Volume 21, Number 1, April 2009

Volume 21, Number 1, April 2009
Advisory and Editorial Boards
Advisory Board
University of Hawai‘i, USA
Richard Day, Co-Editor, Reading in a Foreign Language, readfl@hawaii.edu

Thom Hudson, Co-Editor, Reading in a Foreign Language, readfl@hawaii.edu
Richard Schmidt, Director, National Foreign Language Resource Center, schmidt@hawaii.edu
Kimi Kondo-Brown, Interim Associate Dean, College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature, kondo@hawaii.edu
Editorial Board
Charles Alderson University of Lancaster, UK c.alderson@lancaster.ac.uk
Neil J. Anderson Brigham Young University, USA neil_anderson@byu.edu
Cindy Brantmeier Washington University, USA cbrantme@wustl.edu
Andrew D. Cohen University of Minnesota, USA adcohen@umn.edu
Averil Coxhead Massey University, New Zealand A.Coxhead@massey.ac.nz
Julian Edge University of Manchester, UK julian.edge@manchester.ac.uk
William Grabe Northern Arizona University, USA william.Grabe@nau.edu
Yukie Horiba Kanda University of International Studies, Japan yukiehn@kanda.kuis.ac.jp
Batia Laufer University of Haifa, Israel batialau@research.haifa.ac.il
Sandra McKay San Francisco State University, USA smckay@sfsu.edu
Setsuko Mori Kinki University, Japan setsukomori@mac.com
Paul Nation Victoria University, NZ Paul.Nation@vuw.ac.nz
David Qian Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong egdavid@polyu.edu.hk
Sandra Silberstein University of Washington, USA tq@u.washington.edu
Fredricka Stoller Northern Arizona University, USA Fredricka.Stoller@NAU.EDU
Cyril Weir University of Surrey Roehampton, UK cyril.weir@which.net
Eddie Williams University of Reading, UK CALS@reading.ac.uk
Editorial Staff
Editors: Richard Day and Thom Hudson, University of Hawai’i, readfl@hawaii.edu
Reviews Editor: Anne Burns, Macquarie University, anne.burns@mq.edu.au
Readings on L2 Reading Editor: Cindy Brantmeier, Washington University, cbrantme@wustl.edu
Assistant Editor & Web Production Editor: Zhijun (David) Wen, University of Hawai’i, readfl@hawaii.edu
Copyright © RFL 2009

About Reading in a Foreign Language
The online journal Reading in a Foreign Language (RFL) is a scholarly international refereed
journal originally founded as a print journal in 1983 at the University of Aston, Birmingham,
England. The journal moved to the University of Hawai‘i in 2002 under the co-editorship of
Richard R. Day and Thom Hudson, and Reviews Editor Anne Burns, Macquarie University,
Australia. It is supported by the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC), the
University of Hawai‘i College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature, and the University of
Hawai‘i Department of Second Language Studies.
Reading in a Foreign Language has established itself as an excellent source for the latest
developments in the field, both theoretical and pedagogic, including improving standards for
foreign language reading.
This fully-refereed journal is published twice a year, in April and October. The editors seek
manuscripts concerning both the practice and theory of learning to read and the teaching of
reading in any foreign or second language. Reviews of scholarly books and teaching materials,
conference reports, and discussions are also solicited. The language of the journal is English, but
lexical citations of languages other than English are acceptable. Additionally, the journal
encourages research submissions about reading in languages other than English. From time to
time, special issues are published on themes of relevance to our readers. Please see our
submission guidelines for more information.
Although RFL is a free online journal, we would appreciate your support as a subscriber. This
will assist us in continuing to obtain institutional support for the journal, keeping it free of charge.
Please take a few minutes to visit our subscription page.

Information for Contributors
Reading in a Foreign Language (RFL) seeks submissions of previously unpublished manuscripts

on any topic related to the area of foreign or second language reading. Articles should be written
so that they are accessible to a broad audience of language educators, including those individuals
who may not be familiar with the particular subject matter addressed in the article. Manuscripts
are being solicited in these three major categories: articles, discussion forum, and reviews.
Submission guidelines, general publication policies, general guidelines for reporting on both
quantitative and qualitative research are provided below.
Articles
Discussion Forum
Reviews
Features
Submission Guidelines
General Publication Policies
Guidelines for Reporting on Research
Articles
Articles should report original research or present an original framework that links previous
research, educational theory, and teaching practices. Full-length articles should be no more than
8,500 words in length, excluding appendices. Additionally, each submission should include an
abstract of no more than 150 words, and a list of five to seven keywords for index and search
purposes. We encourage articles that take advantage of the electronic format by including
hypermedia links to multimedia material both within and outside the article. All article
manuscripts submitted to RFL go through a two-step review process.
Step 1: Internal review. The editors of the journal first review each manuscript to see if it meets
the basic requirements for articles published in the journal (i.e., that it reports on original
research or presents an original framework linking previous research, educational theory, and
teaching practices), and that it is of sufficient quality to merit external review. Note that RFL
follows the guidelines of the fifth edition of the Publication Manual of the American
Psychological Association published by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 2001.
Manuscripts submitted to RFL must conform to APA format. Manuscripts that do not meet these
requirements are not sent out for further review. This internal review takes about 1–2 weeks.

Step 2: External review. Submissions that meet the requirements above are then sent out for
blind peer review from two to three experts in the field, either from the journal’s editorial board
or from a larger list of reviewers. This second review process takes 2–3 months. Following the
external review, the authors are sent copies of the external reviewers’ comments and are notified
as to the decision (accept as it is, accept pending changes, revise and resubmit, or reject).
Discussion Forum
Short articles, usually no more than 2,000 words, in the Discussion Forum generally discuss
material previously published in RFL and may also present replies by the authors to the issues
raised in those comments. The Discussion Forum contents are meant to be constructive and
professional exchanges about an area of foreign language reading. Discussions go through the
same review process as that for full length articles.
Reviews
The journal welcomes reviews of recent publications and resources focusing on a variety of
aspects of reading, including research, professional development, classroom approaches,
teaching texts, and computer mediated materials. Reviewers should give a clear and succinct
description and provide the reader with the means of evaluating the relevance of the material to
the targeted field of theory and practice. Reviews should normally include references to
published theory and relevant research, and reviews providing a critical/evaluative overview of
several publications that have made a distinct contribution to the field of reading research and
practice are particularly welcome. Reviews of individual books or reading instructional software
are generally 1,200–1,600 words in length. Reviews of multiple texts can be longer. Reviews
should include the name, institutional affiliation, e-mail address, URL (if applicable), and a short
biographical statement (maximum 50 words) of the reviewer(s). The following information
should be included in a table at the beginning of the review:
Author(s)
Title
Publication date
Publisher
Publisher City and Country
Number of pages
ISBN
Price
Contact Anne Burns if you are interested in having material reviewed or in serving as a reviewer.
Anne Burns
Department of Linguistics
Macquarie University
Sydney Australia
anne.burns@mq.edu.au

Features
RFL has two features, Readings on L2 Reading: Publications in Other Venues, which first
appeared in the October 2005 issue, and RFL Revisited: Past Articles Today, which started in the
October 2006 issue. Both features appear once a year in the October issue.
Readings on L2 Reading: Publications in Other Venues offers an archive of articles published in

other venues during the previous year and will serve as a valuable tool to readers of RFL.
Articles may treat any topic within the scope of RFL and second language reading. Articles are
organized by topic. This feature includes titles of the articles as well as brief summaries. Two
additional sections include a list of books, volumes, and dissertations that treat second language
reading. For more information, please contact the editor for this feature, Cindy Brantmeier, an
Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics and Spanish, Washington University in St. Louis.
RFL readers are requested to send to Dr. Brantmeier titles of appropriate articles. Please include
all relevant information such as author(s), journal, date of publication, and, if possible, a brief
summary. Please send to cbrantme@wustl.edu
RFL Revisited: Past Articles Today brings past RFL articles and reprises them in current issues.
In order to find articles that still attract attention, we look at the number of hits that previous
articles receive. When we have identified an article, we ask the original author to comment on
the article as well as to have others comment on it.
Submission Guidelines
Please list the names, institutions, e-mail addresses, and if applicable, World Wide Web
addresses (URLs), of all authors. Also include a brief biographical statement (maximum 50
words, in sentence format) for each author. (This information will be removed when the articles
are distributed for blind review.) All submissions may be submitted in the following formats: (a)
HTML files, (b) Microsoft Word documents, (c) RTF documents, (d) ASCII text. If a different
format is required in order to better handle foreign language fonts, please consult with the editors.
Submissions can be transmitted in either of the following ways:
1. By electronic mail: Send the main document and any accompanying files (images, etc.) to
readfl@hawaii.edu
2. By mail: Send the material on a disk to the following address:
RFL
NFLRC
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
1859 East-West Road, #106
Honolulu, HI 96822
USA
Please check the General Publication Policies below for additional guidelines.

General Publication Policies
The following policies apply to all articles, reviews, and commentaries:
1. All submissions must conform to the requirements of the Publication Manual of the American
Psychological Association (5th edition). Authors are responsible for the accuracy of references
and citations, which must be in APA format. Manuscripts may be rejected if they do not meet
APA requirements.
2. Manuscripts that have already been published elsewhere or are being considered for
publication elsewhere are not eligible to be considered for publication in RFL. It is the
responsibility of the author to inform the editor of the existence of any similar work that is
already published or under consideration for publication elsewhere.
3. Authors of accepted manuscripts will assign to RFL the permanent right to electronically
distribute the article.
4. The editors of RFL reserve the right to make editorial changes in any manuscript accepted for
publication for the sake of style or clarity. Authors will be consulted only if the changes are
substantial.
5. Articles are copyrighted by their respective authors, but if published after electronic
appearance, RFL will be acknowledged as the initial locus of publication.
6. The views expressed in RFL do not necessarily represent the views of the National Foreign
Language Resource Center, the University of Hawai‘i College of Language, Linguistics, and
Literature, or the University of Hawai‘i Department of Second Language Studies.
7. RFL expects authors to adhere to ethical standards for research involving human subjects. All
manuscripts submitted for consideration must meet the human subjects review established by
your institution.
RFL Guidelines for Reporting on Research
Research should generally include the following sections:
An Abstract
Five to seven keywords for index and search purposes
An Introduction:
1. stating the research issue to be investigated

2. presenting the underlying theoretical framework discussing how the research fits with
previous research

3. presenting a description of the methodological tradition in which the study was conducted for
qualitative research
4. defining the variables
5. stating the research hypotheses
A Method section:
1. describing the participants or subjects and research site

2. presenting a detailed description of data collection and analysis procedures
3. describing the apparatus or materials used
4. explaining the procedures and summarizing the steps employed in the research
A Results section:
1. presenting graphs and tables that help to explain the results

2. for quantitative research, presenting descriptive and inferential statistics used to
analyze the data, including the following: (a) the reliability of the instruments used, (b)
the statistic used, (c) statistical significance and effect size indicators of the results
obtained, (d) how all statistical assumptions were met
3. for qualitative research, data should reflect prolonged engagement, persistent

observation, and triangulation, with “thick description”
A Discussion section:
1. presenting an evaluation and interpretation of the results

2. discussing alternative explanations when appropriate
3. causal inferences should be cautiously made, and not based solely on correlational
approaches
4. results of the study should not be overly interpreted or generalized
5. linking the results obtained in the study to original hypotheses
6. presenting the implications and any limitations of the study
A Conclusion:
1. including a summary and general implications of the study

2. proposing suggestions for further research
References in APA format
Appendices of instrument(s) used

Contact RFL
Reading in a Foreign Language

National Foreign Language Resource Center
1859 East-West Road #106
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
Honolulu, HI 96822
USA
readfl@hawaii.edu

Volume 21, Number 1, April 2009
Issue With Special Theme on Reading in Languages Other Than English

Edited by Cindy Brantmeier and Keiko Koda
Editorial Board, About RFL, and Information for Contributors
From the Editors

pp. i–ii
From the Guest Editors

Cindy Brantmeier and Keiko Koda
pp. iii–iv
Special-Theme Articles
Russian orthography and learning to read
Eugenia Kerek and Pekka Niemi
pp. 1–21
Early reading strategies in Irish and English: Evidence from error types
Christine E. Parsons and Fiona Lyddy
pp. 22–36
Articles
Chinese senior high school EFL students’ metacognitive awareness and reading-strategy use
Lawrence Jun Zhang and Aijiao Wu
pp. 37–59
The effects of cultural familiarity on reading comprehension

İsmail Hakkı Erten and Salim Razı
pp. 60–77
Reviews
English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom (2nd ed.)
Barbara M. Birch
reviewed by Handoyo Puji Widodo and Zhiling Wu
pp. 78–82
Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power
Cynthia Lewis, Patricia E. Enciso, and Elizabeth Birr Moje (Eds.)
reviewed by Michael Thomas Witten
pp. 83–87
Teaching Reading to English Language Learners: A Reflective Guide

Thomas S. C. Farrell
reviewed by Alex Poole
pp. 88–92
External Reviewers
Elizabeth Bernhardt, James Dean Brown, Heidi Byrnes, Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli, Carol A.
Chapelle, Nobuko Chikamatsu-Chandler, Pierre Cormier, Carol A. Fraser, Greta Gorsuch, Peter Yongqi
Gu, Megumi Hamada, Joann Hammadou-Sullivan, Majid Hayati, Margot Haynes, Yao Hill, Claire Ikumi
Hitosugi, Tsung-Yuan Hsiao, Jan H. Hulstijn, Alireza Jalilifar, Joy Janzen, Xiangying Jiang, Jean
Kirschenmann, Ailing Kong, Katsunori Kotani, Soo-Ok Kweon, Jill M. Leafstedt, Jeong-Won Lee,
Michael Leeser, Jun Liu, John Macalister, Marianne, Beniko Mason, Kouider Mokhtari, Yoshiko Mori,
Aek Phakiti, Leslie Reese, Thomas Robb, Steve Ross, Michael Rost, Robert Rueda, Françoise Salager-
Meyer, Paul Stapleton, JoAnn Hammadou Sullivan, Etsuo Taguchi, Atsuko Takase, Stuart Webb, Rose-
Marie Weber, Junko Yamashita, Lawrence Jun Zhang
Copy Editors
Amy Goodman-Bide, Yue Guo, HeeJin Kim, Jake Kletzien, Elizabeth Lavolette, Wenpei Long, Treela
McKamey, Mar Galindo Merino, Samantha NG, Kyae-Sung Park, Leslie Reynolds, Bal Krishna Sharma,
Bong-Gi Sohn, Sakol Suethanapornkul, Aya Takeda, Jae Rim Yoon

Reading in a Foreign Language April 2009, Volume 21, No. 1
ISSN 1539-0578 pp. i–ii
From the Editors
This issue of Reading in a Foreign Language marks the start of its 8th year as a free scholarly
online journal at the University of Hawai‘i. We are able to maintain the journal at no cost to
subscribers, thanks to the support of the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC),
the University of Hawai‘i College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature, and the University
of Hawai‘i Department of Second Language Studies. Their continued funding is deeply
appreciated.
This issue contains two special-theme articles edited by Cindy Brantmeier and Keiko Koda on
reading in languages other than English. This is a topic we hope to pursue more in the future, and
we encourage any researchers in this area to keep us in mind. Also with this issue we have made
a change in the journal’s format. We have changed to use of pdf formatted articles alone rather
than including articles in html format as well. This change simplifies the formatting work that
was previously required, and makes the articles a bit less subject to plagiaristic abuse. We hope
this change does not inconvenience any of our readers.
With this change in format, there is also a change in the RFL staff. Jun Nomura, who has been
the RFL Web Production Editor since the October 2006 issue, has finished his doctoral studies at
the University of Hawai‘i, and has resigned. We wish to thank Jun for his outstanding work with
the journal and wish him well in his future endeavors. Zhijun (David) Wen continues as the
Assistant Editor and, in addition, will also serve as the Web Production Editor.
There has also been a change on the Editorial Board. Françoise Salager-Meyer has resigned as
her major interests no longer include reading. We would like to thank her for her work with the
journal.
As usual, we request that readers of RFL become subscribers. All subscribers have the option of
being notified through e-mail as soon as each new issue is released. We ask you to subscribe
because it will assist us in continuing to obtain institutional support for the journal, keeping it
free of charge. We keep all subscriber information confidential. So, please fill out the
brief subscription form for Reading in a Foreign Language.
We would like to acknowledge and thank the following external reviewers who have provided
valuable comments on submitted manuscripts through March 2009:
James Dean Brown, Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli, Carol A. Chapelle, Carol A. Fraser, Greta
Gorsuch, Peter Yongqi Gu, Joann Hammadou-Sullivan, Majid Hayati, Yao Hill, Claire Ikumi
Hitosugi, Tsung-Yuan Hsiao, Alireza Jalilifar, Joy Janzen, Xiangying Jiang, Jean Kirschenmann,
Ailing Kong, Katsunori Kotani, Soo-Ok Kweon, Jill M. Leafstedt, Jeong-Won Lee, Michael
Leeser, Jun Liu, John Macalister, Marianne, Beniko Mason, Kouider Mokhtari, Aek Phakiti,
http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl
From the Editors ii
Thomas Robb, Steve Ross, Michael Rost, Françoise Salager-Meyer, Paul Stapleton, Etsuo
Taguchi, Atsuko Takase, Stuart Webb, Junko Yamashita, and Lawrence Jun Zhang.
We would also like to thank the following copy editors:
Amy Goodman-Bide, Yue Guo, HeeJin Kim, Jake Kletzien, Elizabeth Lavolette, Wenpei Long,
Treela McKamey, Mar Galindo Merino, Samantha NG, Kyae-Sung Park, Leslie Reynolds, Bal
Krishna Sharma, Bong-Gi Sohn, Sakol Suethanapornkul, Aya Takeda, and Jae Rim Yoon.
We would like to have your feedback to the articles; please feel free to contact us with your
reactions, comments, and suggestions.
In this issue
Special-Theme Articles
Eugenia Kerek and Pekka Niemi explore how Russian orthography influences the acquisition of
reading skills in Russian.
Christine E. Parsons and Fiona Lyddy examine the reading strategies used by children when
reading Irish.
Articles
Lawrence Jun Zhang and Aijiao Wu assess metacognitive awareness and reading-strategy use of
Chinese senior high school EFL students.
İsmail Hakkı Erten and Salim Razı present research into the effects of cultural familiarity on
reading comprehension.
Reviews
Handoyo Puji Widodo and Zhiling Wu review English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom
(2nd ed.) by Barbara M. Birch.
Michael Thomas Witten reviews Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity,

Agency, and Power edited by Cynthia Lewis, Patricia E. Enciso, and Elizabeth Birr Moje.
Alex Poole reviews Teaching Reading to English Language Learners: A Reflective Guide by
Thomas S. C. Farrell.
Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

ISSN 1539-0578 pp. iii–iv
From the Guest Editors

Cindy Brantmeier
Washington University in St. Louis
United States
Keiko Koda
Carnegie Mellon University
United States
We are happy to edit a volume that focuses on second-language reading development in

languages other than English. The increasing emphasis on reading across all languages and all
levels of instruction in the United States has generated a demand for more theory- and data-
driven evidence to support applications in the classroom.
The topic is timely because interest in cross-linguistic variations in language learning and
processing is escalating sharply. Empirical investigations generally support the likelihood that
qualitatively different processing skills evolve through experiential exposure to linguistic input
in diverse languages. In the second-language reading literature, however, little information is
available about such variations. We thus know little about how second-language learners cope
with different demands and requirements in learning to read in a new language particularly when
their two languages are typologically different.
Further, a growing number of school-age children in the United States and other industrialized
nations struggle in learning to read in their second language without benefits of sufficient
proficiency in that language. Given consistently high correlations between reading ability in first
and second languages, prior literacy experience in the first language presumably provides
substantial facilitation in learning to read in a new language. Systematic investigations of cross-
linguistic relationships in reading sub-skills should yield significant insights into literacy
development in a second language.
It is important to note, moreover, that major claims in the current second-language reading
literature have been based on data obtained almost exclusively from learners of English as a
second language. Thus, scant attention has been given to learners of other languages. As noted
above, the requisites for learning to read vary across languages. There is no doubt that we need
more research-based information on literacy acquisition in diverse languages other that English.
In view of the research paucity, this volume represents a much-needed addition to the literature.
In this special-theme issue, Eugenia Kerek and Pekka Niemi detail the unique structure of
Russian orthography in order to examine how it may affect the organization and acquisition of
reading skills in Russian. They offer a detailed review of phonemic–graphemic correspondences
From the Guest Editors iv
in order to highlight the difficulties beginning readers and writers may face. In the article they
also study insights and viewpoints that are essential to present-day research and theory on
reading. Christine E. Parsons and Fiona Lyddy provide an analysis of oral reading errors in order
to examine reading strategies utilized by children studying English and Irish in different schools
in Ireland. They specifically examine strategies the children use when they are faced with
unfamiliar words. The detailed description of English and Irish orthographies is fundamental to
the analysis, and the authors skillfully discuss findings in light of specific orthographic variations.
Overall findings highlight the different strategies employed by children learning to read in
English and Irish.
We would like to thank our long list of reviewers who made this special issue possible: Elizabeth
Bernhardt, Heidi Byrnes, Nobuko Chikamatsu-Chandler, Pierre Cormier, Megumi Hamada,
Margot Haynes, Jan H. Hulstijn, Yoshiko Mori, Leslie Reese, Robert Rueda, JoAnn Hammadou
Sullivan, and Rose-Marie Weber. Their invaluable and insightful comments on the many
submitted manuscripts will serve as a catalyst for more research on this topic. The reviewer’s
comments and suggestions were extremely valuable in the quality and final outcome of this
special volume. We want to thank Richard Day and Thom Hudson for the invitation to edit this
volume, and we hold enormous gratitude for the assistant editor of RFL, Zhijun (David) Wen, for
his hard work and dedication.

