Grabe, W. (1991). Current developments in second language reading and research. TESOL Quarterly, 25(3), 375-406.
Grabe's article begins with a general overview of the past 25 years of reading research. The 1960s saw an increase in ESL student enrollment in the US. This required new approaches to teaching English as a second language. Teachers began to need something more than the audio-lingual method that was being used at the time. In the 1970s, the psycholinguistic model of reading was introduced. This model approached reading as a selective process. ESL teachers began to develop reading strategies for their students.
After this general outline, Grabe focuses more on the developments in reading research of the 1980s and their implications for L2 reading. ESL research began by looking at the six characteristics of L1 fluent reading. Using these six characteristics, some component skills were identified as being necessary for reading. The research then began to focus on the differences between L1 and L2 reading. Some of these differences were advantageous to ESL readers while others created problems. The research stated that the age of the ESL learner was sometimes helpful in overcoming the lack of vocabulary. ESL learners were able to understand certain academic concepts that they had already been introduced to in their native language. In this instance, the NNS had only to rename the concept in English. One disadvantage that showed up in ESL reading was interference from cultural and linguistic differences concerning schema and discourse organization.
The article continues with some guidelines for L2 reading instruction based on the past 25 years of research. Grabe gives seven suggestions for ESL reading programs which should help teachers and ESL departments develop better ESL readers.
The article was very informative in that it provides a comprehensive overview of the history ESL research. It is a good basic article that all ESL teachers will find helpful when trying to take in all that ESL has come to represent.
In 1991, William Grabe was Associate Professor in the English Department at Northern Arizona University. His research interests include the theory ond proctice of reading and writing development.
"Second, a reading lab should be used to provide individualized instruction as well as to practice certain skill and strategies (e.g., recognition exercises, timed reading, vocabulary learning strategies) outside of the content-centered course." (p. 396)
I appreciate this guideline for reading instruction because it helps solve the teachers' problem of trying to address all strategies, cultural transfers and individual student differences in one classroom. A reading lab would help students focus on their individual problems and leave more class time for discussing the problems the majority of the class have in common. A reading lab would also place more of the responsibility for learning on the students. A reading lab would also give students more out-of-class access to corrective feedback which is a necessary component for learning a language.
Carson, J. G., Chase, N. D., Gibson, S. U., & Hargrove, M.F. (1992). Literacy demands of the undergraduate curriculum. Reading Research and Instruction, 31(4), 25-50.
This article looks at what needs to be taught in college preparatory classes in order to prepare students for university level writing and reading assignments. The premis is that students cannot transfer the skills they learn in these preparatory classes if those skills do not correspond to the type tasks they will be required to do in college courses. The article presents the students' and teachers' expectations and perceptions about an introductory history course. The types of tests and reading, writing, and class discussion assignments are also considered. By analyzing all these factors, the authors were able to make five conclusions.
The first conclusion was that reading, writing and listening need to be taught as integrative skills since the university student often has to do these simultaneously. Students need to be able to read and understand textbook materials, listen to and comprehend class discussions, write class notes, and write short answer questions or essays for exams. The second and third conclusions reached were that writing instruction and reading instruction at the preparatory level should be reality driven. The traditional models should be put aside while the actual demand of the classroom should be the focus of instruction. The reading assignments should reflect the amount and type of reading expected in a college course instead of watered-down light readings. The fourth conclusion suggests that students be taught how to acquire knowledge. The preparatory courses should help build the students' background knowledge so that when they reach the university level, they will have a strong foundation. The final conclusion encourages departments to teach reading and writing courses as co-requisites to academic classes. This way the students see the immediate benefit and are more likely to be motivated to learn. The article ends by stating that this type of approach to teaching reading and writing could also be adapted for the ESL setting. Whether it is for ESL instruction or college preparatory, such instruction will be much more successful and useful to the students if it is reality based and develops "real life" skills.
One of the most interesting points of the article had to do with the different student and teacher expectations and perceptions toward the course.
"...chronological order is a difficult discourse type to remember, due to the fact that information is organized linearly and not hierarchically. Hierarchical organization, such as cause and effect, comparison and contrast, and problem-solution discourse patterns, is more easily comprehended and remembered since readers can retrieve subordinate nodes (e.g., three effects) by accessing a superordinate node (e.g., one cause) which then serves as a memory aid. Information organized linearly, a sequence of facts with no necessarily structural connection, is much more difficult to retain in memory." (p. 34).
This quote was of paticular interest to me because definitions fall in the linear organization pattern. This explains why it is so difficult to memorize definitions. I expect that this difficulty with linearly organized information (definitions) will become evident as we work with our ESL student for our project.
MacDonald, S. P. (1994). Sentence-level differences in disciplinary knowledge making. In Professional and academic writing in the humanities and social sciences, (pp.147-169). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
In this chapter, MacDonald makes connections between grammar at the macro- and micro-levels of academic texts. The introductory chapter of her book presents the idea that academic writings differ in structure from discipline to discipline. Each discipline has a text-level pattern which is directly related to whether the academic community is more concerned with knowledge making using particulars or abstractions. She continues developing this concept by showing that even at the sentence-level, these patterns are evident.
