Conducting Second-Language Reading Research

A Methodological Guide

Elizabeth B. Bernhardt, Michael L. Kamil

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780367725198
  9780367725211
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000583564
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This is the first hands-on methods guide for second-language (L2) reading research. The authors expertly and critically situate L2 reading and literacy as a multivariate, interactive process and define terms, concepts, and research tools in connection with theory and a rich body of past empirical work, with lessons to learn and pitfalls to avoid. They concretely detail how to design empirical studies, collect data, and analyze findings in this important area.

Authored by world experts on first-language (L1) and L2 reading, this book provides a comprehensive, critical, theory-driven review of methods in L2 reading research, offering a step-by-step guide from research design to study execution and data analysis.

With useful pedagogical features and a unique database of L2 reading studies from around the world over three decades, this will be an invaluable resource to students and researchers of second-language acquisition, applied linguistics, education, and related areas.

1THE ETHOS OF SECOND-LANGUAGE READING RESEARCH

DOI: 10.4324/9781003155133-1

All researchers begin their research with what they already believe about a process, about its importance, or about what needs to be done. This is the ethos, defined as “the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; the dominant assumptions of a people or period” (Dictionary.com Unabridged, n.d.). To capture a sense of spirit, the chapter looks first to historical roots, both social and research based. How second-language literacy has been thought about and discussed (i.e., the beliefs and customs surrounding it) plays a crucial role in its reception. Is it a social tool? A political one? A mechanism for gaining information? The basis of an aesthetic experience? A means to perceive? Answers to these questions often pervade research studies, implicitly and explicitly. The chapter then turns to much more recent expressions of beliefs about second-language reading, examining dominant assumptions about the process that evolved over decades and culminated at the beginning of the 21st century in a set of theory statements. Is second-language reading exclusively reliant on a language threshold level? Is it merely translation? Is it a unique literacy or a derivative? Answers to these kinds of questions often guide decisions made about the design of research studies. Finally, we turn in this chapter to explore how the field of second-language acquisition (SLA) has or has not acknowledged the role of reading in its theory and model building and in its data collection process. Reading materials and tasks play significant roles in many research studies. Understanding their functions can clarify and enhance data sets in all research areas. Ignoring them means overlooking potential influences in research studies that might be critical.

Historical Roots

References to second languages dart in an out of depictions of world history from the Biblical story of Babel to the Rosetta Stone in 196 BC to whether a German-speaking English king should be able to speak English and so on and so forth. In most instances, a concern with the translation of one language to another is articulated, with little to no mention of what we call today reading. Even Rousseau’s extensive discussion of language and other languages focuses on orality and doesn’t mention literacy. Indeed, Emile learns Latin, but it is Latin grammar that is referred to, not reading, with Rousseau arguing “it is a small matter to learn languages, they are less useful than people think; but the study of languages leads us on to that of grammar in general” (Rousseau, 1762/1921, p. 308). The American founders also weighed in on language learning. While Benjamin Franklin’s comments at the opening of the Philadelphia Academy in 1751 indicated that he found language learning to be too time consuming to be useful (1961, p. 108) even though he knew French, Italian, and Spanish (Franklin, 2000; Schiff, 2005) and published a newspaper in German (Moyer, 2014). Thomas Jefferson provided a contrast, including both ancient and modern languages in his ideas about education. In 1781, he wrote, “I do not pretend that language is science. It is only an instrument for the attainment of science. But that time is not lost which is employed in providing tools for future operation” (Jefferson, 1955, p. 148). Jefferson’s comments begin to depict the use of language to arrive at scientific knowledge and that language itself is an instrument for capturing knowledge. Arguably, Jefferson helped us to enter what became in the late 19th century the distinct problem space of reading in a second language. In the late part of the century, second-language reading was highlighted as a research tool: both Javal (1879) and Cattel (1885) considered how reading in two languages provides an efficacious way for examining how readers process print at a microlevel. These examples are forerunners of views of research that examine literacy processes as a part of basic reading research. More importantly, however, from that time forward, reading in a second language has been used as a mechanism to maintain class differences and as a political cudgel. Understanding these various contexts helps to explain an array of research directions.

The use of second languages, and reading in particular, has a long history within North American education. By the early part of the 20th century, there was an explicit statement about learning second languages exclusively “for the reading purpose” (Coleman & Fife, 1949). In fact, Huey (1908), the progenitor of reading research, referred to reading in a second language as “the acme of scholarship” (p. 4). This helped to solidify the image of a second-language dimension to an education as bringing with it some gloss and a sense of the educated person, one that “exclude[s] from modern languages all but superior students” (Coleman & Fife, 1949, p. 167). It was used, frankly, as a marker of class distinction and elitism, buttressing the notion that someone who can read and does so in a second language most assuredly has available time for leisure and for contemplation. Second-language reading was clearly not viewed as a necessary element of the education of someone in the workforce, an attitude that existed well into the time of the Second World War.