ISSN 1539-0578 pp. 1–21
Russian orthography and learning to read

Eugenia Kerek and Pekka Niemi
University of Turku
Finland
Abstract
The unique structure of Russian orthography may influence the organization and
acquisition of reading skills in Russian. The present review examines phonemic-
graphemic correspondences in Russian orthography and discusses its grain-size units and
possible difficulties for beginning readers and writers. Russian orthography is governed
by a hierarchical, relatively regular 3-tier system of rules, complicated by numerous
exceptions. Many theorists find that the key to this regularised complexity lies in Russian
morphology. This review presents the perspectives of prominent Russian linguists on
what linguistic units Russian orthography represents, and it evaluates and analyses their
relevance for contemporary reading research.
Keywords: reading acquisition, Russian, grapheme-to-phoneme regularity, grain-size unit
The bulk of reading research has been conducted on the English language. However,
understanding is growing that theoretical models of reading and reading acquisition cannot be
based on properties of only one language, even the most commonly used one (for a detailed
review, see Share, 2008). Cross-linguistic comparisons have become popular (Bruck, Genesee, &
Caravolas, 1997; Cossu, Shankweiler, Liberman, Katz, & Tola, 1988; Wimmer & Goswami,
1994), and in multilingual communities, several studies have investigated bilinguals’ reading
strategies in diverse language combinations (Comeau, Cormier, Grandmaison, & Lacroix, 1999;
Durgunoglu, 1997; Wade-Wooley & Geva, 1999). Linguistic diversity serves as a natural
laboratory for identifying the language-specific properties of the reading process and its core
components common to all languages and orthographies.
Reading instruction in shallow orthographies usually relies on basic phoneme-grapheme

correspondences, and the acquisition of decoding skills in these orthographies is completed
within fairly short periods of time. Deeper orthographies constitute more complexly organised
systems, the mastery of which demands more time and effort (Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003).
Constraints placed by the degree of regularity in phoneme-grapheme correspondences influence
processing strategies in different orthographies, as has recently been described by the
psycholinguistic grain-size theory (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005, 2006). This theoretical framework
suggests that learning to read in regular orthographies requires reliance on “small”
psycholinguistic grain-size units, whereas the reduced reliability of small grain-size units in more
irregular orthographies may encourage beginning readers to develop multiple grain-size reading
Kerek & Niemi: Russian orthography and learning to read 2
units. Consequently, reading acquisition in irregular orthographies demands more time and
greater effort to develop several recoding strategies and a high degree of flexibility in reliance on
grain units of varying sizes. The inventory of such units is different for specific orthographies
and is the result of the interplay between the orthography’s inherent structural features, its
correspondences with the phonology in question, and the dominant methods of reading
instruction, which are in their turn often motivated by the nature of the orthography.
A detailed explanation of how orthographic complexity may slow down reading acquisition was
presented by Frost (1998). Frost’s strong phonological model suggests that during the initial
phase of word recognition, a fast prelexical computation occurs, when letters or letter clusters are
converted into phonemes or syllables. This procedure results in underspecified phonological
representations, based on unambiguous letters. Frost suggested that the phonological code used
for lexical access is more detailed in shallow orthographies and relatively impoverished in deep
ones. A reader of deeper orthographies must develop grain units of the optimal size for fast
conversion into preliminary phonological representations. A beginning reader then starts out with
phonological recoding of single letters into phonemes and, as the process of reading acquisition
continues, learns to convert larger units of letters into phonemic clusters. According to Frost, a
skilled reader is defined by the speed of the assembly process, the size of the computed units,
and the efficiency of lexical access using underspecified phonological information.
Analyses of specific features of orthographies may be used to predict grain-size units used in
reading. For example, based on findings from Danish, an orthography with multiple complexities,
Elbro (2006) presented a reading acquisition model based on the principle of economy where the
most reliable grapheme-phoneme correspondences are learned first, and more complex and less
productive associations are learned later. Elbro suggested that all deviations from the alphabetic
principle, even those linked to predictable pronunciations, have a disruptive effect on beginning
reading. He suggested the following sequence of literacy acquisition in Danish: (a) learning of
single letter-single sound correspondences, (b) learning of letter-sound patterns with conditional
pronunciations, (c) learning of spelling based on morphemic orthographic knowledge, and (d)
learning of word-specific orthographic patterns. According to Elbro, conditional pronunciations
are learned primarily in the smallest possible units (vowel-consonant combinations) rather than
inside bigger units (rimes). Morphemic and word-specific pronunciations take a long time to
learn, even though Elbro allows for the possibility that some high-frequency morphemes or
words may be recognised as whole patterns.
Russian is one of the world’s most widely used languages, one of the six official languages of the
United Nations. However, despite the current interest in reading strategies promoted by different
orthographies, the number of publications based on Russian data is strikingly small. The
attention of Russian linguists and psychologists has traditionally been directed at the difficulty of
spelling in Russian, and not reading, which was considered a relatively easy skill to acquire
(Inshakova, 2004). While theories dealing with the structure of Russian writing and the methods
of teaching it at school have been a focal point of discussions inside the Russian linguistic and
pedagogical research community, difficulties in reading acquisition for a long time remained the
domain of speech therapy and special education. Despite considerable effort in studying
developmental dyslexia in Russian (Kornev, 1997; Lalayeva & Venediktova, 2001), little is
known about the strategies a beginning Russian reader relies on.

The scarcity of research is especially unfortunate because Russian phonology and orthography
possess a number of unique features, making Russian an interesting test case for current theories
of word recognition and reading acquisition. Russian has a rather elegant orthographic system:
on the one hand, quite complex and hierarchical, and on the other hand, organised around a
dominant principle and therefore, sufficiently regular and predictable, even though the number of
exceptions is high. This combination of complexity and regularity is what makes Russian
orthography interesting for comparative reading research. The present review aims to contribute
to this research by undertaking an in-depth analysis of Russian phonological and orthographic
structure and introducing the English-speaking reader to works by Russian scholars on this
subject. A detailed description of Russian orthography and its possible difficulties for beginning
readers have been presented in English by Grigorenko (2003, 2006). A short but informative
article by Liberman (1980) is devoted to the same topic. The difference between the present
review and previous similar accounts is that it puts the description of the special features of
Russian orthography into the context of existing theories about the structural organization of this
complex system and about reading acquisition in different types of orthographies. A discussion
of the implications of the special features of Russian orthography for defining the dominant
strategies used by beginning and skilled readers in Russian is the main goal of the present review.
Major Features of Russian Morphology and Phonology
Unlike major European languages, where grammatical meanings are often expressed analytically,
that is, by grammatical constructions rather than morphology, Russian is a synthetic language
with a vast variety of affixes and endings. In contrast to other morphologically rich languages,
like Finnish or Hungarian, where morphemes are glued to each other, morphemic fusion is a
widespread phenomenon in Russian. Morphemic and syllabic boundaries often do not coincide,
and analyzing the morphological structure of a Russian word may be a complicated task. A word
in Russian may have several prefixes, suffixes, and an ending, for example,
пред|на|знач|ен|н|ый (“pred|na|znach|en|nyj,” having the purpose of). 1
The Russian phonological system contains 42 phonemes (differences of opinion concerning the
phonemic inventory of Russian are outside the scope of this article, but see Bondarko, 1998).
The syllabic structure of Russian allows closed syllables and consonant clusters in both the onset
and coda positions. A consonant cluster in Russian may contain up to four consonants, for
example, встреча (“vstrecha,” meeting), and each grapheme in such clusters usually
corresponds to a separate phoneme (but see exceptions in Table 1).
Languages with a synthetic type of grammar often have phonological systems based on
paradigmatic connections. As a result of the modifications phonemes undergo in speech, Russian
phonology is characterised by a vast variety of positional vowel and consonant alternations.
These paradigmatic relations between phonemes determine the system of phoneme-grapheme
relations in Russian.
In Russian orthography, stress is marked only in dictionaries and books for beginning readers or
nonnative learners of Russian, while skilled readers are expected to assign stress on the basis of

their linguistic competence. However, stress constitutes a central feature of the phonetic structure
of a Russian word, and stress assignment is a vital factor in reconstructing the holistic shape of a
Russian word. Erroneous stress assignment hampers comprehension or may even change word
meaning, for example, мук’а (“muk’a,” flour) and м’ука (“m’uka,” suffering).
Table 1. Some common consonant clusters and their pronunciations

Cluster Pronunciation Example
Clusters with unpronounced consonant
здн [зн] праздник (holiday)
рдц [рц] сердце (heart)
лнц [нц] солнце (sun)
стн [сн] лестница (stairs)
вств [ств] чувство (feeling)
Other clusters
жч мужчина (man)
зч [щ’] извозчик (cabman)
сч счастье (happiness)
чт [шт] что (what)
чн [шн] конечно (of course)
тц [ц] вкратце (in brief)
дц двадцать (twenty)
тч лётчик (pilot, flyer)
дч [ч’] докладчик (reporter)
тся учится ((he) studies)
ться [цца] учиться (to study)
Stress in Russian is free (can fall on any syllable in a word) and mobile (can move to another
syllable). The mobility of Russian stress has a morphological motivation: it is often shifted in
word formation or inflexion, for example, город (“gorod,” city) and города (“goroda,” cities).
Due to its unpredictability, stress assignment in Russian demands a well-developed visual
anticipation ability, which is often problematic for beginning readers whose cognitive resources
are entirely focused on the task of sequential phonological recoding (see Rayner, 1986).
Stress in Russian is strongly centred. The stressed syllable is pronounced with much more
prominence than the remaining syllables. A Russian word is a complex unity of syllables with
varying degrees of vowel intensity and length, organised around the stressed syllable. Stressed
vowels increase in length and intensity, while unstressed ones undergo different types of
reduction depending on their positions relative to the stressed one. Especially affected are the
vowel phonemes o and e, which respectively sound like a and i when unstressed, for example,
cова (“sova,” owl, pronounced as “sava”), and река (“reka,” river, pronounced as “rika”).
Russian orthography does not represent vowel reduction in unstressed positions, which is one of
the sources of its numerous irregularities.
The Russian consonant system is much more complex than the vowel system (Bondarko, 1998),
but paradigmatic consonant alternations are more systematic than the vowel alternations. One of
the most fundamental characteristics of the Russian consonant system is the distinction between

soft (palatalised) and hard consonants. Sometimes the hardness-softness dichotomy is the only
meaning-distinguishing feature, for example, вес (“ves,” weight) and весь (“vesj,” whole), брат
(“brat,” brother), and брать (“bratj,” take). The most typical consonant alternations in Russian
are progressive assimilations of voiced or unvoiced obstruents (“d” in “vodka” is pronounced as
“t” because of the following “k”), and devoicing of voiced obstruents in word-final position, like
in German. As a result, Russian contains numerous homophones, and this is known to cause
difficulties for beginning writers, for example, кот (“kot,” cat) and код (“kod,” code).
Language-specific features of the Russian morphological and phonological systems, as described

above, influence the process of language acquisition (Ceytlin, 2000). Grigorenko (2006) pointed
out that the whole Russian phonological system is characterised by extraordinary fluidity, where
the quantity and quality of both vowel and consonant phonemes are highly dependent on their
positions. Bondarko (1998) suggested that high variability in the phonetic form of a Russian
word might require complex psycholinguistic mechanisms of speech perception and production.
The existence of strongly centred stress in Russian, where the stressed syllable gains prominence
at the expense of unstressed ones, results in the division of disyllabic and multisyllabic Russian
words into two perceptual parts, the prestressed-stressed, and the poststressed, where sounds are
sometimes totally blurred. The diminished distinctness of phonological representations of lexical
items in long-term memory may cause difficulties in the development of phonological awareness
and in reading acquisition (Elbro, Borstrøm, & Petersen, 1998; Elbro & Pallesen, 2002). This
idea is supported by the results of experiments with prereaders and beginning readers of Russian,
reported by Lepskaya (1987) and Bogomazov (2001), who showed that the indistinctness of the
poststressed parts of multisyllabic words in Russian delays the development of phonological
awareness for the phonemes used in those parts of the words.
Irregularities of Grapheme-phoneme Correspondences in Russian
Not all language-specific features of Russian morphology and phonology are reflected in writing.
As a result, the spelling of Russian words may be difficult for beginning readers and writers.
This part of the review classifies the irregularities of Russian orthography from the standpoint of
their predictability.
Theorists of Russian writing largely accept Baudouin de Courtenay’s (1963) division of the
Russian writing system into two broad levels: graphics and orthography. These terms, widely
used in the Russian scientific and pedagogical literature, may be confusing for Western
specialists. Instead of being used to denote a system of writing as a whole, in Russian, the term
orthography is reserved for describing cases where the choice of grapheme in writing is not clear
(weak positions). To make the choice, the writer must try to find a related word in which he or
she can identify the phoneme in question in a strong position. For vowels, the strong position, in
which the phonemic quality is at its best, is under stress; for consonants, the strong position is
before a vowel. The term alphabetic rules is used to describe one-to-one phoneme-grapheme
correspondences (Baudouin de Courtenay, 1963; Zinder, 1987). The combinatory possibilities of
encoding phonemes within syllables are determined by the rules of graphics.

Predictable Irregularities (I): Alphabetic Rules and Graphics
Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet of 33 letters, including 2 special markers, soft sign ь and hard
sign ъ, which have no phonemic values (see Table 2).
Table 2. The Russian alphabet

Letter Closest English letter Approximation of pronunciation in English
Аа a father
Бб b box
Вв v vest
Гг g get
Дд d do
Ее e yet
Ёё e yolk
Жж zh vision
Зз z zebra
Ии i yield
Йй i short “yi”
Кк k kinky
Лл l lip
Мм m mother
Нн n nice
Оо o song
Пп p put
Рр r rock
Сс s soup
Тт t top
Уу u book
Фф f fat
Хх kh home
Цц ts mats
Чч ch chicken
Шш sh shop
Щщ shch shch
Ъъ “ silent
Ыы i, y busy, bill
Ьь ‘ onion
Ээ e band
Юю iu new
Яя ia yuppy
Phoneme-grapheme correspondences are not always straightforward in Russian because many

letters in the Russian alphabet are not bound to representing only one phoneme each. Attention
must be paid to the so-called syllabic (Ivanova, 1966) or positional (Moiseev, 1987) principle of

Russian graphics. The essence of this is that phonemic values cannot be assigned to the
consonants and vowels in a syllable without evaluating either or both the left or right context of a
given grapheme. One of the most common examples is the representation of palatalised
consonant phonemes: 15 consonant letters out of the 21 each correspond to two phonemes,
where one letter signifies both hard and soft consonant phonemes. Russian has no diphthongs,
and vowel phonemes are not divided into long and short. Six vowel phonemes are represented in
writing by 10 letters (see Table 3). This includes 4 letters that each represent a combination of
the original phoneme with the phoneme y (as in yes) or with a preceding soft consonant. For this
purpose, the so-called combined graphemes (Kuzmina, 2005) or syllabemes (Pavlova, 2000) я, ё,
ю, е, and и are used (see Table 3).
Table 3. Russian vowel letters, corresponding phonemes, and English approximations

of their pronunciation
Russian vowel letter Phoneme English approximation
Аа A as in father
Ее y+е or after a soft consonant as in yes
Ёё y+o or after a soft consonant as in yoghurt
Ии Ee as in see
Оо O as in object
Уу Oo as in look
Ыы I as in bill
Ээ E as in get
Юю y+oo or after a soft consonant as in you
Яя y+a or after a soft consonant as in yard
In positions where a consonant is not followed by a vowel, for example, at the end of a word or
before another consonant, softness is indicated by the soft sign ь. The soft sign has no phonemic
value and is sometimes treated as part of a complex grapheme or a diacritic (Scherba, 1983;
Zinder, 1987). The pronunciation of the consonants, depending on their hardness or softness, is
illustrated in Table 4.
Table 4. Rules for reading hard-soft consonants

Consonants Hard (before а, о, у, ы, э, ъ) Soft (before е, ё, и, ю, я, ь)
б был (was) бил ((he) beat)
в высота (height) весна (spring)
г гусь (goose) деньги (money)
д дар (gift) дядя (uncle)
з роза (rose) зима (winter)
к конь (horse) кино (cinema)
л лук (onion) люк (hatch)
м мать (mother) мел (chalk)
н новый (new) небо (sky)
п папка (file) песня (song)
р рама (frame) говорю ((I) speak)
с сумка (bag) сестра (sister)
т там (there) тема (topic)
ф шкафы (wardrobes) физика (physics)
х холод (cold) стихи (verses)

