|
Paul
Nation
Victoria University of Wellington |
The idea that learners can develop their language
knowledge through extensive reading is attractive for several reasons. First,
reading is essentially an individual activity and therefore learners of
different proficiency levels could be learning at their own level without being
locked into an inflexible class program. Second, it allows learners to follow
their interests in choosing what to read and thus increase their motivation for
learning. Third, it provides the opportunity for learning to occur outside the
classroom.
However, before investing time and money in an
extensive reading program, it is necessary to be sure that the learning that
occurs from it is not restricted solely to the improvement of reading fluency,
even though this in itself is a useful goal. This article looks at the language
learning benefits from extensive reading, looking both at extensive reading of
texts prepared for native speakers and those prepared for non-native speakers.
An important issue considered in this article is
the vocabulary load of the texts that learners should read in extensive
reading. Laufer's (1989) research suggests that learners need to be familiar
with at least 95% of the running words in a text if they want to comprehend and
thus perhaps learn from the text. In the following section we will see if texts
for native speakers can meet these requirements.
Extensive Reading by Non-native Speakers of Texts Written for Young Native Speakers
The "book flood" studies reviewed by
Elley (1991) show striking increases made on measures of language use, language
knowledge, and academic performance. The studies of extensive reading that
Elley was involved in are the most substantial in terms of length (12-36
months) and number of students (from over a hundred to several thousand). The
book flood studies involved learners spending the greater part of their class
time reading books that interested them.
The measures of language use in Elley, and Elley
and Mangubhai's studies included measures of oral language, reading
comprehension, and writing. An interesting finding in some of the studies was
the improvement made in writing, which appeared most dramatically in the tests
given two years after the beginning of the book flood. Elley and Mangubhai
(1981b, p. 23) comment that:
It is tempting to conclude that the Book Flood
pupils had reached a threshold level in their language growth which enabled
them to exploit their passive vocabulary and to produce more fluent interesting
language of their own, an accomplishment which the Control group pupils were
not ready for.
The improvements in reading, listening, and oral
language were equally striking but not so unexpected, because the "shared
book" approach used in one of the groups of classes involved learners in
listening, reading, and orally joining in with the reading of a story.
The language knowledge measures included word
recognition where learners have to read aloud a list of words, vocabulary
knowledge, and grammar. The vocabulary knowledge measures did not measure total
vocabulary size or vocabulary growth.
The measures of academic success involved the
examinations used across the school system. Learners in the book flood groups
had a greater than normal success rate in these examinations. Although there
were no formal measures of learners' attitudes to reading, informal observation
and teacher reports indicated that book flood learners enjoyed reading.
These studies present compelling evidence of the
improvements in second language acquisition that can be brought about by such
programs. Elley (1991, pp. 378-379) attributes the success to five factors.
- Extensive input of meaningful print.
- Incidental learning.
- The integration of oral and written activity.
- Focus on meaning rather than form.
- High intrinsic motivation.
The control groups in the studies were classes
following a syllabus of language items that were presented one by one with
substantial amounts of form focused activity.
The books that were used in the experiments were
generally "well-illustrated, and used only common-sense controls over the
presentation of vocabulary and structures" (Elley & Mangubhai, 1981a,
p. 26). There was language control only to the extent that
"appropriateness of difficulty and interest were the guiding principles of
book selection" (Elley, 1991, p. 402). The books used were not graded
readers but were ones that young native speakers of English would read. The
children in the book flood studies were aged from 6 to 12 years old, and so the
content matter of such books was appropriate.
Let us look at two books written without formal
vocabulary control for young native speakers and compare them with a graded
reader written to fit into a prescribed vocabulary level. One of the texts The
Three Little Pigs in the Ladybird series seems to have been used in the
Fiji book flood study (Elley & Mangubhai, 1981, p. 26).
Table 1 presents the vocabulary profile of the
three texts showing the percentage of the running words in the 1,000 most
frequent words according to West's (1953) General Service List, the
words in the second 1,000 most frequent words, the names of characters and
places, and the remaining words.
