeeding in school and in the workplace, emerges largely from the degree to which educated adults depend on text-based and digital resources for learning and communication. When educated people think about how and why literacy is important, few question the fundamental notion that reading is a crucial building block, if not the chief cornerstone, of success at school, at work, and in society (Feiler, 2007; Gee, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c; McCarty, 2005; Olson, 2009). In primary education around the globe, one of the first things children do at school is participate in literacy lessons and “learn to read.” Of course, “the developmental transformations that mark the way to reading expertise begin in infancy, not in school” (Wolf, 2007, p. 223).

In many parts of the world, primary-level teachers receive specialized education and training in teaching children to read, sometimes in two or more languages. As children advance toward adolescence, they may undergo sustained literacy instruction designed to enhance their reading comprehension, fluency, and efficiency. Formal “reading” courses taper off as children progress toward and beyond secondary school—except, perhaps, for foreign or second language instruction. Many language teachers assume that teaching and learning a foreign or second language (L2)¹ depend on reading skills. In fact, they may devote considerable time and effort to promoting L2 reading skills among their students, often under the assumption that learners already have a developed system of literate knowledge and skill in their primary language(s) (L1s) (Lin & Li, 2015; Verhoeven & van Leeuwe, 2012).

Teachers in disciplines such as science and mathematics, social studies, and the arts may need to assume that their pupils or students already know “how to read.” Such educators may not provide much, if any, explicit instruction in the mechanics of processing texts. Similarly, many teachers of writing at both the secondary and tertiary levels often assume that students know “how to read,” or at least that students have been taught to read: “Reading instruction becomes invisible” (Grabe, 2009b, p. 278). Paradoxically, while formal education, professional activities, and use of digital tools including the Web depend on reading efficacy, many educators find themselves under-equipped to help students develop their reading skills when they need intervention. In other words, we often fail to recognize the complexity of reading because, as proficient readers, we overlook the marvel of reading, assuming that reading processes are automatic: “Literate people likely do not notice how frequently they rely on the ability to read” (Willingham, 2017, p. 7). As Seidenberg (2017) pointed out:

Reading is one of the few activities you do every day whether you want to or not. Street signs, menus, e-mails, Facebook posts, novels, ingredients in Chex Mix. You read for work, for school, for pleasure; because you have to, because you want to, because you can’t help it. That is a lot of practice over a long period. If it takes thousands of hours to become an expert at something like chess, we readers are in grandmaster territory.

(p. 3)

It is easy to ignore the complexity of reading processes, as many of us do not have to think much about how we read. After all, you can read and understand the words on this page because you have somehow “learned to read” English (and perhaps other languages, as well). You have also successfully automatized your ability to decode alphabetic symbols, interpret meaning from text, and retrieve a great deal of information from memory. Precisely how you achieved this level of skill, however, involves processes that cognitive scientists and neuroscientists are still trying to demystify—although dramatic strides have been made in recent decades (Dehaene, 2009; Seidenberg, 2017; Willingham, 2017; Wolf, 2007). Our experiences as students, language teachers, and teacher educators have led us to a profound appreciation of the complexity of the reading process and for the fact that, for many novice readers—whether working in L1 or L2—reading processes are far from automatic. We have also come to recognize the seemingly overwhelming challenges of teaching reading to language learners. Reading, learning to read, and teaching reading are neither easy nor effortless.

In this chapter, we consider fundamental aspects of the reading process that make it a complex social and cognitive operation involving readers, writers, texts, contexts, purposes, and extensive knowledge of formal conventions. We will introduce contemporary principles of literacy and literacy development to familiarize readers with definitions of key constructs in the interrelated fields of literacy studies, L1 and L2 reading research, and pedagogy. Our aim is to help readers develop a working knowledge of key issues, insights, and controversies in L2 literacy education by presenting an overview of key theories, models, and metaphors. Our chief focus is on the literacy development of multilingual learners in secondary and postsecondary educational settings.² Naturally, we refer to research on L1 literacy development, which has richly informed agendas for L2 literacy research and instruction. In the first part of this chapter, we consider contemporary views of literacy as a sociocultural and psychological construct that frames reading development and processes among L1 and L2 learners. By comparing research and theory associated with prevailing processing metaphors, we explore instructional issues of particular relevance to the teaching of L2 reading. These issues include the uniqueness of L2 reading processes, interactions amongst L1 and L2 literacies, and the importance of strategies-based instruction in promoting L2 literacy.

THE NATURE OF LITERACY AND LITERACIES

Literacy is both an urgent practical concern and a metaphor for modernism itself.

Olson and Torrance (2009, p. xiii)

Before examining the mechanics of reading, we would like to situate reading processes and instruction with respect to the sociocultural and educational contexts where reading skills are valued and learned. It is certainly true that the main job of any reading teacher is to cultivate learners’ literacy skills and that reading skill should be central to any definition of literacy. Traditionally, researchers and educators have treated literacy as a mental process that involves reading and writing ability, a view that positions literacy in the heads of individuals rather than in society. In line with many other contemporary theorists, Gee (2015c) argued that this cognitivist perspective “obscures the multiple ways in which literacy relates to the workings of power in society” and to the social, cultural, and educational practices associated with reading and writing (p. 30). Literate knowledge, skill, and practice are shaped by institutions, history, politics, economics, ideologies, and value systems (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Cummins, Brown, & Sayers, 2007; Gee, 2015a, 2015b; Goldenberg, Rueda, & August, 2006; Lewis, Enciso, & Moje, 2007; Robinson, McKenna, & Wedman, 2007).

We can refer to reading and writing as literate processes, but reading and writing are among numerous areas that we now characterize as forms of literacy. For example, the International Literacy Association (formerly called the International Reading Association) defined literacy as “the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, compute, and communicate using visual, audible, and digital materials across disciplines in any context” (www­.li­ter­acy­wor­ldw­ide­.or­g/w­hy-­lit­era­cy). Seidenberg (2017) summarized this broad definition of literacy as “the exchange of information by linguistic and non-linguistic means” (p. 278). Across disciplines, “the term literacy has become a code word for more complex views of what is involved in reading and writing” (Barton, 2007, p. 5), such that a literate person can become “competent and knowledgeable in specialized areas” (p. 19). Literacies are multiple, overlapping, and diverse: “People have different literacies which they make use of, associate with different domains of life. These differences are increased across different cultures or historical periods” (Barton, 2007, p. 37). Consequently, in a multiple literacies framework, we frequently use the term literacy as a countable noun when describing skills, knowledge, practices, and beliefs allied with specific disciplines, discourse communities, and social practices (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; New London Group, 1996; Unrau & Alvermann, 2013). Familiar examples include:

	academic literacy	digital literacy	multimodal literacy
	computer literacy	financial literacy	remix literacy
	consumer literacy	information literacy	scientific literacy
	cultural literacy	media literacy	workplace literacy.^3

Contemporary conceptions of literacy do not characterize literacy merely as a cluster of isolated mental processing skills. Scribner and Cole (1981) framed literacy as a system of socially organized literacy practices. This view led to an “emerging theory of literacy-as-social-practice” (Reder & Davila, 2005, p. 172), now widely known as the New Literacy Studies (NLS) (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Barton, Hamilton, & Ivanicˇ, 2000; Barton, Ivanic cˇ, Appleby, Hodge, & Tusting, 2007; Burnett, Davies, Merchant, & Rowsell, 2014; Gee, 2000; Mills, 2016; Street, 1984, 1995, 2003, 2005). As socioculturally constructed and organized systems, literacies consist of much more than an individual’s ability t...