The application of the syllabic principle in this case is very functional because it allows encoding
of the phonological opposition hardness-softness in a rational and economical way by using 4
extra vowel letters instead of 15 extra consonant letters. Some linguists see the relationship
between soft and hard consonants in Russian phonology as hierarchical, where the soft
consonants are the marked members of the opposition, and therefore, the vowel letters that do
not signal softness are not explicitly perceived as signalling hardness (Bondarko, 1981; Kuzmina,
1981). Hardness is seen as the default attribute of a consonant letter. However, others view the
use of а, у, о, э, ы, a consonant and the absence of the soft sign, or word-final position as
markers of the preceding consonant’s hardness (Skoblikova, 1974).
Another case of irregular phoneme-grapheme correspondence in Russian involves the soft-set

vowel letters in the opposite version of the syllabic principle, when a single letter stands for two
phonemes, the phoneme й and a vowel. This function is also contextual, and the reader has to
analyse the context in front of the soft-set letter because it is used when й is combined with a
vowel in word-initial position (e.g., юбка, “jubka,” skirt), after a vowel (e.g., моя, “moja,” my),
or after ь/ъ (e.g., бельё, “beljo,” linen). This irregularity is often difficult for beginning writers,
who tend to use the combination й + vowel instead of the syllabemes я, ё, ю, and е (Kuzmina,
2005).
These irregularities in Russian graphics have serious implications for the practice of reading
instruction. The written syllable in Russian is an inseparable unit of mutually dependent parts,
which according to Ivanova (1966), is a basic reading and writing unit. The consonant-vowel
(CV) segments inside different types of syllables are often used as the central reading unit by
primer authors. Determining whether the consonant should be palatalised is only possible by
looking at the next (vowel) letter, and therefore, approaches to reading CV syllables, especially
sound blending inside a syllable, is one of the central issues in the history of reading instruction
in Russia. Elkonin (1988) considered developing anticipatory orientation to the vowel the central
element of the reading process in Russian and suggested that initial reading instruction should
focus on the development of this orientation.
Previously, Russian primers separated palatalised and non-palatalised consonants, introducing in

the beginning only words that contained “hard” consonants. Today, consonant letters are
presented at once as signifying both the palatalised and non-palatalised phonemes. The
mechanism of decoding a CV syllable is considered to be the same for both types of consonant
phonemes; it demands analysing the context to the right of the consonant letter. Most modern
primers address the irregularities of Russian graphics by presenting letters in blocks to prepare
young learners for the application of the syllabic principle. Children are trained to detect a CV
syllable inside a word and read it as a unit, while other members of intrasyllabic consonant
clusters are added on to the blended CV unit (Goretsky, Kiriushkin, & Shanko, 1988). Kornev
(1997) suggested that syllables become the operative grain-size units in reading acquisition in
Russian after only 3–6 months of reading instruction, whereas letters remain the main grain-size
units in writing acquisition, at least during the 1st year of instruction.
To sum up, although Russian graphics can often represent one-to-one phoneme-grapheme
correspondences, they also contain numerous irregularities. Their rules are highly positional and

far from straightforward. At the same time, they are a sufficiently logical system with a high
degree of regularity and predictability.
Predictable Irregularities (II): Orthography
The complexity of phoneme-grapheme correspondences in Russian significantly increases when,

on top of the rules of Russian graphics, responsible for reflecting phonemes in their strong
positions, the rules of orthography are applied to the phonemes in weak positions and many
letters acquire phonemic values that are not defined by the rules of graphics. Rusakova and
Ceytlin (1999) found that in a standard Russian text, 70% of graphemes are determined by
graphic rules, and 30% by both graphic and orthographic rules.
Russian linguists’ decades-long heated debate on the underlying principle of Russian

orthography was aimed at deciding which linguistic unit is central for it, phoneme or morpheme.
This debate was prompted by differing definitions of what constitutes a phoneme. Phonemically
indefinite segments (weak positions) are interpreted in different ways by the Moscow and St.
Petersburg phonetic schools, which has a direct impact on their choices of unit of analysis for
Russian orthography. Linguists of the Moscow school (Avanesov, 1956; Panov, 1979;
Reformatskij, 1955) see positionally alternating phonemic values within the same morpheme as a
single unit consisting of a strong phoneme present in the strong position and other weak
members of the paradigm, which appear in the positions of neutralization (weak positions). This
phonemic row is, according to the Moscow school, reflected in writing through its strong-
position representative. While the Moscow school emphasised paradigmatic connections
between sounds, the St. Petersburg school adopted a linear approach. St. Petersburg linguists
(Bondarko, 1998; Ivanova, 1971; Scherba, 1983) do not accept the idea of a phoneme as a
complex of strong and weak phonemes and view cases of phonemic indistinctness in weak
positions as phonemic alternations. The prevailing mechanism of writing in Russian is supposed
to be morphological analogy, aiming at the visual unity of the morpheme.
Both theoretical approaches describe the same phenomenon with the help of different linguistic
units and levels of abstraction. The basic idea of the phonemic principle (Moscow school) is that
positional alternations of sounds belong to one and the same phoneme, always reproduced in
writing by the same letter, whereas the morphemic principle (St. Petersburg school) sees
different phonemes alternating within the same morpheme and represented by the same letter to
preserve morphological continuity.
Russian linguists disagree on whether cases where graphemes represent phonemes in weak
positions are part of regular phoneme-grapheme correspondences and can be seen as some kind
of secondary alphabetic values (Gvozdev, 1954; Ivanova, 1971; Osipov, 1970; Scherba, 1983;
Selezniova, 1981; Skoblikova, 1974). The primary source of these debates is the regularity of
Russian orthography’s deviations from transparency. Grigorenko (2003) described writing in
Russian as largely morphophonemic and noted a logical, regular structure underlying word
alterations that may seem irregular at the surface level. Ivanova (1966) wrote that writing in
Russian dissociates from pronunciation, but only at certain points such as morphemic boundaries
and the absolute end of the word for consonants and inside the morphemes for vowels.

Unpredictable Irregularities: The Traditional Principle
Russian orthography, like many others, is not based exclusively on one principle, but rather on a
combination of several. According to Liberman (1980, p. 54), “Russian spelling is phonemic to a
point, very morphological and largely traditional.” Russian linguists disagree on exactly how
many principles are at work. Most definitions take into account the regularity of the rules upon
which a principle is based (Selezniova, 2004; Zinder, 1987). Predictable irregularities are
verifiable; a phoneme in the weak position can be checked by finding a related word with a
different stress pattern where the same phoneme is in the strong position, for example, вода
(“vod’a,” water) and водка (“v’odka,” vodka). If a phoneme in the weak position cannot be
related to a phoneme in the strong position, the spelling of the word simply has to be memorised,
for example, собака (“sobaka,” dog), where the phonemic quality of o is blurred, and no other
word or word form has it in the strong position (under stress). Often, these are words of unclear
etymology or loan words from other languages. Sometimes the written form of such a word will
adequately represent its phonemes, and sometimes not. These spellings are often grouped
together as the traditional principle. Ivanova (1977) described the traditional principle as one
where phonemes in weak positions are represented by one of the phonologically possible letters.
Though the choice of a grapheme is arbitrary, the number of available graphemes is, in fact,
limited. Besides, some common consonant clusters in Russian have a pronunciation that
traditionally deviates from each consonant's respective representation in writing. Some examples
are presented in Table 1.
Words spelled according to the traditional principle are often problematic for beginning writers.
However, it is not clear whether the unpredictable nature of orthographic irregularities in the
spelling of these words affects their reading in any way.
Educational Practice
Varying definitions of the underlying principles of Russian orthography, even though these
definitions are not always stated explicitly, determine to a large extent the structure and the
choice of reading instruction materials in Russian schools. Several types of reading and writing
programs with supplementary materials, based on different principles and approaches to reading
acquisition, are available for use in Russian schools. Most programs are phonics-based, but they
differ in their presentation of irregularities of Russian orthography.
Traditionally, most of the reading and writing instruction programs used in Russian schools have
been based on the ideas of the St. Petersburg school. Reading instruction in Russia does not deal
explicitly with the grapheme-phoneme irregularities on the orthographic level after the basic
grapheme-phoneme correspondences and the rules of graphics have been learned. Instead, the
rules of Russian orthography are extensively covered during writing lessons and supplemented
by training in stress assignment, the blending of phonemes into syllables, morphological analysis,
and lexicology (the study of lexical meanings and derivational patterns of words).
Since the 1970s, reading and writing instruction programs of a new type have been created by
groups of researchers interested in the ideas of the Moscow school and the possibility of guiding

students in their discovery of the underlying phonological principles of Russian. Such programs
(Elkonin, Tsukerman, & Bugrimenko, 1995; Repkin, Levin, Timchenko, & Zhedek, 1994;
Soloveichik, 2008) draw the attention of students to positional changes in phonemes inside
words rather than to morphological connections between words. These programs are of an
experimental nature and aim at helping students to see the phonology and orthography of
Russian as complex but logically organised systems. The spelling exercise shown in Figure 1
demands that the learner make a choice between two possible letters based on the position of the
sound that they signify.
Figure 1. A spelling exercise from Soloveichik’s (2008) textbook K tainam nashego

jazyka [Towards the mysteries of our language].
According to Share (2008), the predominant emphasis on reading accuracy is the result of the
anglocentric focus in reading acquisition research. Goswami (2006) pointed out that for children
learning to read in most European languages, the main challenge is to achieve fluency rather than
accuracy (see also Wimmer & Mayringer, 2002). Reading instruction in Russian schools is
speed-focused and dominated by reading aloud from Grade 1; teachers traditionally measure
students’ success in reading acquisition twice a year by counting the number of words each child
can read per minute. Reading instruction in Russian schools focuses mainly on introducing
children to basic phoneme-grapheme correspondences and to blending sounds inside CV
syllables, whereby special attention is paid to vowels as the main actors in contextual effects
inside CV syllables (Kostromina & Nagayeva, 1999; Omorokova, 1997; Starzhinskaya, 1988).
Beginning readers in Russian schools are expected to reach the stage of accurate syllabic reading
by the end of the first grade. After a child has achieved the stage of syllabic reading, he or she
gets little help from the teacher in reaching complete fluency. At the same time, the demands
placed on the beginning readers’ fluency at school are quite high, often prompting parents to
prepare for the pressures of the school program by teaching children to read prior to school entry.
Recently, the educational standards have been changed to include not only the quantity of words
read per minute but also reading comprehension.

Learning to Read Russian: Possible Grain-Size Units
Share (2008) noted that any orthography in effect can be seen as an attempt to compromise
between providing beginners with an efficient self-teaching mechanism and at the same time
providing distinctive word- or morpheme-specific visual orthographic configurations needed for
automatised skilled word recognition. Orthographies differ in the emphasis they put on different
parts of this dual function. Grigorenko (2006, p. 319) wrote that the Russian language is “heaven
for experts and hell for novice writers and readers.” Indeed, many features of Russian
orthography, such as letter-sound patterns with conditional pronunciations, morphemic spellings,
and word-specific orthographic patterns, are the same as those described by Elbro (2006) as
disruptive for the process of reading acquisition in deeper orthographies.
According to the psycholinguistic grain-size theory (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005, 2006), beginning
readers in deeper orthographies develop multiple reading strategies to cope with the irregularities
presented by such writing systems. The structure of Russian orthography, which is at the same
time both sufficiently complex and quite consistent in its complexity, presupposes the existence
of several grain-size units. On the basis of our analysis of Russian orthography as a system and
of Russian linguists’ ideas about its internal structure, we discuss possible grain-size units for
reading in Russian and research questions, which in our opinion are relevant for international
reading research and could be explored using Russian-language material. Obviously, this
discussion is of a speculative nature, and the suggestions made must be verified by experimental
results.
As shown above, Russian linguists from different schools of thought hold conflicting views on
the nature of Russian orthography. The most disputed problem in the linguistic theory of Russian
orthography, whether its regularised complexities are motivated by morphological or by
phonological factors, has relevance for choosing possible grain-size units of reading in Russian.
If the description of Russian writing as phonemic-morphological (Selezniova, 1997) is accepted,
reading acquisition in Russian should logically at a certain point involve morphemes as grain-
size units. If, on the other hand, Russian readers rely on the type of phonemes suggested by the
Moscow school, which views the sounds in weak positions as positional variants of the original
phoneme in the strong position, the focus might shift from morphemes to Moscow-school type
phonemes (i.e., abstract phoneme-sized units, which can be read in different ways depending on
their positions in words). Decoding in this case proceeds in a relatively linear way as the reader
copes with cases of phonemic indistinctness (weak positions) without needing to access the
morpheme inside of which this phoneme is read. At the same time, different types of literacy-
related processes and tasks may require different types of grain-size units.
Bogomazov (2005) came up with a hypothesis, supported by experimental data, which can be
considered an elegant compromise between the conflicting views on the nature of Russian
orthography and the phonological units it encodes. Bogomazov suggested that Russian children
gradually develop a two-level phonological system, starting with phonemes of the St. Petersburg
school, which mainly serve the processes of speech perception (and reading), and then adding a
more abstract level of Moscow-school phonemes, which are used in speech production (and
writing). Bogomazov noted that the development of Moscow-school phonemes occurs primarily

inside the consonant system, responsible for expressing lexical meanings, while vowels mainly
serve to produce grammatical forms. If a morpheme is located in the prestressed part of the word,
as is often the case with morphemes carrying lexical meaning in Russian, the formation of
Moscow-school-type phonemes in this part of the word occurs more rapidly. In terms of reading
acquisition, the implication of this theory is that beginning readers of Russian rely on grapheme-
phoneme correspondences, whereas skilled readers often use morphemes as grain-size reading
units. Bogomazov noted that adult foreigners learning to read and write in Russian might in some
cases develop a two-level phonological system in reverse because they are primarily influenced
by the written variant of Russian, so they tend to pronounce Russian words the way they are
written, without applying the required phonetic modifications.
There is yet another candidate for the role of a larger grain-size unit in Russian. Besides basic
phonemic recoding, reading in Russian requires constant attention to the intrasyllabic structure
because the quality of the consonant phoneme depends on the following vowel letter. The CV
syllable in Russian orthography is an especially tightly cohesive unit, and most reading
instruction programs include special exercises aimed at promoting syllabic reading. While
positionality is a structural feature in Russian graphics, and the syllabic principle is entirely
based on syntagmatic relations, the morphological principle emphasises the vertical,
paradigmatic connections. How the skill of using and coordinating these two operational units is
acquired and developed has not been investigated experimentally. This dual task might require
considerable attentional resources and complicate the process of reading skill automatisation.
The processing costs of attending in parallel to different grain-size units (phoneme, syllable, and
morpheme) can be expected at different points of reading acquisition in Russian.
Still, some Russian linguists disagree with the traditional division of the Russian system of
writing into graphics and orthography. Kuzmina (1981) of the Moscow school argued that
writing in Russian does not presuppose consecutive stages where the rules of graphics are
applied first, and then the initial draft is corrected according to the rules of orthography. The
process has one stage, taking into account two types of conditions for the choice of grapheme:
phonological (graphic) and morphological (orthographic). Linguists of the St. Petersburg school
do not accept that the division between graphics and orthography presupposes dual coding.
Selezniova (1981) noted that a distinction should be made between the acquisition of rules,
which is indeed done in two stages, and their application, which is a unitary process. Kuzmina
(2005) studied beginning writers’ errors and concluded that spontaneous acquisition of rules of
graphics and orthography does not occur in a linear sequence. After the initial stage, when
children only use one-to-one phoneme-grapheme correspondences, graphic and orthographic
rules seem to be acquired in parallel. A presentation of all of the principles applicable to written
Russian can be found in Table 5.
Lexical stress is another important aspect of Russian phonology that might influence the
development of reading strategies in Russian. Stress patterns in Russian words vary greatly, and
stress assignment is vital for reconstructing the spoken form of the written word. In particular,
the place of stress determines the type of position (strong or weak) of the vowel phonemes in a
word. On the other hand, stress dependencies in multisyllabic words span over several syllables,
and therefore, the place of stress in a word cannot be determined by looking at a part. This is a
bit like the chicken-and-egg problem: you cannot read the word accurately unless you know the

stress pattern, but you cannot know the stress pattern unless you read the word. That is why in
Russian primers and other books for beginning readers, stress is marked by a special diacritic ( ́)
above the stressed vowel. However, because stress in Russian is often located far from a word’s
beginning, finding the stressed syllable is not effortless for beginning readers.
Table 5. The most important principles of the Russian writing system

Level Regularity Irregularity
Phonemica 1:1 phoneme-grapheme correspondences No
Syllabic Vowels or softness-hardness markers Exceptions: ж, ш, ч, щ, ц, й

determine the softness-hardness of the
preceding consonant; some letters are
syllabemes
Morphological- Preserves the unity of morphemes and Morphemes and phonemes in

phonemicb principle represents a phoneme in a weak position positions that have no other
verifiable counterparts
Traditional Words are spelled in a way that does not Item-based irregularity
(vocabulary words) follow any of the above principles
Note. aSt. Petersburg school phonemes or Moscow school phonemes in strong positions. bMoscow
school phonemes in weak positions for which there are counterparts in strong positions.
Skilled Reading in Russian: Possible Grain-Size Units
Ziegler and Goswami (2005) argued that reading development is a continuum stretching well
into adulthood, with skilled reading bearing developmental footprints of the constraints imposed
by the orthographic system. From this point of view, an analysis of language-specific features of
the Russian orthography may help in defining processing strategies that skilled readers in
Russian might use. According to the minimality principle postulated by Frost (1998), in word
recognition, skilled readers initially rely on minimal phonological representation, where prosodic
information and segments containing phonological ambiguity are not available prior to lexical
access and can be activated later. What kind of minimal representation, sufficient for lexical
access, can be produced by skilled readers without knowing the place of stress in a word in
Russian? Because knowing the place of stress is affected primarily by the reader’s knowledge of
the quality of vowel phonemes, their representation in the initial phase of word recognition
cannot be complete. At the same time, vowel letters in Russian are involved together with soft
and hard signs in contextual effects, signalling the softness-hardness of the preceding consonant.
Therefore, they cannot be completely absent from the initial phonological representation, unless
we suppose that information about consonant softness-hardness is not important at this stage. In
Russian linguistic theory, soft and hard consonants are considered to be separate phonemes;
consequently, some information about the vowel letter or the soft or hard sign following the
consonant is plausibly present in this preliminary phonological representation. This might be
very general, such as letters signalling softness (or hardness). Voicedness is one more
characteristic of consonant phonemes, which depends on the quality of the preceding or
following phoneme. The reader needs to know if the following phoneme is a vowel and if the

preceding or the following consonant is voiced or voiceless. This information should probably
also be present in the unspecified representation.
Initial representations for skilled readers in Russian can thus take the form of syllables or
morphemes with unspecified phonemic values for those consonant and vowel letters that do not
represent the phonemes in the spoken form of the word. These values can be assigned after
lexical access has occurred and information about lexical stress has become available. Skilled
readers in Russian, just like skilled writers, might then apply the Moscow type of phonemes
(phonemic rows) in the prelexical access stage and specify the phonemic values for
phonemically indistinct word segments at a later stage of reading recognition on the basis of the
information about strong and weak positions derive from stress assignment. This concerns
primarily the vowel phonemes, because, as shown above, the identity of the consonantal skeleton
of the word can be more or less defined already in the initial representations. Frost (1998)
described his own experiments in Hebrew and of his colleagues in English (Berent & Perfetti,
1995), which showed that initial unspecified representations at the prelexical access stage in
these languages have a consonantal basis, where the vowel information is supplied in the second
cycle of processing. The same might be true for skilled reading in Russian. In Russian,
consonants are more informative than vowels (Bogomazov, 2001; Silchenkova, 2002); for
example, vowels are the first to be omitted when words are shortened. However, the strong
degree of positionality inherent in Russian orthography makes extracting at least some
information about the vowel letters indispensable even for skilled readers.
Note that word recognition processes in silent reading and reading aloud are not identical (Frost,
1998; Share, 2008). In particular, while for silent reading, minimal preliminary phonological
information might suffice, reading aloud demands well-specified phonological representations.
Consequently, grain-size units for reading aloud and silent reading might also be different.
Reading aloud demands much more detailed representations for vowels and precise and well-
timed assignment of stress.
Conclusion
In the present review, the Russian writing system has been described as a complex yet
sufficiently consistent system that presents a beginning reader with several levels of complexity
and consistency to cope with. Other researchers who have written on the topic share this
viewpoint (Grigorenko, 2006; Liberman, 1980). In this article, the writing system has been
examined from the point of view of possible grain-size units involved in both beginning and
skilled reading in Russian. This approach has been prompted by recent suggestions of Ziegler
and Goswami (2005, 2006) that differences in orthographic systems result in differences in
reading strategies developed by beginning readers. The discussion of principles of writing in
Russian and the controversies related to their definitions highlight the possibility of multiple
grain-size units not only in writing, which is widely acknowledged, but also in reading.
A detailed analysis of the phonological and morphological structure of Russian words serves as a
basis for a prognosis of the possible complexities of learning to read in Russian. Such specific
traits of Russian phonology as differentiation between soft and hard consonants, which is