By categorizing the types of nouns that occupy the subject position in sentences, she highlights how each discipline reflects its overall approach to knowledge making. The subjects are divided into two main categories: the phenomenal classes, or more general classes, deal with the phenomena being studied and written about while the epistemic classes have to do with particulars and the author or academic community's reasoning and research. Each of the two major classes were then subdivided into smaller, more defined classes. Using these categories and sub-categories to analyze the sentences in each of the case studies, attachment research psychology, New England social history, and Renaissance New Historicism literature, MacDonald exposes the sentence-level differences that appear in each type of academic discourse. She demonstrates that the sentences in the psychology text had a low percentage of subjects in the phenomenal category and a high percentage of subjects in the epistemic classes. In history, the subjects tended to fall in both classes, the phenomenal class # 2, groups, and the epistemic class # 4, reasons. The sentence subjects in literature were concentrated in the phenomenal classes.
These findings support MacDonald's original statement that the discourse of academic communities does differ according to each community's approach to knowledge making. These differences are evident at the textual level and at the sentence-level. Psychology tends to be more concerned with generalizable patterns. History concentrates on both particulars and group patterns while literature focuses on particulars.
The introductory chapter and the second chapter on patterns in disciplinary variation are very insightful. The general differences in disciplinary approaches to knowledge making and problem solving are defined and discussed. Both chapters give the reader a general explanation of the reasons for the sentence-level differences presented in chapter six.
The reference list is extensive and very helpful.
"Although the connections between academic knowledge making and text making have begun to come under scrutiny, the connections often have not been made at the sentence level because of the lingering assumption that academic language is transparent and because we have lacked methods of analysis adequate for exploring connections between macro- and micro-levels of structure in academic texts." (p. 147)
This quotation validates our research projects. The language of academic texts is not transparent for English NS and is especially dense for our ESL students. Until now, there has not been enough research in this field. The scope of the research needs to be broadened and the methods of analysis need to be refined. Only by conducting more thorough through research in discipline specific discourse analysis and its effects on our ESL students will we be able to develop strategies to help NNS be successful in the academic world.
Love, A. (1993). Lexico-grammatical features of geology textbooks: Process and product revisited. English for Specific Purposes, 12, 197-218.
This article discusses how introductory geology textbooks adhere to the academic discourse community's textual semantic structure. Love in a previous article, proposes that geology as an academic field tends to have a textual structure that reflects geology's emphasis on process and product. She states in this article that not only does the discipline have a textual level pattern, but also a pattern that is evident in the sentence structure in introductory textbooks. This pattern is used to get introductory students accustomed to the field.
In the article, two introductory textbooks are compared. The first textbook was Read and Watson's Introduction to Geology (2nd ed., 1968). The author states that this book was being used as the recommended text for beginning students at the University of Zimbabwe. The geology department elected to use this text since it was inexpensive and sophisticated enough to be used in more advanced geology courses. This textbook was compared to Lutgen's and Tarbuck's Essentials of Geology (1989). This book was being used by the geology department in an American university because it was up to date on recent developments in the field and had more attractive layouts and illustrations.
Love used the classification system described in MacDonald's (1992) article to analyze the subject-noun phrases in the sentences of each textbook. The noun phrases were then grouped into either the phenomenal or epistemic classes. The characteristics that existed in both texts which were representative of the textual structure of this field's academic discourse were numerous. The most common sentence level structure was the grammatical metaphor (Halliday, 1985a). In the geology textbooks, a grammatical metaphor was created when a geological process was nominalized. The process is compacted leaving out the details of the process. The process then functions as a noun in the sentence. By nominalizing the process, much information can be compressed. Both textbooks used grammatical metaphors.
Some of the differences that were found between the two textbooks represent varying perspectives on the teaching of geology and the authors' objectives. Love found that the lexico-grammatical patterns in the Lutgen and Tarbuck text were more varied than those in the Read and Watson. There were more active verbs and analytical language in the Lutgen and Tarbuck textbook, and the relationships between process and product were more explicit.
Both textbooks followed the textual structure that was shown to exist in Love's previous article on this topic. The differences were that Lutgen and Tarbuck used more specific lexis and a combination of lexico-grammatical patterns requiring and encouraging the student to be more involved in the reading. Read and Watson tended to have consistent lexico-grammatical patterns and more focus on abstractions. The similarities found between the two texts supported Love's previous work, while the differences were traced to the textbook authors' objectives and perspectives about teaching the subject.
Lutgens, F. D., & Tarbuck, E. J. (1989). Essentials of geology (3rd ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill Publishing Company.
MacDonald, S. P. (1992). A Method of analyzing sentence-level differences in disciplinary knowledge making. Written Communication, 9(4), 533-569.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1985a). An Introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
Read, G. G., & Watson, J. (1968). Introduction to geology: Vol. 1: Principles (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan.