This attitude was rooted in arenas beyond education. Cries for nationalism often focused on language as a unifying element in the growing American democracy (Higham, 1988). Higham notes that organizations such as the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Society of Colonial Dames held “nationalist anxieties” (1988, p. 236) and supported classes that “would turn immigrants into Americans” (Bernhardt, 1998, p. 47). Civic societies such as the Immigration Restriction League were founded in Boston and in concert with “many officials of charitable and law enforcement agencies, leading sociologists and biologists, organized labor, and a variety of patriotic societies”, they fought against “an assortment of ethnic societies, the steamship and railroad lines, manufacturers, and the National Liberal Immigration League” for more restrictionist immigration policies (LeMay, 1987, p. 65). Several literacy bills had been proposed in Congress around the turn of the 20th century. In fact, in 1897, a literacy bill was passed in Congress, but President Grover Cleveland refused to sign it (LeMay, 1987, p. 65). Subsequent bills were passed and presidentially vetoed in 1913 and 1915 (Daniels, 2004, pp. 32–33). Within years of those refusals, with America preparing to enter the First World War, Congress did pass the Immigration Act of 1917, which included literacy testing for immigrants and overrode a veto of it by then President, Woodrow Wilson:

The first immigration act, passed in 1917, codified into law a single, omnibus package. Its two significant innovations were its incorporation of a literacy test, designed to exclude those who were not substantially literate in any language, and its delineation of a single geographic zone, covering most of Asia, from which nonwhite immigration was barred. The literacy test and the Asian barred zone, like the old/new distinction earlier, signaled a massive change in the way people thought about immigration restriction.

(Shanks, 2001, p. 34)

The relevant section of the law lists as “excluded from admission”:

All aliens over sixteen years of age, physically capable of reading, who can not read the English language, or some other language or dialect, including Hebrew or Yiddish: Provided, that any admissible alien, or any alien heretofore or hereafter legally admitted, or any citizen of the United States, may bring in or send for his father or grandfather over fifty-five years of age, his wife, his mother, his grandmother, or his unmarried or widowed daughter, if otherwise admissible, whether such relative can read or not; and such relative shall be permitted to enter. That for the purpose of ascertaining whether aliens can read the immigrant inspectors shall be furnished with slips of uniform size, prepared under the direction of the Secretary of Labor, each containing not less than thirty nor more than forty words in ordinary use, printed in plainly legible type in some one of the various languages or dialects of immigrants. Each alien may designate the particular language or dialect in which he desires the examination to be made, and shall be required to read the words printed on the slip in such language or dialect.

(Immigration Act of 1917, 1917)

The thrust of the legislation is captured by a contemporaneous political cartoon (Figure 1.1) depicting “The Americanese Wall” constructed of books and the nibs of ink pens pointed outward in a gun-like fashion toward a family of immigrants with their belongings. Uncle Sam hovers over the wall, saying: “You’re welcome in if you can climb it”. An important question becomes: what did it mean to climb this literacy wall?

FIGURE 1.1 Cartoon drawing by Raymond Oscar Evans published in Puck magazine in 1916.

It should be clarified that the aim of the literacy test was not in fact to prevent illiterates from entering the United States but to weed out individuals who were “regarded as undesirable for reasons other than educational level” (Hutchinson, 1981, p. 481). The true goal of the test was to decrease immigration from southeastern European nations and “the test’s proponents did not bother to pretend otherwise. Restrictionists’ two goals were to reduce immigration’s volume and to redirect its sources to draw almost entirely from northwestern Europe wherein lived ‘Nordics’” (Shanks, 2001, p. 34). It so turns out that the literacy test provision of the law was largely unsuccessful at fulfilling its purpose:

Despite the more than two decades of struggle it engendered, the literacy test, when finally enacted, had little effect. During the last year in which it was the major statutory bar to immigration (July 1920-June 1921) more than 800,000 immigrants entered the country and 250,000 returned home. About 1.5 percent of the number of all entrants, nearly 14,000 persons, were excluded or deported on one ground or another. Only a tenth of these, a mere 1,450 persons, were kept out by the much heralded literacy test. Rising standards of education in Europe had pulled most of the teeth the law might once have had.

(Daniels, 2004, p. 46)

There is much to unpack in this early 20th century overview. First, it is remarkable that so many immigrants entering the nation were able to read “in any language”. Hidden within the grave shortcomings in the attitudes toward immigrants is the astonishingly progressive acknowledgement that any literacy is better than no literacy. Generally speaking, the image of immigrants as desperate illiterates is perhaps not quite accurate, especially when one considers Eastern European Jews, men in particular, who had both literacy and numeracy (Teller, 2010). Stunning in the Act of 1917 is the explicit reference to Hebrew and Yiddish, marking these languages as being spoken by “acceptable immigrants”, despite the fact that a reduction of Eastern European immigrants was considered to be desirable. In this part of the law, there is again a recognition of class distinction; higher literacy signaled higher social status. Figures 1.2 and 1.3 illustrate literacy tests, thrust into the faces of immigrants who were asked to read aloud.

FIGURE 1.2 Literacy test card in Hebrew and English.

Source: Published by the United States Government Printing Office.

FIGURE 1.3 Literacy test card in Italian and English.

Source: Published by the United States Government Printing Office.

Hing (2004) provides us with an illustration of the testing process:

Upon her arrival in New York on March 7, 1923, Ms. Friedman a 23-year-old Yiddish-speaking native of Ratno, province of Vohlyn, in the Pinsk region of Poland, was asked by the immigration inspector, “Do you read any other language than Yiddish?” “No”, she replied. As part of Ms. Friedman’s entry examination, her literacy was then tested using a printed slip in Yiddish, the English translation of which was, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful”. Although she was able to read a large majority of the words, she could not explain the meaning of them. Ms. Friedman was denied admission.

(p. 51)

At some level, what Ms. Friedman and countless other immigrants and would-be immi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 The Ethos of Second-Language Reading Research
• 2 Preparing to Ask and Asking Questions in Second-Language Reading Research
• 3 Analyzing Populations and Text for Research Purposes
• 4 Data Collection
• 5 Perennial Concerns in Second-Language Reading Research
• 6 Conclusion: The Research Report and Beyond
• Appendix: The Development of the Database
• Index