signalled in writing by the following letter, demand special attention and long-term strategic
training in blending syllable components by beginning readers. The fact that Russian
phonotactics allows complex onsets does not make this task any easier. Morphemic (phonemic,
according to the Moscow school) continuity in written Russian demands well-developed
morphological awareness. However, analyzing a Russian word into its constituent morphemes is
often difficult because of wide-spread morphemic fusion. The development of morphological
awareness is also hampered by suprasegmental features such as the extreme variability of
Russian stress patterns and the fact that distinctiveness in the pronunciation of different parts of
Russian words is dependent on their positions in relation to the stressed syllable. Phonetic
modifications in the quality of Russian consonants also prevent a Russian speaker from retaining
an image of a morpheme as a distinct perceptive unit.
In many ways the difficulties that beginning readers in Russian encounter might be similar to the
ones outlined for Danish learners by Elbro (2006), for example, letter-sound patterns with
conditional pronunciations (syllables), spellings based on morphemic orthographic knowledge,
and word-specific orthographic patterns (traditional spellings). Danish is one of the deeper
European orthographies, and its complexities slow down the process of reading acquisition, as
shown by Seymour, Aro, and Erskine (2003). However, the comparable degree of complexity in
Russian does not necessarily mean that it will bring about the same results as in Danish. The
reason for this optimism is the predictability of many irregularities in written Russian words.
Coping with complexities, of course, demands more training, but because many of them obey
certain rules, eventually mastering them could bring about a qualitative change in reading
strategies and an emergence of multiple grain-size units, which beginning readers learn to rely on.
These hypothetical suggestions should, of course, be verified experimentally.
Some topical research questions concerning reading acquisition in Russian are the following.
How does the high variability in the phonological and morphological structure of Russian lexical
items influence learning to read in this language? How do the irregularities of the Russian
writing system influence reading acquisition? How are reading accuracy and fluency in Russian
related to the complexities of Russian orthography? What is the developmental progression in
terms of grain-size units in reading aloud? How is the lack of congruency between syllables and
morphemes in the structure of Russian words resolved at different stages of reading acquisition?
Future studies could explore these issues.
An investigation of the process of reading in Russian should include lexical items of different
complexity levels, for example, the ones containing and not containing different types of
irregularities. A longitudinal study could reveal the dynamics of the development of reading
skills and the changes in the influence of the item complexity on the rate of progress in reading
acquisition.
The possible grain-size units in skilled reading in Russian, discussed above, might serve as a
basis for silent reading—the most common reading activity for advanced readers. Researchers
concerned with skilled reading might be interested in answering the following questions. What is
the prevailing mechanism of skilled reading aloud in Russian? Is it a process occurring in several
stages, involving the build-up of well-specified phonological representations on top of the initial
minimal ones? If so, what do these minimal phonological representations look like? Does skilled

reading involve dissecting syllables or morphemes as larger grain-size units? What are the
developmental footprints of the language-specific traits of Russian orthography in the reading
strategies of skilled readers of Russian? The answers to these complex questions could inform
reading instruction in Russian.
Finding out what grain-size units are operative at different stages of reading acquisition and for
different types of reading activity in Russian will help to develop effective instruction methods
for achieving reading accuracy and fluency and setting balanced reading proficiency norms for
Russian primary school students. Moreover, investigating the development of reading skills in
Russian will contribute to cross-linguistic reading research in answering questions about the
relationship between the regularity of an orthography and predictability of its complexities and
progress in reading acquisition.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by grant No. 53432 from the Research Council for Culture and
Society, Academy of Finland, to Pekka Niemi. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their
helpful comments and suggestions.
Note
1. In all examples from Russian, the word within quotation marks is not a phonetic transcription
of the actual pronunciation of the Russian word, but the representation of the word spelled with
Latin letters, unless specifically mentioned otherwise.
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About the Authors
Eugenia Kerek is a doctoral student at the University of Turku, Finland. She is a native Russian
speaker, and her PhD research deals with reading acquisition in Russian and preliteracy skills of
bilingually reared children.
Pekka Niemi is a professor of psychology at the University of Turku, Finland. His main research
interest is development of cognitive processes, particularly reading acquisition and difficulties
associated with it. Address for correspondence: Department of Psychology, University of Turku,
Turku, FIN-20014, Finland. E-mail: peknie@utu.fi

ISSN 1539-0578 pp. 22–36
Early reading strategies in Irish and English: Evidence from error types
Christine E. Parsons and Fiona Lyddy
National University of Ireland Maynooth
Ireland
Abstract
For the majority of people in Ireland, Irish is a second language acquired primarily
through the schooling system. This study examined the reading strategies children used in
response to English and Irish words (presented in isolation), through an analysis of their
oral reading errors. Children in their 4th year of schooling attending English-medium
schools, immersion schools, and Irish-medium schools in Irish-speaking (Gaeltacht)
regions participated. The English-medium school children scored significantly below the
other 3 groups on the Irish task; the Gaeltacht school children scored below the other 3
groups on the English task. Overall, the children made significantly more real-word
errors on the English task compared with the Irish task and significantly more nonword
errors on the Irish task compared with the English task. These findings suggest that
children learning to read in English and Irish may adopt different strategies when faced
with unfamiliar words from each language.
Keywords: reading, minority language, immersion education, Irish, orthography
This special-theme issue examines reading in languages other than English; this article considers
reading of Irish by children schooled through Irish or English. Notwithstanding the name of this
journal, Irish is not a foreign language for our sample. While Irish is constitutionally recognised
as the first official language of the Republic of Ireland, for the majority of the population, it is a
second language (L2) acquired primarily within the schooling system. Most children attend
English-medium schools and are taught Irish as a compulsory school subject. However, in recent
decades, the Irish-medium schooling sector has expanded rapidly, with an increase from 17
schools in 1972 to 135 schools in 2007 and with an enrolment of about 30,000 pupils. Children
attending Irish-medium schools generally come from English-speaking homes
(Ó Muircheartaigh & Hickey, in press). In addition to those attending Irish-medium schools
within English-speaking regions, slightly less than 10,000 children attend 143 schools within
designated Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) regions (MacDonnacha, Ní Chualáin, Ní Shéaghdha, & Ní
Mhainín, 2005). In both Irish-medium and Gaeltacht schools, Irish is the medium of instruction
for all subjects (with the exception of English as a school subject).
Irish reading instruction varies considerably across English-medium, Irish-medium, and

Gaeltacht schools. For English-medium schools, the Revised Primary School Curriculum
(National Council for Curriculum and Assessment [NCCA], 1999) recommends that formal
Parsons & Lyddy: Early reading strategies in Irish and English 23
reading in Irish should not commence before Second Class (i.e., the 4th year of schooling), by
which point children are expected to have mastered basic English reading and have attained
some oral Irish proficiency. The curriculum provides no explicit guidelines for Irish-medium or
Gaeltacht schools regarding the sequencing of English and Irish formal reading instruction.
Consequently, there is no consensus on best practice, and sequencing (i.e., the order in which
Irish and English reading instruction occurs) differs from school to school. Some Irish-medium
schools initially commence reading in Irish, others introduce English first, and a minority
simultaneously commence reading in both languages. While no figures are available as to the
order and timing of sequencing of formal reading in Gaeltacht schools, MacDonnacha et al.
(2005) noted that most schools begin formal reading in Irish and English before the end of the
2nd year of schooling.
The Gaeltacht regions of Ireland are primarily rural regions in the west of the country that are
largely Irish speaking. The highest concentration of first language (L1) Irish speakers can be
found within these regions (Reagan & Osbourne, 2002). Schools operating within these regions
are required to accommodate children with mixed Irish language ability (MacDonnacha et al.,
2005): Children whose L1 is Irish are typically mixed with L2 learners from English-speaking
homes. Furthermore, the number of children coming to school with high levels of Irish language
competency in Gaeltacht regions is declining (NCCA, 2007). As a result, Irish has declined as
the medium of instruction in a number of schools (Ó Murchú, 2001).
The English and Irish Orthographies
Children in the Republic of Ireland learn to read in both English and Irish at varying points in
their schooling. The English orthography is complex, with numerous inconsistencies in its
grapheme–phoneme correspondences and, consequently, many exception or irregular words,
such as have, shoe, or one (Spencer & Hanley, 2003). Standardisations of Irish spelling have
resulted in a relatively good correlation between writing and sound mappings (Ó Laoire, 1997),
although inconsistencies remain (see Ó Laoire, 2005). Irish orthography is not as deep as that of
English (Hickey, 2006, 2007); however, it is not a transparent language. The Irish alphabet
consists of 18 letters: 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and 13 consonants (b, c, d, f, g, h, l, m, n, p, r, s, t),
representing about 50 basic sounds. Vowels are either long or short, with a stroke (síneadh) over
a vowel indicating that it is long. Syllables may be open or closed. In general, stress is placed on
the first syllable of the word if no long vowel or diphthong occurs in any other syllable. The Irish
syllable structure permits consonant clusters in both syllable onsets and codas. A distinction is
made between consonants that are slender (caol) or broad (leathan) and indicated by surrounding
vowels (e.g., bád with a broad /d/, “boat,” and báid with a slender /d/, “boats”).
Irish shows some of the characteristic features of Celtic languages, including inflectional
morphology. Two main types of grammar-dependent initial mutations feature prominently in the
Irish orthography: lenition and eclipsis. Lenition alters the sound attributes of a consonant and in
writing places an h after an initial consonant; for example, the /b/ sound in bord (meaning
“table”) becomes /w/ or/v/ in bhord. Eclipsis adds a letter or letters to the start of the word and
changes the initial phoneme. For example, after the possessive my, bord (table) becomes mo
bhord (my table). With the possessive our, it reads mbord, where mb is pronounced /m/ in ár

mbord (our table). In Irish, while such changes modify the original phoneme, the eclipsed letter
is retained in the spelling. Morphological transparency is thereby evident, but phonological
transparency is lacking in such forms. The mb in mbord is pronounced /m/, with no remaining /b/
sound. Other Celtic languages (e.g., Welsh) overwrite the spelling, maintaining phonological
transparency.
Examining Children’s Reading Strategies
The word-reading strategies children adopt when reading different orthographies have been the
focus of much recent research. One way in which children’s early reading strategies have been
investigated is through the analysis of oral reading errors. The types of errors children make
when encountering an unfamiliar word can be informative regarding the word recognition
strategies adopted. For instance, reading errors that are phonologically similar to the target word
suggest that a grapheme–phoneme assembly strategy is used. That is, when grapheme–phoneme
assembly goes wrong, the probable result is a nonword (Ellis & Hooper, 2001). If children are
using a phonological recoding strategy, they are also more likely to attempt to read a word
(Hoxhallari, van Daal, & Ellis, 2004). Pronunciations that are phonologically dissimilar from the
target suggest the use of non-phonological strategies. According to Ellis and Hooper, when
lexical retrieval is erroneous or when partial phonetic cueing is used, the error type is likely to be
a word.
A number of studies have found that orthographies that differ in terms of their regularity elicit
different patterns of errors. Wimmer and Hummer (1990) demonstrated that children reading
German, a regular orthography, tended to make nonword reading errors; children reading English,
a more irregular orthography, tend to make whole-word errors (Seymour & Elder, 1986; Stuart &
Coltheart, 1988). In a cross-language study, Ellis and Hooper (2001) examined the error types
made by young readers of the orthographically regular Welsh language and the more irregular
English on frequency-matched tests in the two languages. Children were presented with single
words in order of decreasing frequency, and the errors made were categorised as nonwords, real-
word substitutions, or failures to read. The Welsh readers tended to produce more nonword
errors, while the English readers produced more real-word errors and omissions (i.e., failures to
read or non-attempts). On the basis of their findings, Ellis and Hooper suggested that the
regularity of an orthography can influence the type of reading strategy adopted. The Welsh
readers were more reliant on a grapheme–phoneme conversion strategy than the English readers.
The English readers, in contrast, relied to a greater extent on lexical retrieval through partial
visual analysis of the target words.
Hoxhallari et al. (2004) compared the reading performance of beginner readers of Albanian with
the Welsh and English readers from Ellis and Hooper’s (2001) study. The Albanian orthography
is fully consistent for both grapheme–phoneme and phoneme–grapheme mappings, and thus is
even more regular than Welsh. Like the Welsh readers, nonword reading errors predominated all
error types for the Albanian readers. In addition, the Albanian group produced fewer failure-to-
read errors than either the English or Welsh readers. Again, Hoxhallari et al. implicated the role
of the orthographic transparency of Albanian: The highly consistent orthography invites a
grapheme–phoneme assembly strategy, and children tend to attempt more items.

Spencer and Hanley (2003) examined the reading performance of children in Wales learning to
read in Welsh with that of children learning to read in English in their 1st year of schooling and
again 1 year later. At both time points, the Welsh readers made significantly more
phonologically based nonword errors, whereas real-word errors were more common for the
English readers. Similarly, Spencer and Hanley conducted an analysis of the error types made by
Welsh and English readers at three stages in their 1st year of formal reading instruction. Relative
to the Welsh readers, the English readers made a large number of failure-to-read errors. Across
the 2nd and 3rd time points, the English readers made significantly more real-word errors than the
Welsh readers, who tended to produce nonword errors. Spencer and Hanley suggested that the
disparity in error types for the two groups indicates different approaches to reading unfamiliar
words.
Children Learning to Read in Two Languages
Considering the reading strategies children adopt is further complicated when children are
learning to read in more than one language. In addition to the depth of the orthographies, an
influential factor is a child’s proficiency in the languages. Geva and Siegel (2000) examined the
reading development of L1 English speakers learning to read concurrently in their L1, English,
and their L2, Hebrew. Children from Grades 1 to 5 were tested on measures of word recognition
in the two languages. Even though Hebrew was their L2, the children demonstrated more
accurate word recognition in that language than in their L1, English. Orthography-specific
patterns of error were found. The children made significantly more real-word errors when
reading the English test items than when reading the Hebrew items, particularly at the younger
grades. The analysis of error categories for Hebrew word recognition indicated that the children
engaged in a linear left-to-right phonological decoding strategy. Geva and Siegel suggested that
the children were more likely to make real-word errors in English than Hebrew because it was
their L1. Geva and Siegel proposed that when an orthography is highly consistent, children may
develop their word-reading skills, even without adequate linguistic competence. They argue that
for a very regular L2, basic reading skills may be less contingent on language proficiency than
for a more irregular orthography.
To date, no systematic quantitative analysis of error patterns exhibited by children reading Irish
has been reported. Hickey (2005, 2007) provided some examples of the errors typically made by
children from English-medium schools in their 4th year of schooling commencing Irish reading.
The children in the lower half of the ability range were unsure of some of the most regular
grapheme–phoneme correspondences, such as the long vowel sound, and consequently,
encountered difficulty with some of the most frequent Irish words. The word sí (she) was
commonly read as sé /s’e:/ (he), and í (her) was commonly decoded as /e:/. Other typical errors
included reading tharraing (pulled) in place of tháining (came), the nonword trasid for tsráid
(street) and the English word fetch for féach (look). The latter error type reflects the influence of
the children’s L1, English, on Irish reading. Hickey (2007) suggested that the children were
engaging in only partial analysis of the Irish words and were over-reliant on initial or salient
letters.

The present study was designed to investigate the reading strategies children use when reading in
the Irish and English languages, through an analysis of their oral reading errors. Children
attending different school types in Ireland engage in different amounts of Irish reading. To
reflect the diversity of experience, a number of school types within one region of Ireland were
included: Irish-medium, Gaeltacht, and English-medium schools. Two Irish-medium schools
were included: one that commenced formal reading in Irish, and another that began with formal
reading in English. Children from the participating Gaeltacht school were primarily from Irish-
speaking backgrounds. Children from the other three types of schools began to acquire Irish,
their L2, only once they started to attend school. All of the children were in their 4th year of
schooling (Second Class within the Irish system) and had commenced formal reading in both
languages. The selected groups provide a comparison of English-speaking pupils who have
recently commenced Irish reading with bilingual or Irish-language proficient children who have
experienced Irish reading in the previous 2 years of schooling. Error types are predicted to vary
as a function of language, with the English language likely to be associated with more real-word
errors, and the Irish language associated with more nonword errors. Error types are also
predicted to vary as a function of reading skill. More proficient readers of Irish are expected to
make more nonword errors than other error types compared with less skilled Irish readers.
Method
Participants
The participants were drawn from four schools in County Galway. The region has the highest
number of primary school children attending Gaeltacht schools in Ireland (MacDonnacha et al.,
2005) and has a number of demographically comparable Irish-medium and English-medium
schools outside of the Gaeltacht regions. Galway is home to the strongest Irish-language area in
Ireland, with 22,377 Irish speakers in the Galway county Gaeltacht alone (76.8% of the total
population of the area) and a further 6,878 Irish speakers in the other Galway regions (Central
Statistics Office, 2007). The majority of the Irish speakers within the Galway county Gaeltacht
report daily use of the language (66.4%). Consequently, many children attending the Gaeltacht-
based schools in Galway experience good levels of Irish language support at home. This region
was therefore selected to examine reading performance across Irish-medium, Gaeltacht, and
English-medium schools.
The principals of 28 schools within the selected region were contacted, and 17 replied indicating
their willingness to participate in the study. From these 17 schools, 4 schools (2 Irish medium, 1
English medium, and 1 Gaeltacht) were selected for participation in this study, based on their
reading instruction practices and similarity in classroom size, sex ratio, and socio-economic
status. Two Irish-medium schools were selected: One began reading instruction in English
(English reading first, ERF), and another commenced reading instruction in Irish (Irish reading
first, IRF). Children in the ERF school were introduced to reading in English in Senior Infants
(2nd year of schooling) and Irish reading in the initial months of First Class (3rd year of
schooling). The policy of the IRF school was to introduce reading in Irish between the end of
Junior Infants (the 1st year of schooling) and the start of Senior Infants. The children were
introduced to English reading towards the end of Senior Infants. The policy of the Gaeltacht

school was to commence Irish reading between the end of Junior Infants and Senior Infants.
Children began reading in English between the end of Senior Infants and the initial months of
First Class. In the English-medium school, children were formally introduced to reading in
English in Senior Infants. Reading instruction in Irish commenced in Second Class, consistent
with the Revised Primary School Curriculum (NCCA, 1999). The sequencing of the reading
instruction across the school samples are summarised in Table 1. Across the four schools,
parental consent was received for 90 children to participate, 8 of whom did not participate due to
behavioral, academic, linguistic, or practical issues. The participants were 82 Second Class
pupils, 43 boys and 39 girls (18 in the ERF school, 21 in the IRF school, 18 in the Gaeltacht
school, and 25 in the English-medium school). The ages of the participants were between 7 and 9
years (M = 7.8 years, SD = 0.42).
Table 1. Sequencing of reading instruction across the school samples

School English reading Irish reading
rd
Irish-medium—English Senior Infants (2nd year of Early First Class (3 year of
reading first schooling) schooling)
Irish-medium—Irish End of Junior Infants/Early

End of Senior Infants
reading first Senior Infants
End of Senior Infants/Early End of Junior Infants/Early

Gaeltacht
First Class Senior Infants
English-medium Senior Infants Second Class
The majority of children attending the participating Gaeltacht school reported using the Irish
language at home. Only 3 came from English-dominant homes. Of the 18 children, 10 reported
speaking “more Irish than English” at home, 3 children reported sole use of Irish in the home,
and 2 children used Irish and English equally within the home. Of the 3 English-dominant
children, 1 spoke only English at home, and 2 spoke “more English than Irish.” As is the case in
the majority of Gaeltacht schools (see MacDonnacha et al., 2005), a number of children had
arrived at the school with very little English, others had varying levels of Irish and English
ability, and some children had no Irish at all. All of the children attending the Irish-medium and
English-medium schools came from English-speaking homes.
For Irish reading, a mixture of the available Irish textbooks was used, with instruction
emphasizing both reading aloud and independent reading. The teachers at the Irish- and English-
medium schools reported following a mixed method of instruction (phonics and whole-word
strategies) for English reading. Similar textbooks were used in all schools for English reading.
In summary, the four participating schools were all within one county in Ireland, were
administered by the same local educational authorities, followed similar curricula, and used
similar teaching methods.
Word Reading Tests
Task equivalence is a recurrent methodological issue in bilingual research (Geva & Wade-