Table 1. The
percentage coverage (and cumulative coverage) of three texts by the high
frequency words of English, names, and all the remaining words
|
The books
|
1st 1,000
|
2nd 1,000
|
Names
|
Remaining words
|
|
Dry
Days for Climbing George
|
76.8%
|
11.7%
(88.5%) |
5.1%
(93.6%) |
6.4%
(100%) |
|
The
Three Little Pigs
|
78.1%
|
11.1%
(89.2%) |
7.5%
(96.7%) |
3.3%
(100%) |
|
Indonesian
Love Story
|
82.7%
|
8.4%
(91.1%) |
7.9%
(99%) |
1.0%
(100%) |
In The Three Little Pigs pig, wolf,
and (Mr.) Smith make up the total of names. Pig is actually
in the second 1,000 words but for comparison purposes it was counted as a name.
Note that the names of the characters and places make up a large proportion of
the words not in the first 2,000 words.
We can see from Table 1 that the graded reader Indonesian
Love Story provides greater control with 99% of the words coming from the
most frequent 2,000 words of English plus names. But the figures of 96.7% and
96.3% are still good coverage figures. In The Three Little Pigs just
one word in every 30 will be outside the lists, and in Dry Days for
Climbing George by Margaret Mahy (1988) one word in every 22. In addition,
several of the words outside the lists were repeated several times (huff,
puff, chinny, chin). Elley and MangubhaiÃs
motivation for choosing books written for young native speakers was probably
that these were much more attractively illustrated, and interesting for young
readers. It also seems that in terms of vocabulary control such texts compare
favourably with graded readers.
A study of texts aimed at teenage native speakers
of English showed that such texts are not as accessible for non-native speakers
as graded readers (Hirsh & Nation, 1992).
Extensive Reading with Graded Readers
In two experiments, one conducted with second
language learners in England for a maximum of 60 hours (Tudor & Hafiz,
1989; Hafiz & Tudor, 1989), and one with learners in Pakistan for a maximum
of 90 hours (Hafiz & Tudor, 1990), Hafiz and Tudor looked at the effect of
extensive reading of graded readers on learnersà language use. The study in
England used standardised reading and writing measures and analyses of the
studentsà writing, while the study in Pakistan used only analyses of students'
writing. Even with these limited and indirect measures, improvement was seen
particularly in writing. There was no significant change in the vocabulary used
in writing for the group in England, but this is not surprising as the
vocabulary of the graded readers was probably far below the learners'
vocabulary level (Hafiz & Tudor, 1990, p. 36). There were some indications
that the simplified syntax of the graded readers seemed to encourage the
learners to simplify the syntax in their own writing. All of Hafiz and Tudor's
measures were of language use. It is likely if they included more direct
measures of vocabulary size, word recognition, and English structures as Elley
and Mangubhai did, then there would be even more signs of improvement. Tsang (1996)
also found very positive effects of simplified reading on learnersà writing
performance.
Extensive Reading of Unsimplified Texts
Several correlational studies looking at the
effect of a variety of factors on L2 proficiency have shown the importance of
extensive reading. Huang and van Naerssen (1987) found that reading outside
class was the most significant predictor of oral communicative ability. Green
and Oxford (1995) in a study of the effect of learning strategies on language
proficiency found that reading for pleasure was most strongly related to
proficiency. Gradman and Hanania (1991) found that out of class reading was the
most important direct contributor to TOEFL test performance. This study raised
the important issue of causality through the use of the LISREL program for
analysing the data. Gradman and Hanania found the strongest connection going
from individual out of class reading to TOEFL results. They found that oral
exposure, speaking and listening outside class and communicative oral use affected
out of class reading.
It is clear from these studies that extensive
reading can be a major factor in success in learning another language. It is
likely that the relationship between extensive reading and language proficiency
is changing and complex. Success in formal study may make reading more
feasible. Success in reading may increase motivation for further study and
reading.
These correlational studies are supported by
Pickard's (1996) survey of the out of class strategies used by a group of German
learners of English in Germany, where extensive reading of newspapers,
magazines and novels ranked very high on the list of strategies used for
learning English. Use of reading and other input sources may be the only
practical options for out of class language development for some learners.
In a study using SRA reading boxes, Robb and
Susser (1989) found that extensive reading of SRA material and readers written
for American teenagers produced several results superior to a skills focused
reading course involving less reading. The extensive reading program also gave
the learners more enjoyment both of reading and writing. The effects of
extensive reading were thus both cognitive and affective.
Extensive Reading and Vocabulary Growth
Experimental studies of second language learnersÃ
vocabulary learning from reading have not come near to approaching the careful
design of first language studies best exemplified by the work of Nagy, Herman
and Anderson (1985).