While the general point of this article is comprehensible, the specifics and the analyses are somewhat challenging to someone who is not familiar with the methods of discourse analysis.
"The differences between the two books reflect their differing, though complementary, approaches to their subject: Read and Watson (1968) see geology as "earth history" with rocks and landforms as "documents ." Thus their concern is with the relationships and classifications this implies. Lutgens and Tarbuck (1989) are concerned with convincing their readers that "The earth is indeed a dynamic body" (Lutgens & Tarbuck 1989: 75), despite its static appearance." (p. 214)
This quote is significant because it has implications for us as teachers.
Lutgens, F. D., & Tarbuck, E. J. (1989). Essentials of geology (3rd ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill Publishing Company.
Read, G. G., & Watson, J. (1968). Introduction to geology: Vol. 1: Principles (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan.
Teachers should definitely be aware of the approach the textbook author uses towards the subject. This is of particular concern in the introductory courses since the initial contact with an academic field can discourage the student from further study in the field, or make him/her more interested. Motivation and interest are direct factors in learning. This is true for native speakers of English and non-native speakers. If a text is difficult and boring for English speaking university students, then imagine its effect on ESL students. Perhaps departments should consult with discourse analysis specialists before deciding on introductory textbooks. More interesting and motivating textbooks could boost general interest in the sciences.
Meyers, G. (1991). Lexical cohesion and specialized knowledge in science and popular science texts. Discourse Processes, 14, 1-26.
Meyers discusses the problem that scientific reading presents for non-specialist readers. Many people feel the problem to understanding scientific discourse has to do with understanding vocabulary. According to Meyers, this is not the case. A person could have a large dictionary and look up every word they didn't understand, and they still wouldn't understand the scientific the discourse of scientific texts. The problem is isolated as being that science texts assume a certain level of background knowledge on the readers behalf. This discipline specific knowledge includes an awareness of the arguments and issues currently being debated in the scientific community. Meyers names the readers who do not possess such specialized background information "naive readers."
The article continues by comparing the same discussion of the discovery of molecular genetics in both science and popularized science texts. This comparison was conducted on different levels. First, the lexical knowledge in the scientific texts was considered. Several problems for "naive readers" were caused by their lack of a comprehensive understanding of the field. These problems were 1) understanding the uses of the same word in different contexts, 2) grasping meaning when synonyms, hyponymy and opposites were used, 3) and in determining dominance relationships in phrases and 4) recognizing breaks in discourse segments.
After highlighting the problems "naive readers" experience in comprehending scientific texts, Meyers then uses the same discussion topic to show how popularized scientific writings overcome the non-specialists' gap in domain specific knowledge. These particular texts use more explicit conjunctions to make the relationships between sentences clear. This explicit type of writing helps bridge the divide between the specialized discourse and the readers' common language. Another technique this type text uses to increase comprehension is to give several definitions at the beginning of popular articles in order to help the reader identify terms. Popularized texts use these definitions at other points in the article so as to enable the reader to understand not only the meaning of the term, but also to help him/her develop a sense of how the term can be used in different contexts. Along with being more explicit, adding definitions, and presenting examples, popularized texts take on the task of breaking up the complicated noun phrases that are prevalent in informational writing such as scientific texts. This is done through re-writing the noun phrases as prepositional phrases and relative clauses.
This article is especially approachable even for the "naive reader." The linguistic discussions are clear and precise, while the examples are specific enough to prove the point. Meyers' comparing the same discussion and providing examples of how it is presented in the two types of text gives the reader new insight into how the intended audience influences the author's writing.
"Non-specialists who have to read scientific texts (including students, language teachers, translators, journalists, administrators, and politicians) often think their difficulty in reading is a simple matter of not knowing the vocabulary; they see a lot of "big words." But their problem will not be solved even by a very large dictionary, for much of the difficulty is in the process of connecting one sentence to the next." (p.1)
This quote sums up the universal feeling of frustration that any language learner has had when dealing with a complex topic. S/he does everything possible to grasp the meaning, and still doesn't understand. The ESL student for my project has already expressed that this happens often to her in her reading.
Meyers states that while "some textbooks ...do incorporate the devices of popularizations, ...others offer no more cues for the student than the scientific articles on which thy are based."
This should be of great concern to the professors that teach these introductory courses. If students come to an introductory course expecting to build background knowledge about a subject and are required to read textbooks that already assume they have that domain specific knowledge, they may become frustrated and disillusioned about their competence as a student. This feeling of incompetence may lead the student to memorize terms and never attempt to understand the concepts or overall ideas of the field. This lack of comprehension could result in disinterest and eventual failure. We should keep in mind that students develop positive attitudes towards subjects in which they are successful. If this scenario could be true for beginning English NS university students, then imagine the impact such a textbook could have on an ESL student.
If you have comments, suggestions or questions about the articles summarized, please contact me at gs05kjj@panther.gsu.edu.