Woolley, 2004; Koda, 1994). In a series of studies of reading acquisition in Wales, Hanley and
colleagues (e.g., Hanley, Masterson, Spencer, & Evans, 2004; Spencer & Hanley, 2003, 2004)
used translational equivalents for their English and Welsh word sets to ensure that words from
the two sets were of comparable familiarity. A similar approach was undertaken here. English
and Irish single word reading tasks were used that each included 50 words, presented singly in
large black font in lower case on a computer screen. The English words were between 2 and 11
letters long, with word frequencies of between 2 and 36,411 occurrences per million, with a
mean rating of 1,323 occurrences per million (SD = 5,256.54) using the Kucera-Francis (1967)
written frequency ratings. The English words were taken from a number of studies of emergent
literacy (e.g., Hanley et al., 2004; Masterson, Laxon, & Stuart, 1992; Patel, Snowling, & DeJong,
2004; Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003; Spencer & Hanley, 2004) and additional (more difficult)
items were selected using the Kucera-Francis ratings for written frequency. Because it was
considered important that the English and Irish words were of similar familiarity, the words in
the Irish set were translations of the English words. This method of matching items across
languages has been used in a number of recent studies in the Welsh–English context (e.g.,
Hanley et al., 2004; Spencer & Hanley, 2003, 2004). In the absence of established measures of
frequency and age of acquisition for Irish words, translational equivalents were considered the
most appropriate method for matching the English and Irish word sets in terms of familiarity.
The English and Irish word lists were also matched as much as was feasible for word length,
number of syllables, and number of phonemes. All of the English and Irish words were between
2 and 11 letters in length. There was no significant difference between the number of letters in
the words in the English (M = 4.88, SD = 2.01) and Irish sets (M = 4.86, SD = 2.07), t(49) = 0.17,
p = .87. The number of phonemes in the English word set ranged from two to eight, and in the
Irish set, from one to eight. Again, there were no significant differences in the number of
phonemes in the English set (M = 3.76, SD = 1.56) and the number of phonemes in the Irish set
(M = 3.78, SD = 1.45), t(49) = 0.14, p = .89. The English word set included 33 monosyllabic, 14
disyllabic, 2 trisyllabic, and 1 quadrasyllabic word. The Irish word list contained 33
monosyllabic, 14 disyllabic, and 3 trisyllabic words. No significant difference was found
between the number of syllables in the English (M = 1.42, SD = 6.7) and Irish word sets (M = 1.4,
SD = 6.1), t(49) = 0.44, p = .66. The participants were required to read up to 50 words in each
language. The order of the words on the Irish list was the same as the order of their translations
on the English list. The words were placed in order of increasing difficulty to ensure that the
youngest children were reasonably familiar with the initial words on the list.
Procedure
All of the children were tested in the language of their school, and each child was tested
individually at the back of the classroom. The order of the administration of the English and Irish
tasks was counterbalanced across participants. The word reading tasks were discontinued if a
child consecutively gave five incorrect responses. Self-corrections were marked as correct
responses. The children were encouraged to attempt to answer even if they were unsure and were
praised periodically. They were given a short break between the two language tests. The
maximum obtainable score for the word reading tasks was 50 for each language.
Scoring

The errors made by the children were recorded for both the English and Irish tasks and were
sorted using categories consistent with a number of previous studies (Ellis & Hooper, 2001;
Spencer & Hanley, 2003, 2004; Hoxhallari et al., 2004). The error categories were (a) null
response or failure-to-read, (b) whole-word substitutions, (c) attempts that resulted in nonword
responses, (d) Irish items read as English words, and (e) English items read as Irish words.
A real-word reading error was made when the child said a real word in the target language
instead of the target word. Real-word substitutions in the Irish language included reading glac
(accept) as glas (green) or seanathair (grandfather) as sneachta (snow). The real-word
substitutions in the English language included reading bull as ball or spear as spare. A nonword
reading error was made when a child said a nonword instead of the target word. Irish nonword
substitutions included responding with [sil] for síl or [tarb] for tarbh. For the English tasks,
nonword substitution responses included responding with [hig] for high or [hom] for home.
Examples of Irish items read as English included reading cé as see or cuid as could. The failure-
to-read category included failed attempts to blend (giving just letter sounds), non-responses, and
simply naming letters.
Results
The children from the four school groups made 604 errors in total on the English word reading
task and 1,477 errors on the Irish word reading task (see Table 2). Figure 1 summarises the
reading accuracy of the children from the four school types on the Irish and English tasks. There
was a significant interaction between the school type attended and the language of the test, F(3,
78) = 41.83, p < .01. The main effect of school type, F(3, 78) = 6, p < .01, and the main effect of
the language of the test, F(1, 78) = 211.24, p < .01, were also significant.
50
45
40
35
Mean Score
30
English
25
Irish
20
15
10
5
0
ERF IRF Gaeltacht English-Medium
School Type
Figure 1. The mean number of words read correctly by school type and language.
Follow-up comparisons using post-hoc Tukey tests indicated that for the English word reading

task, the accuracy scores of the children in the Gaeltacht sample were significantly lower than
those of the children in the other three groups (p < .01). There were no other significant
differences between the groups. For the Irish word reading task, the post-hoc tests differentiated
the English-medium sample from the remaining three school groups (p < .01). Again, the
remaining three groups performed similarly.
The error types made by children in each school group for the English and Irish tasks are
presented in Table 2. Overall, real-word errors predominated in response to the English word
targets (31.8%), while nonword errors were less common (24.5%). The opposite pattern was
evident for the Irish task: Nonword errors were more frequent (25%) than real-word errors
(8.3%). The number of failure-to-read errors was high for both the English task (43.7%) and the
Irish task (55%).
Table 2. The types of errors made by each school group for the English and Irish tasks
English task
Failure to
Real-word Nonword respond Total
School group
n % n % n %
ERF (N = 18) 29 25.89 12 10.71 71 63.39 112
IRF (N = 21) 41 39.42 32 30.77 31 29.80 104
Gaeltacht (N = 18) 73 28.85 55 21.15 132 50.77 260
English-medium (N = 25) 49 38.28 49 38.28 30 23.44 128
Mean (N = 82) 192 31.78 148 24.50 264 43.71 604
Irish task
Failure to English real-
School group Irish real-word Nonword respond word
Total
n % n % n % n %
ERF (N = 18) 15 4.80 53 17.09 224 72.26 18 5.80 310

IRF (N = 21) 18 8.91 75 37.13 77 38.12 32 15.84 202
Gaeltacht (N = 18) 38 12.34 61 19.81 172 55.84 37 12.01 308
English-medium (N = 25) 52 7.91 180 27.39 339 51.59 86 13.09 657
Mean (N = 82) 123 8.33 369 24.98 812 54.98 173 11.71 1,477
Note. ERF = English reading first; IRF = Irish reading first.
A three-way mixed ANOVA was performed to examine the relationships among school type,
language of test, and error type. The focus of the first analysis was on the three error types
common to the two language sets (nonword reading errors, real-word reading errors in the
correct language, and failure-to-read errors). A second analysis was then conducted including the
English word substitution errors, reported below. The dependent variable in each analysis was
the number of occurrences of each error type. There was a significant School Type × Language ×
Error Type interaction, F(6, 154) = 6.27, p < .01. The performance of the specific school groups
for each language is summarised in Table 2. For the English word reading task, the ERF-
schooled children made significantly more real-word errors (M = 1.61, SD = 1.24) than nonword

errors (M = 0.67, SD = 0.77), t(17) = 4.99, p < .01. Conversely, for the Irish task, the same
children made significantly more nonword errors (M = 2.94, SD = 1.83) than real-word errors
(M = 0.83, SD = 0.51), t(17) = 5.58, p < .01. For the IRF school group, the difference between
the number of nonword and real-word errors made on the English word reading task did not
reach significance, t(20) = 1.12, p = .27. For the Irish task, the IRF-schooled children generally
made more nonword reading errors (M = 3.57, SD = 2.5) than real-word reading errors (M =
0.86, SD = 1.35), t(20) = 4.26, p < .01. The error patterns for the Gaeltacht school group
followed the same general trend as the other school groups: Real-word errors were more
common than nonword errors on the English test, whereas nonword errors were more frequent
than real-word errors for the Irish test. However, these differences in error types did not reach
significance for the English task, t(17) = 1.62, p = .12, or the Irish task, t(17) = 1.89, p = .07, for
this group. Children from the English-medium school group made significantly more nonword
substitutions (M = 7.88, SD = 2.18) than real-word substitutions (M = 2.08, SD = 1.71) on the
Irish task, t(24) = 8.64, p < .01. There was no significant difference between the number of real-
word errors and nonword errors this group made on the English task, t(24) = 0.64, p = .49. The
interaction between school group and error type across the two languages is shown in Figure 2.
100 ERF
90 IRF
Percentage of Total Errors
80 Gaeltacht
70 English Medium
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Real-Word Nonword Real-Word Nonword
Errors Errors Errors Errors
English Task Irish Task
Figure 2. Mean percentage of real-word and nonword errors for the Irish and English tasks
across the four school groups.
The interaction between the language of the test and error type was significant, F(6, 154) = 7.45,
p < .01. Overall, the children made more real-word errors than nonword errors on the English
task, but more nonword errors than real-word errors on the Irish task. There was a significant
interaction between school type and test language, F(3, 78) = 40.57, p < .01. The children taught
through Irish made fewer errors on the Irish task on average than the English-medium schooled
children. There was a significant interaction between error type and school type, F(6, 154) = 7.45,
p < .01. Overall, the children from the English-medium school made more failure-to-read errors
than the other school groups. The main effects of test language, F(1, 78) = 156.03, p < .01, error
type, F(2, 77) = 78.41, p < .01, and school type, F(3, 78) = 5.65, p < .01, were all significant.

In the Irish task, the children made a number of English real-word substitutions. These errors
were grouped with the Irish whole-word reading errors to form a total-word errors category. A
three-way ANOVA was conducted to examine the relationships between school type attended,
language of the test, and error type. The Language × Error Type interaction, F(2, 77) = 36.3, p
< .01, the Language × Error Type × School Group interaction, F(2, 77) = 36.3, p < .01, the Error
Type × School interaction, F(6, 156) = 4.16, p < .01, and the Language × School Type
interaction, F(3, 78) = 37.22, p < .01, were all significant. In addition, the main effect of
language, F(1, 78) = 166.34, p < .01, and the main effect of error type, F(2, 77) = 39.24, p < .01,
were significant. Overall, the children made more nonword errors than total-word errors on the
Irish task, while children made more real-word errors than nonword errors on the English task.
Error Types in Irish Reading by Quartile Group
The individual variation in Irish word reading accuracy scores was considerable, even within
each class group. To disentangle the effect of reading proficiency from that of the orthography of
the Irish language, the sample was divided into four quartile groups based on their accuracy
scores on the Irish reading task. Group 4 was the top 25% (best readers); Group 3, the second
25%; Group 2, the third 25%; and Group 1, the fourth 25% (worst readers). Table 3 summarises
the error types and accuracy scores of each quartile group.
Table 3. Error types and accuracy scores (out of 50) for each quartile group for the Irish task
Mean accuracy Nonword Failure-to- Real-word English substitution
Group
score errors read errors errors errors
1 17.24 (4.99) 5.76 (2.68) 20.67 (6.38) 2.90 (1.79) 3.43 (1.63)
2 27.50 (3.35) 5.35 (3.07) 12.70 (4.16) 1.50 (1.43) 2.95 (2.14)
3 38.00 (2.22) 4.75 (2.31) 4.80 (2.63) 0.95 (0.89) 1.50 (1.43)
4 45.29 (2.92) 2.19 (1.60) 1.33 (1.35) 0.62 (0.87) 0.57 (0.60)
Note. Standard deviations are in parentheses.
A mixed ANOVA was conducted to examine the relationships between the error types on the
Irish task and the quartile groups. There was a significant interaction between quartile group and
error type, F(9, 185) = 15.74, p < .01. The main effect of error type, F(3, 76) = 145.24, p < .01,
and the main effect of quartile group, F(3, 78) = 250.85, p < .01, were both significant. Group 4,
the most proficient readers, scored above 84% on the Irish reading task. Contrasts indicated that
the children in this group made more nonword reading errors than real-word errors, F(1, 20) =
16.93, p < .01, or English word substitutions, F(1, 20) = 22.49, p < .01, or failures to read, F(1,
20) = 4.93, p < .05. When both English substitutions and Irish real-word errors are grouped
together to form a total-real-word error category, nonword errors still predominate for this group.
Contrasts again confirmed that the children made more nonword errors than total-real-word
errors, F(1, 20) = 20.36, p < .01, or failure-to-read errors, F(1, 20) = 4.93, p < .05.
The children in the lowest quartile group scored between 18 and 46% on the Irish task. The
children in this group made significantly more nonword reading errors than real-word reading
errors, F(1, 20) = 14.49, p < .01, or English word substitutions, F(1, 20) = 19.6, p < .01, and
significantly more failure-to-read errors than nonword errors, F(1, 20) = 71.78, p < .01. When

the English word substitutions and Irish real-word errors are grouped together, there is no
significant difference between the number of real-word errors and nonword errors, F(1, 20) =
0.37, p = .55. The children made significantly more failure-to-read errors than nonword errors,
F(1, 20) = 71.78, p < .01.
The Gaeltacht Children: Controlling for Home Language Variability
Three of the children from the Gaeltacht sample were from English-dominant homes. When
these children were excluded from the analyses, the mean scores of this group were similar on
the Irish task (M = 62.23, SD = 21.44, for the 15 children, compared to M = 68.4, SD = 24.33, for
the 18 children) and the English task (M = 68.4, SD = 24.33, for the 15 children, compared to M
= 71.2, SD = 23, for the 18 children. The pattern of error types was the same for the English and
Irish tasks as previously reported. The children made similar numbers of real-word errors and
nonword errors on the English task, t(14) = 2.13, p = .06, and similar numbers of real-word and
nonword errors on the Irish task, t(14) = 1.28, p = .22, as did the full Gaeltacht group.
Discussion
Generally, real-word errors were more common than nonword errors in response to the English
targets, consistent with previous studies (e.g., Ellis & Hooper, 2001; Spencer & Hanley, 2003,
2004). For the Irish items, conversely, nonword errors were more frequent than real-word errors.
This pattern remained when both English substitutions and Irish real-word errors were grouped
to form a whole-word error category. The trend towards nonword errors found for the Irish task
is comparable to that found for young readers of Hebrew (Geva & Siegel, 2000), Welsh (e.g.,
Ellis & Hooper, 2001; Spencer & Hanley, 2003, 2004) and German (Wimmer & Hummer, 1990).
The incidence of failure-to-respond errors was high for both languages across all school groups,
however, and the overall higher error rate for Irish words must also be considered.
Children from all four school groups made a number of English word substitutions in response to
the Irish items, reflecting interference from the English language. While the poorest readers
demonstrated the highest proportion of English word substitution errors, the best readers also
experienced some interference from English. This type of intrusion from the English language in
Irish reading is consistent with the error patterns described by Hickey (2007). No cross-language
errors were made in response to the English items. This finding may be related to the status of
the English language relative to the Irish language within the Republic of Ireland: English is far
more dominant. For children from English-speaking homes, exposure to Irish text is largely
limited to within the classroom. Even for those children from Gaeltacht homes, levels of Irish
literacy-related activities can be low. For instance, Hickey (1997) found that Gaeltacht parents of
preschoolers did not frequently read children’s books aloud to their children and engaged in low
levels of Irish reading in general. Further to this, Denvir (2003) suggested that Gaeltacht children,
when given a choice, will read in English, a finding that may be related to the dearth of
appropriate Irish reading materials. Children from all language backgrounds generally engage in
more English reading than Irish reading, and this may be reflected by the unidirectional cross-
language interference found here.

All groups in the current study made fewer real-word errors on the Irish task than on the English
task. Geva and Siegel (2000), in their study of bilingual readers, suggested that the children may
have been more inclined to make real-word errors on the English task because English was their
L1. Similarly, for three of our participating school groups, Irish is an L2. Children from the Irish-
medium and English-medium schools may have been more likely to make real-word errors on
the English test because it was their L1. These children have a smaller vocabulary in Irish than
English and consequently, have fewer words available to them for lexical retrieval strategies in
that language. The children generally performed more poorly on the Irish task than the English
task. While there were no significant differences between the mean Irish word reading scores of
the children attending the Irish-medium schools and those attending the Gaeltacht school, word
reading proficiency varied considerably within each school group. To disentangle the effects of
the orthography from those of reading proficiency, the error types of the best and worst readers
were examined. The best Irish readers (top 25%) in the current sample tended to make more
nonword reading errors than all other error types. Therefore, the most successful readers appear
to use a phonological decoding strategy to read unfamiliar Irish items. The more regular
orthography of Irish may support the successful sounding out of items. The poorest readers, on
the other hand, produced a similar number of real-word and nonword errors.
While the Gaeltacht school children made nonword errors more frequently than real-word errors
on the Irish task, this difference was not statistically significant. The children in this group may
have used both whole-word reading and grapheme–phoneme assembly strategies for Irish word
recognition. The children in this group were all living within an Irish-speaking community, and
all but one reported home use of the language (and only three children came from English-
dominant backgrounds). This group might have had a better Irish vocabulary than those children
attending the Irish-medium schools. However, previous studies have reported low levels of
literacy-oriented activities and typically low levels of Irish reading in Gaeltacht homes (see
Hickey, 1997). Despite their oral language proficiency, the children in this group may have had
less written Irish language experience, which may explain, to some extent, the mixed strategies
that they appear to have used.
In conclusion, the findings suggest that children learning to read in English and Irish may adopt
different reading strategies when faced with unfamiliar words from each language. Irish word
reading skill varied substantially, resulting in differences in the quantities of error types across
individual learners. While the best readers made few errors of any type, those that they did make
were primarily nonword errors. Based on the data from single word reading, the conclusion
drawn is that the best decoders of Irish use a phonological decoding strategy (which generates
nonword pronunciation errors). These “successful” readers have acquired the grapheme–
phoneme correspondences of Irish more readily than other readers, and their errors (when they
occur) suggest a phonological recoding strategy. Whether instructional practices that promote
using such a strategy would benefit beginning readers of Irish remains to be seen.
Acknowledgments
This paper is based on PhD research conducted by the first author and supervised by the second
author. The research was supported by funding from An Chomhairle um Oideachas Gaeltachta &

Gaelscolaíochta (COGG), the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences,
and a John and Pat Hume Scholarship from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. The
authors gratefully acknowledge this support and thank the school principals, parents, and
children involved in this study. The views expressed are the authors’ own and do not necessarily
reflect those of COGG.
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About the Authors
Christine Parsons recently completed her PhD at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
Her doctoral research examined the development of reading skills in the Irish and English
languages in children from different schooling and home language backgrounds.
Fiona Lyddy is a senior lecturer in Psychology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
Her research interests include word recognition and reading development in Irish and English.
Address for correspondence: Department of Psychology, National University of Ireland,
Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland. E-mail: fiona.lyddy@nuim.ie