The second language studies (Day, Omura, & Hiramatsu,
1991; Pitts, White, & Krashen, 1989; Saragi, Nation, & Meister, 1978)
used tests that were not sensitive to small amounts of learning (see Joe,
Nation, & Newton, forthcoming), did not adequately control text difficulty,
and generally lacked careful control of the research design.
In spite of these shortcomings, there is no
reason to doubt the finding that learners incidentally gain small amounts of
vocabulary knowledge from each meaning focused reading of an appropriate text.
The most important finding from first language studies is that this vocabulary
learning is not an all-or-nothing piece of learning for any particular word,
but that it is a gradual process of one meeting with a word adding to or
strengthening the small amounts of knowledge gained from previous meetings. The
implications of this finding are very important for managing extensive reading.
Essentially, vocabulary learning from extensive reading is very fragile. If the
small amount of learning of a word is not soon reinforced by another meeting,
then that learning will be lost. It is thus critically important in an
extensive reading program that learners have the opportunity to keep meeting
words that they have met before. This can be done in two ways: (a) by doing
large amounts of extensive reading at suitable vocabulary levels so that there
are repeated opportunities to meet wanted vocabulary, and (b) by complementing
the extensive reading program with the direct study of vocabulary. A
well-balanced language program has appropriate amounts of message directed
activity and language focused activity.
There is a rough way of providing a guideline for
deciding how much extensive reading learners at a particular level should be
doing. The two factors determining the necessary amount of reading are (a) the
frequency level of the learners' vocabulary, and (b) the length of time that
the memory of a meeting with a word is retained. For example, if a learner has
a vocabulary of around 1,000 words and is thus expanding her vocabulary at the 1,001-2,000
word level, on average each word at this word level will appear once in every
10,000-15,000 running words (see Table 2). If, for example, the memory of a
meeting with a word lasts for one week, then the learner will need to read at
least 10,000 words per week (40 pages of 250 words per page) to ensure that
there is another meeting with the word before the memory of it is lost. At this
level, this is the equivalent of one graded reader every one to two weeks. As
learnersà vocabulary grows larger, the new vocabulary is of lower frequency,
and therefore the amounts of extensive reading would need to be greater. The
length of graded readers increases as the vocabulary level increases, so up to
the 2,000 level about a book a week is about right.
Table 2. Word
frequency level and the average number of running words needed to meet each
word again
|
Vocabulary frequency level
|
Word frequency in 1,000,000
running words
|
Average number of running
words between repetitions of each word
|
Graded reader length
|
|
1000 word level
|
113 per 1,000,000
|
1 per 10,000
|
20,000
|
|
1500
|
75
|
1 per 13,000
|
35,000
|
|
2000
|
56
|
1 per 20,000
|
up to 50,000
|
|
3000
|
34
|
1 per 30,000
|
|
|
4000
|
23
|
1 per 43,000
|
|
|
5000
|
16
|
1 per 62,500
|
|
|
6000
|
8
|
1 per 125,000
|
|
Table 2 shows, for example, that each word at the
1500 word level occurs 75 times per million running words. This means that a
learner with a vocabulary of the most frequent 1500 words would need to read
13,000 running words in order to meet a repetition of words at this level to
reinforce a previous meeting.
The figures in column two are from Francis and
Kuçera (1982). Column three converts the figures in column two to a ratio. The
lengths in column four are from the Longman Structural Readers Handbook (1976).
The weakness of this analysis is that the figures of occurrences per 1,000,000
running words are based on unsimplified texts. Simplified texts, especially
long ones, provide more repetitions of high frequency words (Wodinsky &
Nation, 1988).
Conclusion
The research on extensive reading shows that
there is a wide range of learning benefits from such activity. Experimental
studies have shown that not only is there improvement in reading, but that
there are improvements in a range of language uses and areas of language
knowledge. Although studies have focused on language improvement, it is clear
that there are affective benefits as well. Success in reading and its
associated skills, most notably writing, makes learners come to enjoy language
learning and to value their study of English.
However, the figures on repetition indicate that
teachers need to be serious about extensive reading programs particularly in
ensuring that learners do large amounts of reading. The benefits of extensive
reading do not come in the short term. Nevertheless, the substantial long-term
benefits justify the high degree of commitment needed.
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