ISSN 1539-0578 pp. 37–59
Chinese senior high school EFL students’ metacognitive awareness and

reading-strategy use
Lawrence Jun Zhang
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore
Aijiao Wu
Hainan Senior High School
China
Abstract
This paper reports findings from a study that assesses metacognitive awareness and
reading-strategy use of Chinese senior high school students who are learning English as a
foreign language (EFL). A total of 270 students responded to a 28-item survey of reading
strategies (SORS). The strategies were classified into 3 categories: global, problem-
solving, and support. The results showed that the students reported using the 3 categories
of strategies at a high-frequency level. Both the main effect for strategies and the main
effect for learners’ proficiency were significant. The high-proficiency group
outperformed the intermediate group and the low-proficiency group in 2 categories of
reading strategies: global and problem-solving; but no statistically significant difference
was found among the 3 proficiency groups in using support strategies. Pedagogical
implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the changing Chinese society.
Keywords: metacognitive awareness, EFL reading, reading strategies, Chinese EFL learners of
English
The importance of reading for second language (L2) acquisition has been widely acknowledged
(Day & Bamford, 1998, 2002; Grabe, 2004), and the use of reading strategies is regarded as
being conducive to successful reading comprehension despite the complex nature of the reading
process, which invokes both the L2 reader’s language ability and reading ability (Alderson, 1984;
see also Bernhardt, 2005; Hudson, 2007). In reviewing over 3 decades of L2 reading research,
Bernhardt (2005) maintained that necessary components of a contemporary L2 reading model
should consider readers’ first language (L1) literacy levels, L2 knowledge levels and the
interactions of vocabulary levels, processing strategies, background knowledge, relationships
between and among various cognate and non-cognate L1s and L2s, and the need to examine
emerging L1 and L2 readers in addition to adult L2 readers. She argued for a compensatory
processing model for L2 reading, which recognizes knowledge sources acting in an interactive
and synergistic fashion in contributing to reading comprehension success. Koda’s (2007)
Zhang & Wu: Chinese senior high school EFL students’ metacognitive awareness and reading-strategy use 38
synthesis of recent advances in L2 reading research emphasized similar importance, recognizing

crosslinguistic constraints on L2 reading development. Taken together, L2 reading research
indicates that reading is an interactive meaning-making process (Alderson, 1984, 2005;
Anderson, 1999; Carrell, 1988; Hudson, 1998; Zhang, Gu, & Hu, 2008) in which readers
capitalize on various available sources and utilize a multitude of strategies to achieve the goal of
comprehension. Therefore, L2 researchers have made attempts at identifying a variety of reading
strategies (e.g., Anderson, 1991; Block, 1986; Hudson, 2007).
It needs to be pointed out, however, that most of the comprehension activities of efficient readers
take place at the metacognitive level, as shown by recent research on the reading strategies used
by successful and less successful readers (e.g., Carrell, Gajdusek, & Wise, 1998; Hudson, 2007).
Researchers have begun to recognize the significant role of metacognitive awareness in reading
comprehension. Metacognitive awareness, or metacognition, was first defined by Flavell (1979)
as one’s ability to understand, control, and manipulate his own cognitive process to maximize
learning. Applied to reading, such awareness entails readers’ “knowledge of strategies for
processing texts, the ability to monitor comprehension, and the ability to adjust strategies as
needed” (Auerbach & Paxton, 1997, pp. 240–41). This concept has offered great insights as to
how learners manage their cognitive activities to achieve comprehension before, during, and
after reading (Wenden, 1998).
Studies on learners’ metacognitive aspects of reading-strategy use have discovered that

successful readers generally display a higher degree of metacognitive awareness, which enables
them to use reading strategies more effectively and efficiently than their unsuccessful peers
(Carrell, 1989; Carrell et al., 1998; Hudson, 1998; Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001; Zhang, 2001;
Zhang et al., 2008). Grounded in this understanding, extensive research has been conducted to
examine the effects of reading-strategy instruction on reading improvement (Carrell, 1998;
Macaro & Erler, 2008; Zhang, 2008). The results confirmed that reading strategies can be taught
and that once students’ metacognitive knowledge about reading strategies and strategy use is
developed, they will become better readers (Carrell, Pharis, & Liberto, 1989; Farrell, 2001;
Zhang, 2008). Although readers’ metacognitive awareness in reading has been recognized in the
available literature to be critical to successful L2 reading, very few studies in this area have been
conducted in the People’s Republic of China, particularly with high school students. At present,
English reading instruction in high schools in China is undergoing reforms. Teachers of English
as a foreign language (EFL) are encouraged to implement strategy instruction in order to “help
students cultivate reading strategies and form good reading habits” (Ministry of Education of
China, 2003, p. 5). However, due to various reasons, instruction of reading strategies at high
school level is still characterized by the traditional comprehension-testing model (Anderson,
1999). As this study has witnessed, a typical English reading lesson in high schools usually goes
through pre-, while-, and post-reading procedures, in which students are required to do various
kinds of comprehension-testing exercises that implicitly require a limited number of EFL reading
strategies. It is assumed that students will naturally acquire the target strategies through implicit
learning. However, problems arise. Students complain that they do not see improvement in their
reading ability. Neither do they know what strategies to use. Teachers complain that students just
cannot use their learned strategies to cope with new reading tasks.
Just as Cohen (1998) and Macaro (2001) put it, only when teachers know what strategies

students are using and how they are using them in different contexts can they better understand
the sources of students’ problems with reading strategies and be able to decide on students’
learning needs and adjust teaching procedures accordingly. Therefore, knowledge about what
goes on in students’ minds during reading is a prerequisite for teachers’ decision-making in
strategy-based instruction. For this reason the present study examines the metacognitive
awareness of a group of Chinese senior high school EFL students and their perceived use of EFL
reading strategies. The findings from this study are expected to generate some practical
implications for EFL reading-strategy instruction in high schools in China or in other similar
contexts where EFL reading instruction is conducted with students from China.
Reading Strategies
Over the last 2 decades, most research on L1, L2, and foreign language (FL) reading has focused
on the strategies that readers deploy in processing written input. According to Cohen (1990),
reading strategies are “those mental processes that readers consciously choose to use in
accomplishing reading tasks” (p. 83). Garner (1987) saw it as an action, or a series of actions that
a reader employs in order to construct meaning in the reading process (see also Hudson, 2007).
Hence, using reading strategies indicates how readers conceive a task, what they do to make
meaning from texts, and what they do when comprehension breaks down (Block, 1986, 1992;
Macaro, 2001; Macaro & Erler, 2008; Zhang, 2001).
So far, L1 and L2 reading researchers have profiled a wide array of reading strategies used by
readers. These range from the more traditionally well-known ones like skimming, scanning, and
inferring to the more recently recognized ones such as activating schemata, recognizing text
structure, using mental imagery, visualizing, generating questions, monitoring comprehension,
evaluating strategy use, etc. (Anderson, 1991; Carrell, 1989; Block, 1986; Cohen, 1990; Pressley,
2002; Zhang et al., 2008).
However, researchers such as Cohen (2003, 2007), Grabe (2004), Hadwin, Winne, Stockley,
Nesbit, and Woszczyna (2001), Paris (2002), and Zhang (2003) pointed out that strategies
themselves are not inherently good or bad, but they have the potential to be used effectively or
ineffectively in different contexts. Readers’ use of reading strategies is informed by their
metacognitive awareness of the strategies and how these strategies can be maximized for optimal
effects in solving comprehension problems (Carrell, 1998; Carrell et al., 1998; Cohen, 2007;
Hudson, 2007; Wenden, 1998; White, 1999; Zhang, 2008).
Metacognitive Awareness
The term “metacognitive awareness” or “metacognition” is often defined simply as “cognition

about cognition” (Flavell, 1979, 1987) in cognitive psychology and in learning theories in the
instructional sciences. It is used to refer to one’s understanding of and control over his or her
own cognitive processes (Carrell, 1998; Carrell et al., 1998; Flavell, Miller, & Miller, 1993;
Hartman, 2001; for recent reviews see Hudson, 2007; Veenman, Van Hout-Wolters,
& Afflerbach, 2006).

According to Flavell (1979), metacognitive awareness consists of both metacognitive knowledge

and metacognitive regulation. Metacognitive knowledge is one’s knowledge of the cognitive
process in relation to three variables that affect the outcomes of the cognitive enterprises, namely,
person variable (beliefs about oneself or others as a cognitive processor), task variable
(understanding of the nature and demand of tasks), and strategy variable (perceptions about
strategies and strategy use that facilitate learning). To put it simply, people’s metacognitive
knowledge is reflected in their belief that they, unlike other people, should use Strategy A rather
than Strategy B in Task X rather than Task Y to achieve a learning goal (Hadwin et al., 2001;
Paris & Winograd, 1990).
While metacognitive knowledge is very consciousness-focused, metacognitive regulation is

executive in nature, working on the basis of the metacognitive knowledge and referring to
people’s management of their cognitive processes to ensure realization of learning goals. This
management involves planning, monitoring, evaluating, and manipulating the cognitive
processes to obtain optimal learning outcomes (Flavell, 1979, 1987; Paris, 2002; Veeman et al.,
2006).
Applied to reading, metacognitive awareness includes readers’ conscious awareness of strategic

reading processes, of the reading-strategy repertoires, and of their actual utilization of the
strategies to maximize text comprehension (Carrell et al., 1998; Forrest-Pressley & Waller, 1984;
Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001; Zhang, 2001). Therefore, readers with stronger metacognitive
awareness display hints to interpret a reading task based on context requirements. They select
reading strategies in relation to reading purposes, task demands, and their own cognitive style.
They monitor the process of comprehension, evaluate the effects of the selected strategies, and
adjust strategies when needed (Cohen, 1998; Hudson, 2007; Paris, Lipson, & Wixson, 1994;
Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995; Zhang, 2008).
Metacognitive Awareness and Reading Comprehension
Over the last decade, numerous studies have been conducted to investigate the use of reading
strategies in L1 contexts, either using think-aloud protocols or questionnaires and comprehension
tests. After examining 38 published studies that used think-aloud protocols to explore native
speakers’ strategy use, Pressley and Afflerbach (1995) discovered that efficient readers are
constructively responsive readers, who are able to use strategies more effectively and flexibly
than inefficient readers. The finding establishes a direct relationship between metacognitive
awareness and reading proficiency. Research has also shown that while generalized knowledge
about reading processes and strategies may be necessary, it is not sufficient for proficient reading
comprehension. Forrest-Pressley and Waller (1984) found that skilled readers not only know that
there are different ways of reading but also know how to monitor the efficiency and to regulate
the use of different techniques (see also Paris, 2002; Paris et al., 1994; Paris & Winograd, 1990).
Hadwin et al. (2001) explained that students use different strategies in different contexts and that
context-free measures do not accurately reflect strategy use for any of those contexts. Given that
the present study was conducted independently of any specific task, it is necessary to provide this
background information so that the limitation of the study is made explicit at the very beginning.

Besides, this information is also important for interpreting the results.
Research in L2 and FL contexts has focused much on the differences in reading-strategy use
among learners of different language proficiency levels. Anderson (1991), for example,
concluded from his study that both advanced and low L2 readers may use the same kind of
strategies, but the more proficient readers tend to use a higher number of different strategies and
are able to orchestrate their use more effectively. Studies conducted in other Chinese EFL
contexts have brought about similar findings (e.g., Yang, 2002; Zhang, 2001, 2002; Zhang et al.,
2008), further confirming the role of metacognitive awareness in successful L2 reading.
Differences in metacognitive awareness of reading strategies among native and nonnative

readers have also been investigated in a number of studies. The major findings are (a) nonnative
readers bring with them their L1 knowledge of the reading process and strategies and apply them
to L2 or FL reading contexts (Block, 1986), (b) L1 and L2 readers use similar kinds of reading
strategies, (c) proficient L1 and L2 readers display comparably higher degrees of metacognitive
awareness than non-proficient readers (Anderson, 1999; Block, 1986, 1992; Grabe & Stoller,
2002; Hudson, 1998; Macaro & Erler, 2008; Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001).
Researchers who conducted these studies maintained that metacognitive awareness is crucial to
proficient reading. In addition, insights from such studies have been useful for reading teachers
in helping struggling readers to become strategic readers. Auerbach and Paxton (1997), for
example, conducted an intervention study that was specifically designed to apply findings of
such studies to classroom practices; and they reported great success in helping problematic
readers to become high-ability readers. Similar findings were reported by Zhang (2008), who
conducted strategy-based reading instruction at a tertiary institution in Singapore with young
adults from China who were required to take the English-for-academic-purposes (EAP) courses.
Working within Flavell’s (1979) framework of metacognition and Vygotskyan (1986) thinking
of constructivism, Zhang integrated clusters of reading strategies in the reading curriculum and
conducted the reading instruction systematically for 2 months.
Generally, the studies on the metacognitive aspects of reading have indicated a need to increase
understanding of readers’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies to gain insights into
effective strategy instruction. However, most of the studies so far either have been conducted in
contexts other than China or have dealt with students at primary or tertiary levels; thus, the
contexts in which these studies were conducted are quite different from the high school context
in which the data of the present study were collected. Chamot (2005), Cohen (1998), and Zhang
(2008) pointed out that the contexts of the learning situation may have a strong influence on
learners’ choice of language learning strategies. Therefore, the present study attempts to fill the
gap by assessing the metacognitive awareness of Chinese senior high school students and their
perceived use of reading strategies, through a questionnaire survey, while they are engaged in
reading school-related English materials (e.g., textbooks, passages for exams, and supplementary
readings in newspapers and magazines).
The aim is to find out what reading strategies Chinese senior high school students deploy to
approach EFL reading and whether there are differences in strategy choice among high-,
intermediate-, and low-proficiency students. Three specific questions are addressed in this study:

1. How often do the students use the designated strategies?
2. What kind of strategies are they using most?
3. Is there any difference among high-, intermediate-, and low-proficiency students in

their proneness of strategy choice and frequency of strategy use?
Method
Participants
Participants in this study were randomly selected from a population of about 2,000 second-year
students at a senior high school in Hainan province of China. A total of 270 students were invited
to respond to the questionnaire, but only 249 responses were valid. The 249 participants were
divided into three proficiency groups (high, intermediate, and low) according to their average
scores of three English exams administered among the whole population pool. These exams were
standardized mid-term and final English tests designed by English teachers of the school to
assess students’ overall English proficiency. These exams reliably measured students’ reading
proficiency by virtue of their strong emphasis on reading comprehension and vocabulary, as has
been the practice in FL instruction in senior high schools in China. The scores of the high-
proficiency group ranged from 73 to 91, those of the intermediate from 63 to 71, and those of the
low-proficiency group from 31 to 62.
Materials
The data for this study were collected through a questionnaire (see Appendix A) adapted from
the survey of reading strategies (SORS) by Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002) that was developed to
measure the metacognitive awareness and perceived use of reading strategies of adolescent and
adult learners of English as a second language (ESL) “while reading school related materials in
English” (p. 2). It comprises 30 items measuring three broad categories of reading strategies:
global reading strategies (henceforth “GLOB”), problem-solving strategies (henceforth “PROB”),
and support strategies (henceforth “SUP”). A 5-point Likert scale following each item indicates
the frequency of strategy use ranging from 1 (never do) to 5 (always do).
Taking into consideration of the participants’ EFL proficiency level as well as feedback from the
pilot study, this study made several adaptations to SORS to increase feasibility of the present
study. Firstly, it was decided that the questionnaire be administered in Chinese, the native
language, which the participants were most proficient in and comfortable with. This was to
guarantee successful data collection and avoid comprehension difficulties that participants might
encounter when given the English version, as some students reported having difficulty in
understanding the contents of some of the terms in English. A university faculty member of the
Nanyang Technological University, who had a PhD in applied linguistics and was highly
proficient in both English and Chinese, was invited to review the translated Chinese version for
clarity, readability, and appropriacy. Secondly, for more complete data analysis, a background

information section was added to elicit information about participants’ name, gender, age, and
the class and school they were attending. After the first Chinese version was pilot-tested,
revisions on individual questionnaire items were made as delineated below.
Firstly, Item 14 was deleted because it was considered ambiguous and repetitive of item 25.
Secondly, Items 4 and 8 were incorporated into one in response to respondents’ comment that
these two strategies were always used at the same time. Thirdly, Items 2, 3, and 21 were
rephrased and further elaborated on so that the statements became more comprehensible for the
students.
Finally, in light of the observation as well as students’ suggestions, the sequence of items in the
original SORS were rearranged, with strategies under the same category put together, so that it
would be easier for students to understand and differentiate some of the relevant and similar
strategies. The finalized questionnaire consisted of 28 items, with 12 items falling into the GLOB
category, 7 into PROB category, and 9 into SUP category (see Table 1).
The internal consistency of the revised SORS for the study was proven to be acceptable. The
internal reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha) for the three strategy categories were as
follows: GLOB (α = .780), PROB (α = .790), and SUP (α = .720). The overall reliability
coefficient (α = .85) ensured the general reliability of the study (see Glass & Hopkins, 1996).
Table 1. Categorization and description of EFL reading strategies

Category Description Example Item
Global reading The intentional, carefully planned Having the purpose 1–12
strategies (GLOB) techniques by which learners monitor or in mind; previewing
manage their reading the text
Problem-solving The localized, focused techniques used Adjusting reading 13–19

strategies (PROB) when problems develop in understanding speed; rereading the
textual information text
Support strategies The basic support mechanisms intended to Using dictionaries; 20–28
(SUP) aid the reader in comprehending the text taking notes
Note. Adapted from Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002, p. 4).
Procedure
Seliger and Shohamy (1989) suggested that a pilot study “will significantly improve the quality
of the data obtained” (p. 173). Therefore, it was decided that the first Chinese version of the
questionnaire be pilot-tested with a group of 10 students from the same population pool but in a
different class. The purpose was to check clarity and comprehensibility of the items. In addition,
the amount of time needed to answer the questions was calculated. Some modifications to the
questionnaire were made in response to problems arising from the pilot test. Later, the revised
questionnaire was re-piloted on the same students to further minimize the possibility of
misinterpreting the questions.
Eventually, the finalized questionnaire was administered to 270 students in five classes, assisted
by the class English teachers. The administration was conducted in the evening self-study period,
and the researcher was present to deal with questions that students may pose. Students were
informed of the purposes and requirements of the survey, and they were asked to provide honest
responses. Most students were able to finish the questionnaire within 10 minutes. Later, all the
completed questionnaires were examined; and after discarding 21 unnamed or incomplete ones,
only 249 valid questionnaires were used for statistical analysis.
Data Analysis
Methodologically, the present study is quantitative in nature. It helps measure the extent of
students’ awareness of reading strategies through an examination of the frequencies and
variances of strategy use. Therefore, the collected data were analyzed quantitatively to obtain
descriptive and inferential statistics. The data were subjected to a two-factor ANOVA with
repeated measures to compare the differences among the three proficiency groups.
The patterns of strategy choice in relation to individual strategies, types of strategy, and overall
strategy use were analyzed by examining the means and the standard deviations within the whole
participant group. Similar procedures were adopted to ascertain the variance of strategy use
among the three proficiency groups. Then ANOVA was used to check whether these differences
were statistically significant. In examining students’ strategy use in terms of the Likert scale that
ranges from 1 to 5, this study employed three levels of usages, as suggested by Oxford and
Burry-Stock (1995) for strategy use in language learning, that is, high (mean of 3.5 or higher),
moderate (mean of 2.5 to 3.4), and low (mean of 2.4 or lower).
Results and Discussion
Overall Pattern of Reading-Strategy Use by Chinese High School Students
With regard to the first two research questions (i.e., “How often do the students use the
designated strategies?” and “What kind of strategies are they using most?”), Table 2 presents
descriptive statistics for students’ perceived use of individual strategies and the overall mean
frequency of each of the three categories of strategies in EFL reading. The results showed that
students on the whole reported using the available reading strategies at a high-frequency level (M
= 3.5, SD = 0.61). Among the 28 strategies, 15 strategies (54%) fell into the high-usage level (M
≥ 3.5), and 13 strategies (46%) went to the medium level (M ≥ 2.5). No strategy was reported at
the low-usage level (M ≤ 2.4). As far as the three categories of strategies are concerned, students
showed a moderate to high usage, with problem-solving strategies (M = 3.78, SD = 0.59) as their
prime choice, followed by global strategies (M = 3.63, SD = 0.59) and support strategies (M =
3.06, SD = 0.64). The top five strategies that were most favored by the students were under the
PROB and GLOB categories, while the bottom five mainly went to the SUP category.
Within the category of problem-solving strategies, 6 of the total 7 strategies (82%) were reported
of frequent usage, indicating that students were generally conscious of their comprehension
process and were able to take actions when comprehension breaks down. For example, when
losing concentration, they “tried to get back on track” (Item 19, M = 4.10, SD = 0.87). When a
text became difficult, they “re-read to increase understanding” (Item 17, M = 4.07, SD = 1.03) or

“adjusted reading speed” (Item 14, M = 3.90, SD = 0.95).
Table 2. Chinese high school EFL student’ perceived use of reading strategies (N = 249)
Item M (SE) SD
Global strategies
1 3.59 (.071) 1.12
2 2.78 (.077) 1.21
3 3.51 (.076) 1.19
4 3.26 (.075) 1.18
5 4.08 (.061) .96
6 3.83 (.077) 1.21
7 4.12 (.058) .92
8 3.86 (.072) 1.14
9 3.43 (.072) 1.13
10 4.23 (.054) .85
11 3.83 (.065) 1.03
12 3.07 (.067) 1.06
Overall 3.63 (.037) .59
Problem-solving strategies
13 3.28 (.069) 1.08
14 3.90 (.060) .95
15 3.55 (.062) .98
16 3.53 (.069) 1.09
17 4.07 (.065) 1.03
18 4.00 (.062) .98
19 4.10 (.056) .89
Overall 3.78 (.037) .59
Support strategies
20 3.08 (.072) 1.14
21 3.48 (.077) 1.22
22 2.99 (.082) 1.29
23 3.35 (.075) 1.18
24 2.70 (.075) 1.19
25 3.53 (.064) 1.01
26 2.49 (.065) 1.03
27 2.57 (.080) 1.27
28 3.35 (.067) 1.06
Overall 3.06 (.408) .64
While displaying ability to detect comprehension difficulty and adjust strategies accordingly,
students also demonstrated capacity of planning for reading. This is seen from their frequent use
of some global strategies like “setting goals for reading” (Item 1, M = 3.59, SD = 1.12),
“previewing” (Item 3, M = 3.51, SD = 1.19), “using prior knowledge” (Item 5 M = 4.08, SD =
0.96), and “predicting text content” (Item 10, M = 4.23, SD = 0.85). They also showed
involvement in comprehension monitoring through use of “confirming prediction” (Item 11, M =
3.83, SD = 1.03) and “checking understanding” (Item 9, M = 3.43, SD = 1.13). In addition, their
frequent use of “deciding what to read or ignore” (Item 4, M = 3.26, SD = 1.18) and “using
context clues” (Item 7, M = 4.12, SD = 0.92) showcased their ability of on-line decision-making

to facilitate understanding and to improve their reading speed.
Support strategies like “underlining” (Item 21, M = 3.48, SD = 1.22) and “going back and forth
in text” (Item 25, M = 3.53, SD = 1.01) were also quite espoused by the students, indicating their
ability to utilize possible aids to enhance understanding and memorizing. Other support
strategies (e.g., reading aloud, paraphrasing, asking oneself questions, and translating from
English to Chinese) were among the least favored on the list. Since the effectiveness of these
strategies depends largely on the context of use (e.g., translation is considered slowing reading
speed but helping with clarifying meaning when comprehension breaks down, Pressley &
Afflerbach, 1995), it is not surprising to find them bearing a less frequent usage. In fact, such
results seem to suggest that students were flexible in their strategy selection.
If a frequency of 3.5 and above is taken as indicating high strategy use, 2.5 to 3.4 as medium,
and 2.4 and below as low, then another look at Table 2 can give us sufficient information about
the overall tendency of the participants’ reported frequency of individual strategy use. As can be
seen, out of the 15 strategies reported to be used with high frequency, 8 strategies (53%) were
under the dimension of GLOB, 6 under PROB, and 1 under SUP, suggesting that the use of
global and problem-solving strategies may be closely associated with students’ overall EFL
proficiency level. Nevertheless, due to the design of the study, it is difficult to indicate the
directionality of the relationship. The high-proficiency group’s reported high frequency of these
particular strategies may be due to their high proficiency as readers, and the same applies to the
low-proficiency group.
The above analysis showed that the students on the whole displayed characteristics of active
strategic readers. They were conscious of their cognitive process during reading and were able to
utilize a wide array of EFL reading strategies to achieve comprehension. These findings support
many other studies (e.g., Block, 1986, 1992; Hadwin et al., 2001; Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001;
Zhang, 2001; Zhang et al., 2008), which asserted that effective or successful L2 and FL readers,
like their native counterparts, were aware of a multitude of reading strategies available for use.
Given that a comprehension-testing model is often adopted in EFL reading lessons (Anderson,
1999), Chinese senior high school teachers might be engaged in similar practices without
knowing it. The Chinese students might have acquired these strategies through frequent practice
of the target strategies embedded in the comprehension exercises conducted by their teachers,
even if they were not taught the strategies explicitly (Paris et al., 1994; Pressley, 2002). Although
the effects of comprehension testing needs to be further investigated, it is reasonable to believe
that comprehension testing is beneficial to some extent and should not be totally rejected as a
teaching strategy.
The learning of English in the Chinese context itself can be another explanation for the students’
clearer metacognitive awareness of strategies than usually assumed. The students in this study
generally approached EFL reading after they had learned their L1, Chinese, for some years and
developed an awareness of Chinese reading strategies. As a result, it is natural that they would
transfer some of their Chinese reading strategies to EFL reading (Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Zhang,
2008). Furthermore, teachers’ explicit explanations that are focused on teaching vocabulary,
grammar, and discourse structure of the English language in classroom instruction could help

students develop awareness about English and English learning. This factor might have also
contributed to facilitating students’ improvement in metacognitive awareness of L2 reading
strategies (Hudson, 2007).
Chinese Senior High School EFL Students’ Reading-Strategy Use and Their EFL Achievements
To answer the third research question (“Is there any difference among high-, intermediate-, and
low-proficiency students in their proneness of strategy choice and frequency of strategy use?”), a
two-factor ANOVA with repeated measures was conducted. The dependent variable was the
rating of reading strategies from 1 to 5. The within-subject factor was strategy category (global,
problem-solving, and support); the between-subject factor was the learners’ proficiency level
(low, intermediate, high). The main effect for strategies, F(2, 492) = 182.15, p < .001, the main
effect for learners’ proficiency, F(4, 492) = 3.27, p < .05, and the interaction between strategies
and learners’ proficiency are all statistically significant, F(4, 492) = 12.98, p < .001.
Tests of simple effects were conducted to follow up the significant interactions. To control for
family-wise error rate across these tests, the Holm’s sequential Bonferroni approach was adopted.
The mean ratings of strategies by the low-proficiency group showed significant differences
between the global and problem-solving strategies, t = -3.53, p = .001, between the global and
support strategies, t = 3.23, p = .002, and between the problem-solving and support strategies, t =
5.09, p < 001. The mean ratings of strategies by the intermediate-proficiency group also showed
significant differences between the global and problem-solving strategies, t = -3.41, p < .001,
between the global and support strategies, t = 9.15, p < .001, and between the problem-solving
and support strategies, t = 10.48, p < .001. Similarly, the mean ratings of strategies by the high-
proficiency group differed significantly between the problem-solving and support strategies, t =
12.68, p < .001, and between the global and support strategies, t = 11.59, p < .001. No significant
differences were found between the global and problem-solving strategies, t = - .97, p > .05.
Table 3 shows the means and standard deviations of the participants’ perceived use of reading
strategies across three proficiency groups. As can be seen, there does exist some significant
difference among the three groups. Generally, the high-proficiency group outperformed the
intermediate- and low-proficiency groups in overall strategy use, and this difference was
statistically significant. The three proficiency groups ranked PROB as the most important,
followed by GLOB and SUP. However, although all the three groups reported frequent use of the
first two categories of strategies, the high-proficiency group demonstrated the most frequent use
of them.
Table 3. Means (standard deviations) for the high-, intermediate-, and low-proficiency EFL
readers’ perceived use of reading strategies (N = 249)
Proficiency
Strategy
Low Intermediate High
Global 3.407 (.572) 3.631 (.582) 3.855 (.529)
Problem-solving 3.597 (.685) 3.821 (.580) 3.912 (.450)
Support 3.179 (.652) 3.023 (.577) 2.979 (.687)
While the ANOVA results revealed the differences in reading-strategy choice among students of

different EFL proficiency levels, a correlation analysis further confirmed the relationship
between students’ reading-strategy use and their general EFL proficiency despite the non-causal
nature (see Appendix B for detailed correlation statistics). The results show that altogether 8
strategies (5 from the GLOB category) bear a close positive correlation to students’ English
achievement, with the correlation coefficient (r) ranging from .225 to .507, p < .001. Item 26 (r
= -.160, p = .011) and 27 (r = -1.20, p < .001) actually revealed a negative correlation between
strategy use and students’ EFL proficiency level, corresponding to the difference in strategy use
between the three proficiency groups discussed earlier.
In sum, the above analysis has shown that the high-, intermediate-, and low-proficiency students
were different in strategy choice, and the effective use of global strategies was found to be
correlated with the students’ higher English achievements. These findings are consistent with
those of previous studies, which revealed a relationship between global strategy use and
language proficiency level (Anderson, 1991; Block, 1992; Zhang, 2002). It has to be highlighted,
however, that the issue of whether reading in an L2 is a reading problem or a language problem
has always been a contentious one. Some argue that it is a language problem, whereas others
argue that it is a reading problem, meaning that students perform poorly in reading in an L2
because they do not have good reading skills or strategies in their L1. Alderson (1984), for
example, posited that reading in an L2 is both a language problem and a reading problem.
Carrell’s (1991) findings further lent support to Alderson’s position. This implies that, in the
long run, informed training in the use of global strategies for problem-solving in reading
comprehension for unsuccessful readers can be useful in helping them improve their reading
ability, with a potential of leading to improvement in their overall English proficiency.
Alternatively, reading instruction focusing on developing FL students’ decoding skills can be
conducted concurrently with strategy-based instruction so that provision of reading strategies is
possible in the process of their learning to read.
Conclusion
The study set out to investigate the degree of Chinese high school students’ metacognitive
awareness of EFL reading strategies, which was measured through their reported use of EFL
reading strategies. By examining the students’ responses to the questionnaire, the study revealed
that Chinese senior high school students are also active EFL reading-strategy users and that their
pattern of strategy use is closely related to their overall EFL achievement. Such findings
generally lend support to the published research of this field conducted in other contexts (e.g.,
Anderson, 1991; Block, 1986; Carrell, 1989; Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001; Zhang, 2002; Zhang et
al., 2008).
The study has some practical implications for EFL reading-strategy instruction in Chinese high
schools or other educational settings that share similar characteristics. First, the results of this
study suggest that although students on the whole frequently use a wide range of strategies, good
learners seem to be distinguished from their low-proficiency counterparts in strategic knowledge.
Good learners are better at planning for reading, monitoring their comprehension, and selecting
appropriate strategies. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that low-proficiency learners will
benefit from an informed metacognitive strategy training course that guides them to think about

their reading processes, identify their weaknesses, and take remedial measures, as suggested by
some researchers who have concluded positive effects of strategy training on EFL and ESL
learning (e.g., Carrell et al., 1989; Hudson, 1998; Rasekh & Ranjbary, 2003). Secondly, the
finding of this study that high-, intermediate-, and low-proficiency learners have knowledge of a
range of strategies at a moderate to high level is contradictory to some teachers’ assumption that
senior high school students know little about reading strategies. This implies that students might
know various EFL strategies that are useful for achieving comprehension by virtue of their high
motivation and frequent exposure to English in various modalities nowadays, including hypertext,
print, non-print, visual, and multimedia English materials. This change in the learning
environment from one of poor language input to that of richer exposure might have given these
learners many opportunities to read in English. Necessarily, this would affect their way of
learning and the cultures of learning with which they were strongly associated. Therefore, what
teachers need to do is to find out how effectively students are using different strategies and give
them guidance accordingly. As suggested by the findings from this study, poor high school EFL
readers need more help in increasing their knowledge about global strategies, as reading in a FL
is not only a language problem but also a reading problem (Alderson, 1984, 2005; Hudson, 1998;
for recent reviews, see Bernhardt, 2005; Hudson, 2007; Koda, 2007).
Since many high school English teachers employ a comprehension-testing type of teaching
strategy, it is possible that students develop EFL reading strategies through their experience of
doing comprehension-testing exercises (Grabe & Stoller, 2002); and the strategies they use are
mainly test-taking strategies, which are different from reading comprehension strategies for
effective meaning-making. These test-taking strategies could have helped them become test-wise,
but their ability for in-depth understanding of the reading material at hand might not have
improved (Cohen, 1998). Although such a tentative conclusion needs further investigation, the
comprehension-testing strategy should not be totally rejected or discarded. After all,
comprehension exercises offer opportunities for students to practice using various reading
strategies. These practices have much to do with the way teachers perceive language teaching
and the various facets of language teacher preparation (Zhang, 2000, 2003, 2004). Therefore,
teacher training programs might need to take into consideration language teaching
methodologies that involve the use of strategy-based approaches to reading comprehension
(Anderson, 1999; Chamot, 2005; Macaro, 2001; Hudson, 2007).
Necessarily, this does not mean that comprehension-testing type of teaching is good enough.
What should be advocated is an incorporation of explicit strategy training into the usual reading
instruction procedures (Chamot, 2005; O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Zhang, 2008; see also Zhang,
2003, for a review of research on Chinese ELF learners, especially in relation to strategy-based
instruction). For example, teachers can adopt a “comprehension exercise plus strategy
evaluation” teaching method, where more focus is ascribed to the evaluation of strategy use. In
this way, students will increase their knowledge or awareness of strategies and strategy use
through reflecting on and verbalizing their use of the strategies at the beginning. Gradually, they
can develop a higher degree of autonomy in using these reading strategies in different contexts.
This recommendation is supported by findings from the studies by Cohen (1990, 2007), Zhang
(2001), and Zhang et al. (2008), which suggest that being able to verbalize and evaluate strategy
use is a sign of high metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. In the long run, however,
developing students’ interest in reading in the way extensive reading activities are organized will

be an effective means to achieving reading efficacy in these EFL learners, given that strong
relationships between extensive reading and reading achievement have been firmly established
(see Day & Bamford, 1998, 2002, for a delineation on these issues and rich extensive reading
activities; for recent findings of the benefits of extensive reading in developing various aspects of
L2 language proficiency, see Renandya, 2007; Yamashita, 2004, 2008).
Although the study has revealed some interesting findings that might inform EFL reading
instruction, it has a number of limitations, especially in connection with the research method
adopted (see Brantmeier, 2002, for a review of such issues). The first limitation is about the
reliability of the questionnaire responses. Although students reported use of some strategies, it is
difficult to know whether they are actually using these strategies. Future research should
incorporate on-line think-aloud protocols or interviews to further examine students’ actual
strategy use. The other limitation is related to the way that metacognitive awareness is assessed
in the scoring in this study. It is obvious that awareness of vocabulary in EFL reading is not
assessed in this study despite research findings that scores on vocabulary size and depth of
vocabulary knowledge are highly and positively correlated to reading comprehension and that
scores on depth of vocabulary knowledge can make a unique contribution to the prediction of
reading comprehension levels (Qian, 1999, 2002; Zhang & Annul, 2008). Qian (2002) called for
recognizing the importance of improving learners’ depth of vocabulary knowledge in language
learning. Finally, given that the participants in the study were from a key senior high school in
China, their overall EFL proficiency may be relatively higher than those in other senior high
schools, which might have indirectly contributed to their overall high usage of strategies.
Therefore, findings from the study should be interpreted with caution. Further studies are needed
to examine how students’ awareness of reading comprehension strategies interacts not only with
their perceived use of the strategies but also with their actual use of reading strategies, as well as
with their use of vocabulary-handling strategies and their vocabulary size and vocabulary depth,
in relation to gains in reading scores.
Acknowledgments
We are indebted to all the participants for their ready participation in this study and their teachers
for assistance in the data collection. We are also obliged to Professors Kouita Mokhtari and Ravi
Sheorey for granting us permission to adapt and translate their reading questionnaire, SORS, into
Chinese and use it with our participants in this study. We are obliged to one anonymous reviewer
for the comments and suggestions on the relationship between metacognitive awareness and
reading comprehension, which were incorporated into the final version of this article. We also
record our gratitude to the other three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback,
which has helped us in clarifying several points. Our thanks also go to Dr. Youyan Nie for her
assistance in statistical analysis. Any error or inaccuracy that still remains in the paper is our
responsibility.
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Appendix A
The Revised Survey of Reading Strategies

(Chinese version)
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们深入理解同学们的英语阅读行为，为改进英语教学提供依据。本调查仅供学术研究参考使用，
我们将会对同学们所提供的一切个人资料绝对保密。因此，请同学们放心提供尽可能准确的资
料。非常感谢你们的参与和帮助！
个人简况
姓名__________ 性别_____ 年龄_____ 学校_____________ 班级_____________
问卷说明
以下是人们阅读与英语学习相关的文章（如教材中的课文、试题中的阅读理解短文、报刊杂
志中的同步阅读或补充阅读资料等）时使用的技巧和策略。每个句子后面有五个数字表示不同的
含义：
1 表示”我从不这样做”
2 表示”我偶尔这样做”
3 表示”我有时这样做”（频率约为 50%）
4 表示”我通常/大多数时候这样做”
5 表示”我总是/一直都这样做”
请仔细阅读每个句子，选择一个数字并圈起来，如”○ 3 “。注意，这些问题并没有标准答案，请
同学们根据自己的实际阅读情况作出恰当的选择。
全局策略从不偶尔有时通常总是
1 用英语阅读时，我有明确的阅读目的，如为了
学习，或为了获取与教材内容相关的信息等。 1 2 3 4 5
2 用英语阅读时，我会考虑文章的内容与我的阅
读目的是否相符。 1 2 3 4 5

3 用英语阅读时，我通常先预览全文，了解文章
结构特征，长度和大意。 1 2 3 4 5
4 用英语阅读时，我会决定哪些内容该仔细读，
哪些内容该跳过或忽略。 1 2 3 4 5
5 用英语阅读时，我利用我已有的知识（如与文
章主题相关的知识或语法知识）来帮助理解文
章内容。 1 2 3 4 5
6 用英语阅读时，我会利用文章中的表格、图表
和插图来增强理解。 1 2 3 4 5
7 用英语阅读时，我利用上下文线索来帮助我更
好的理解所读内容。 1 2 3 4 5
8 用英语阅读时，我通过印刷特征如粗体、斜体
来识别重要信息。 1 2 3 4 5
9 用英语阅读时，我通过文章中出现的新信息来
检查自己对文章的理解。 1 2 3 4 5
10 用英语阅读时，我设法猜测所读内容的大意。 1 2 3 4 5
11 用英语阅读时，我会检查自己对文章内容的猜
测或预测是否正确。 1 2 3 4 5
12 用英语阅读时，我以批判性的眼光分析和评判
文章所提供的信息，而不是被动接受文章的信
息。 1 2 3 4 5
解决问题策略
13 用英语阅读时，我读得很慢很仔细以确保我理
解所读内容。 1 2 3 4 5
14 用英语阅读时，我会根据所读的内容调整阅读
速度。 1 2 3 4 5
15 用英语阅读时，我有时会停下来琢磨所读内
容。 1 2 3 4 5
16 用英语阅读时，我在脑海中描绘所读信息，使
文字信息图片化或情景化以便能记住所读内
容。 1 2 3 4 5
17 用英语阅读时，当文章变难的时候，我会重读
较难的部分来增强理解。 1 2 3 4 5
18 用英语阅读时，如果遇到生词和短语，我会设
法猜测它们的意思。 1 2 3 4 5
19 用英语阅读时，当我注意力分散的时候，我会
设法再次集中精神。 1 2 3 4 5
辅助策略
20 用英语阅读时，我将文章的关键词语或句子作
笔记来帮助我理解所读内容。 1 2 3 4 5
21 用英语阅读时，我会划出或圈出文章中的主要
信息以便能记住它们。 1 2 3 4 5
22 用英语阅读时，当文章内容变得难以理解的时
候，我读出声来帮助我理解所读内容。 1 2 3 4 5

23 用英语阅读时，我借助相关参考书（如字典）
来帮助理解所读内容。 1 2 3 4 5
24 用英语阅读时，我用自己的话复述文章以便更
好的理解所读内容。 1 2 3 4 5
25 用英语阅读时，我会来回往复的阅读上下文以
便掌握文中前后出现的观点、大意之间的关
系。 1 2 3 4 5
26 用英语阅读时，我会向自己提问，并且希望能
从所读文章获得这些问题的答案。 1 2 3 4 5
27 用英语阅读时，我把所读内容逐词逐句翻译成
汉语. 1 2 3 4 5
28 用英语阅读时，我有时用英语，有时用汉语来
思考文章提供的信息。 1 2 3 4 5
再次感谢你们的合作！
The Revised Survey of Reading Strategies

(English translation; adapted from Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002).
Survey of EFL Reading Strategies
Name_________ Gender_____ Age_____ School_______________ Class___________
The purpose of this survey is to collect information about the various techniques you use when you read
academic materials in English (e.g., reading textbooks for homework or examinations, reading journal
articles, etc.).
All the items below refer to your reading of school-related academic materials (such as textbooks,
reading comprehension exercises, or other supplementary readings related to course contents). Each
statement is followed by five numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and each number means the following:
“1” means that “I never or almost never do this.”

“2” means that “I do this only occasionally.”
“3” means that “I sometimes do this” (About 50% of the time).
“4” means that “I usually do this.”
“5” means that “I always or almost do this.”
After reading each statement, circle the number (1, 2, 3, 4, or 5) which applies to you. Note that there are
no right or wrong responses to any of the items on this survey.
Global strategies Never Always

1 I have a purpose in mind when I read 1 2 3 4 5
2 I think about whether the content of the text fits
my reading purpose 1 2 3 4 5
3 I review the text to know about its length,
organization and main idea 1 2 3 4 5
4 When reading, I decide what to read closely and 1 2 3 4 5

what to ignore
5 I use my prior knowledge (e.g., knowledge about
the theme of the text, or grammar knowledge) to
help me understand what I read 1 2 3 4 5
6 I use tables, figures, and pictures in text to
increase my understanding 1 2 3 4 5
7 I use context clues to help me better understand
what I am reading 1 2 3 4 5
8 I use typographical features like bold face and
italics to identify key information 1 2 3 4 5
9 I check my understanding when I come across
new information 1 2 3 4 5
10 I try to guess what the content of the text is about
when I read 1 2 3 4 5
11 I check to see if my guesses about the text are
right or wrong 1 2 3 4 5
12 I critically analyze and evaluate the information
presented in the text rather than passively accept
everything 1 2 3 4 5
Problem-solving strategies
13 I read slowly and carefully to make sure I
understand what I read 1 2 3 4 5
14 I adjust my reading speed according to what I am
reading 1 2 3 4 5
15 I stop from time to time and think about what I
am reading 1 2 3 4 5
16 I try to picture or visualize information to help
remember what I read 1 2 3 4 5
17 When text becomes difficult, I re-read it to
increase my understanding 1 2 3 4 5
18 When I read, I guess the meaning of unknown
words or phrases 1 2 3 4 5
19 I try to get back on track when I lose
concentration 1 2 3 4 5
Support strategies
20 I take note of the key expressions and ideas while
reading to help me understand what I read 1 2 3 4 5
21 I underline or circle information in the text to
help me remember it 1 2 3 4 5
22 When text becomes difficult, I read aloud to help
me understand what I read 1 2 3 4 5
23 I use reference materials (e.g., a dictionary) to
help me understand what I read 1 2 3 4 5
24 I paraphrase (restate ideas in my own words) to
better understand what I read 1 2 3 4 5
25 I go back and forth in the text to find relationships
among ideas in it 1 2 3 4 5
26 I ask myself questions I like to have answered in
the text 1 2 3 4 5

27 When reading, I translate from English into my

native language 1 2 3 4 5
28 When reading, I think about information in both
English and my mother tongue 1 2 3 4 5
Appendix B
Pearson Correlations of Strategy Use to Students’ EFL Achievement
Reading strategies Average exam scores

1 Set purpose for reading .129*
2 Check how text content fits purpose -.007
3 Preview text before reading .042
4 Determine what to read .249***
5 Use prior knowledge .270***
6 Use text features (e.g., tables) .183**
7 Use context clues .220***
8 Use typographical aids (e.g., italics) .221***
9 Check understanding .123
10 Predict or guess text content .205**
11 Confirm prediction .226***
12 Critically evaluate what is read .181**
13 Read slowly and carefully -.116
14 Adjust reading speed .213**
15 Pause and think about reading .041
16 Visualize information .051
17 Re-read to increase understanding .275***
18 Guess meaning of unknown words .263***
19 Try to stay focused on reading .171**
20 Take note while reading .042
21 Underline information in text .023
22 Read aloud when text becomes hard -.004
23 Use reference materials like dictionary -.051
24 Paraphrase for better understanding -.091
25 Go back and forth in text .080
26 Ask oneself questions -.160*
27 Translate from English to mother tongue -.331***
28 Think about information in both English and mother tongue -.120
GLOB (items 1–12) .304***
PROB (items 13–19) .209**
SUP (items 20–28) -.126
OVERALL (overall reading strategies) .170*
Note. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

About the Authors
Lawrence Jun Zhang, PhD, is an associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore, a post-doctoral fellow at the Oxford University, and a guest professor of Yangtze
University and Yanshan University, China. He has published in British Journal of Educational
Psychology, Instructional Science, Language Awareness, and Language and Education, among
others. He is an editorial board member of TESOL Quarterly and Metacognition and Learning.
Address for correspondence: 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 637616, Singapore.
E-mail: lawrence.zhang@nie.edu.sg
Aijiao Wu is a senior English teacher at Hainan Senior High School, Haikou, China. She holds a
BA in English Language and Literature from the Hainan Normal University, China, and an MA
in Applied Linguistics from the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
E-mail: wajtutu@163.com

ISSN 1539-0578 pp. 60–77
The effects of cultural familiarity on reading comprehension

İsmail Hakkı Erten and Salim Razı
Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University
Turkey
Abstract
This study investigated whether cultural familiarity influences comprehension of short

stories and whether nativizing the story or using reading activities can compensate for the
lack of such familiarity. The study was conducted with 44 advanced-level students of
English at a state university in Turkey. In a 2 × 2 experimental research design, the 1st
group of students read an original short story without any activities while the 2nd group of
students read the original short story with some activities. The 3rd group read the
nativized version of the text without any activities while the 4th group read the nativized
version with the same set of activities as the 2nd group. The analysis of variance indicated
a better comprehension of the nativized story. The activities contributed to the
comprehension of the original story, but the difference caused by nativization remained
intact, indicating a powerful impact of cultural schema on comprehension.
Keywords: reading comprehension, schema theory, cultural schema, nativization
Readers, when engaged in reading, are believed to go through an active and interactive process
(Anderson, 1999; Grabe & Stoller, 2002). Such a process presumes that readers have or should
have some background knowledge about the topic of the text. Anderson, for example, explained
reading as follows:
Reading is an active, fluent process which involves the reader and the reading material in
building meaning. Meaning does not reside on the printed page. … Synergy occurs in
reading, which combines the words on the printed page with the reader’s background
knowledge and experiences. (p. 1)
Reading as an interactive process requires various mental operations to be performed

concurrently or very closely in time. When students read, they are likely to proceed from
processing the text in smaller units of language to larger conceptual units (Perfetti, 1985). In fact,
readers tend to deal with both micro-level text-driven features, such as pattern recognition, letter
identification, and lexical access, and macro-level reader-driven features, such as activation of
prior knowledge and monitoring comprehension (Berhnardt, 1991; Brantmeier, 2004). Each of
these processes requires valuable memory space and may sometimes overload the working
memory, which is limited in capacity (Baddeley, 1997; McLaughlin, Rossman, & McLeod, 1983;
Miller, 1956; Pulido, 2003).
Erten & Razı: The effects of cultural familiarity on reading comprehension 61
Such limited capacity can be further overloaded by the extra efforts that students make when
reading. Readers’ efforts to deal with micro-level linguistic features may place so much demand
on the readers that not enough resources can be allocated to macro-level textual analysis
(Afflerbach, 1990; Alptekin, 2006). It has been argued, however, that the cognitive load can be
lessened by activation of the background knowledge that readers bring to the text (Carrell, 1988;
Ellis, 2001; Nassaji, 2002; Pulido, 2004). When readers bring relevant background knowledge to
the reading process, they can allocate more attentional space for textual analysis and
interpretation. In this sense, existing background knowledge may contribute to the functioning of
what are described as automatic processes by McLaughlin (1987), sparing valuable attentional
space for more unfamiliar and newer elements in the text.
The place of background knowledge in the reading process has been discussed within schema
theory (Bartlett, 1932; Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983). Schema theory deals with “preexisting
knowledge structures stored in the mind” (Nassaji, 2002, p. 444) and how readers combine their
previous knowledge with the text (Ajideh, 2003; Alderson, 2000; Alptekin, 2006; Anderson,
1999; Carrell, 1983; Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983; Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Johnson, 1981, 1982;
Ketchum, 2006; McKay, 1987; Murtagh, 1989). In the rest of this paper, the terms schema and
background knowledge will be used synonymously and interchangeably. Background knowledge
that readers make use of during their engagement with the text is thought to be of various types
(Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983; Nassaji, 2002; Oller, 1995). Of the different types, the most
frequently referred to and discussed are formal and content schemata.
Formal schema, also called textual schema (Singhal, 1998), is defined as knowledge of language
and linguistic conventions, including knowledge of how texts are organized and what the main
features of a particular genre of writing are (Alderson, 2000; Carrell, 1987, 1988; Carrell &
Eisterhold, 1983). Research into formal schema suggests that “texts with familiar rhetorical
organization should be easier to read and comprehend than texts with unfamiliar rhetorical
organization” (Carrell, 1987, p. 464).
Content schema, which is described as knowledge of the content (Carrell, 1983), can further be
divided into two different types: background knowledge and subject matter knowledge. The
former refers to the knowledge that may or may not be relevant to the content of a particular text,
and the latter is directly related to the text content and topic (Alderson, 2000).
A third type of schema, which is more relevant to this study, is cultural schema (Yule, 1996). It
is also called abstract schema (Nassaji, 2002; Oller, 1995), story schema (Mandler, 1984), or
linguistic schema (Ketchum, 2006). Ketchum proposed cultural schema as a culture-specific
extension of content schema because it refers to the role of cultural membership that is needed to
fully comprehend the meaning intended by the writer.
Abstract in nature, cultural schema involves cultural familiarity and helps readers to reconstruct
the story line through referring to more personally and culturally relevant scripts (Oller, 1995).
One effect of this is a lessened workload to reconstruct scripts and make personal interpretations,
because such texts entail involvement with “real material persons, events, places, and
sociocultural relations with which [readers] can identify and find some common ground” (Oller,

1995, p. 299). This is probably because different concepts may have different referents in
different cultural contexts and may thus generate different expectations on the reader’s part. Such
cultural specificity can be seen in the example of breakfast (Alptekin, 2008). Although most
people from the same society will understand similar things about having breakfast, Turkish and
British readers may have different expectations about breakfast. Turkish readers may often
expect to have cheese, olives, jam, honey, tomatoes, cucumber, and brewed tea (with no milk at
all) for breakfast. British readers may expect to have cereal, toast, butter and jam, honey, and tea
(with or without milk) or coffee; or for a cooked breakfast, to have sausages, bacon, baked beans,
hash browns, fried eggs, and grilled tomatoes. Thus, cultural schema, not dependent on the
surface forms utilized in the formation of the text, involves more than a mere literal
comprehension of the content of the text (Alptekin, 2006).
Several studies have reported positive effects of cultural familiarity on reading comprehension
(Alptekin, 2006; Steffensen, Joag-Dev, & Anderson, 1979) and vocabulary learning (Pulido,
2003, 2004). Steffensen et al., for example, demonstrated that when students are familiar with
cultural norms, they make a better interpretation of the text than when they are not. Further, in
cases of unfamiliar cultural norms, students tend to refer to their own cultural properties, which
results in poor interpretations of the text.
More recently and more relevant to this study, Alptekin (2006) illustrated that when cultural
elements of a short story are nativized to make the text culturally more familiar, students can
make better inferences than when they read the original but culturally-remote story. Alptekin’s
findings give support to Oller’s (1995) assertion that changing certain words in authentic texts
with more familiar ones helps readers to achieve better comprehension.
Alptekin’s (2006) work is different from other schema-related studies (e.g., Carrell, 1988) in that
he did not use two texts of similar difficulty but made use of the same text only by changing
some cultural elements, such as the names of people and places, and by adapting them to the
students’ own cultural context. This, according to Alptekin, reduces the possible bias posed by
varying levels of conceptual density and complexity in different texts. He claimed
the role of cultural background knowledge . . . needs to be investigated not necessarily in

the framework of two texts that are thought to be syntactically, lexically, and rhetorically
equivalent, but in the context of the same text used in two different ways, one being the
original and the other a culturally nativized version. Nativization refers to the pragmatic
and semantic adaptation of the textual and contextual clues of the original story into the
learner’s own culture, while keeping its linguistic and rhetorical content essentially intact.
(p. 497)
Alptekin’s (2006) approach is plausible as he attempts to minimize possible intervening variables

in the experimentation process. It would be worth replicating and extending his study to achieve
a better understanding of the phenomena. Further, minimizing possible intervening variables in
such a procedure could also lend itself to the investigation of other elements involved in the
reading process. One such element is the activities used in a reading class. Working through
nativized texts may prove convenient to measure how effective the use of activities is in
compensating for the lack of relevant cultural schema. Thus, this research aimed to extend

Alptekin’s work and to show whether activities can make up for the lack of cultural familiarity.
Reading Activities
From a more pedagogical standpoint, suggestions have been made to use certain activities for
activating readers’ existing schema or at least providing learners with crucial information about
the topic they will be reading (Ajideh, 2003; Brown, 2001; Chastain, 1988; Chen & Graves,
1995; Grabe, 1991). The use of reading activities can promote strategic reading behaviors by
students at pre-, while-, and postreading (Alyousef, 2006; Ur, 1996) stages. In turn, reading
activities can promote interpretation of the text through the interaction between the reader and
the text (Wallace, 1992) and thus play a vital role in schema activation in order to comprehend
and interpret the text better (Chen & Graves, 1995; Grabe & Stoller, 2002).
Despite the fairly well-documented impact of background knowledge on reading comprehension

and a host of activities suggested, it still remains to be explored whether, or to what extent, the
lack of cultural knowledge can be compensated through the use of reading activities. Erten and
Karakaş (2007) noted that our knowledge on the value of these activities mainly stems from
pedagogical recommendations or personal experiences and often lacks scientific scrutiny. Only a
handful of studies have investigated which is more effective, using a particular activity on the
same text (e.g., Karakaş, 2005) or making use of different activities on the same text with
different groups of students (e.g., Chen & Graves, 1995; Erten & Karakaş, 2007; Shen, 2004).
Karakaş (2005), for example, showed that a combination of previewing and brainstorming is
more effective than merely using brainstorming with short stories. Along the same lines, Chen
and Graves (1995) explored the effectiveness of previewing and providing background
knowledge and concluded that previewing is more effective than providing background
knowledge. A contrasting finding comes from Shen (2004), who found that providing
background knowledge, in fact, could help learners better with their comprehension. Finally,
Erten and Karakaş (2007) reported that some activities (e.g., a combination of previewing,
providing keywords, scanning, skimming, clarifying, asking and answering questions, and
drawing conclusions) contributed to the literal comprehension, while others (e.g., a combination
of brainstorming, surveying, reciprocal teaching, evaluation, inferring, re-reading, thinking aloud,
and discussion), contributed better to the evaluative comprehension of short stories.
With due acknowledgment to these efforts, it is necessary to note that there has not been an
attempt to compare the influence of the presence or absence of cultural familiarity with the effect
of classroom activities used. It therefore remains to be investigated whether cultural schema
influences reading comprehension, and more importantly, whether the use of activities can make
up for the absence of cultural knowledge. This study aims to contribute to our understanding of
these issues. It addresses the following two research questions:
1. Does readers’ familiarity with the cultural content of short stories affect their
comprehension?
2. Do reading activities used with short stories make up for the lack of cultural schema?

Based on the above literature review, the study hypothesized that cultural familiarity has a
significant impact on reading comprehension and that although reading activities contribute to
comprehension, the impact of cultural familiarity remains a significant factor.
Method
The study was conducted in the English Language Teaching Department of the Faculty of
Education at a state university in the west of Turkey. The department was considered suitable for
the study because the teacher training program included a short stories component. The Short
Stories course, taught by a colleague of the authors, offered an appropriate medium for research
as well as constant access to the students.
Participants
Forty-four students from the department participated in the study. The participants were young
adults (aged 20–23). They were all being trained to become teachers of English. At the time of
the data collection, they had studied English for 7–9 years (M = 7.5) and were in their 3rd year of
university education. The participants had an advanced level of English language proficiency and
thus met the minimum language requirements to be included in the study. They had been
accepted into the department after a very competitive nationwide university placement exam,
administered by the University Entrance and Placement Centre of the Turkish Higher
Educational Council. Students enrolled in the department often fall into a very narrow band of
the top 10%. Therefore, the researchers expected the participants to have similar levels of
English proficiency.
The participants were randomly assigned, according to their grade point average (GPA), into
four groups to create a 2 × 2 experimental research design. For the sampling, the participants’
cumulative GPAs at the end of their fifth term in the department were calculated by taking
account of only the English-based courses and English-medium-teacher-training courses. Once
the cumulative GPAs were calculated, the GPAs were grouped into nine ranges, as illustrated in
Table 1.
Table 1. Ranges of participants’ GPAs

Group Range
1 4.00–3.75
2 3.74–3.50
3 3.49–3.25
4 3.24–3.00
5 2.99–2.75
6 2.74–2.50
7 2.49–2.25
8 2.24–2.00
9 1.99–1.75

Finally, 11 students from different ranges of GPAs were assigned evenly to different treatment
groups so as to form homogenous groups that were later labeled Treatment 1 (original text no
activities, henceforth “ONA”), Treatment 2 (original text with activities, henceforth “OWA”),
Treatment 3 (adjusted text no activities, henceforth “ANA”), and Treatment 4 (adjusted text with
activities, henceforth “AWA”). Table 2 shows the mean GPA values for each treatment group.
Table 2. Mean GPA values for each treatment group

Name of the Group N M SD
Original text no activities 11 2.57 0.43
Original text with activities 11 2.52 0.28
Adjusted text no activities 11 2.60 0.29
Adjusted text with activities 11 2.57 0.42
An analysis of variance revealed no significant differences among the treatment groups, F =

0.095, p < .96, indicating a reasonable homogeneity of these groups.
Materials
The reading text. The short story “The Girls in their Summer Dresses” by Irwin Shaw (2000), a
popular classic first published in 1939, was chosen for the study. The story is about a couple
trying to take a Sunday off in the city of New York.
The story was nativized for research purposes. The nativization (Alptekin, 2006) functioned as
an independent variable and provided students with a locality that they were culturally familiar
with. For clarity, it needs to be noted that the terms nativized and adjusted are used
synonymously and interchangeably in the rest of this paper.
In the nativization process, the names of the characters were changed to Turkish names. Care
was taken while adjusting the narrated city plan of New York to Çanakkale, a coastal Turkish
city. All the names of the places, streets, and buildings had to make sense in readers’ minds in
order to activate their schema about the city of Çanakkale. Furthermore, the sequence of actions
had to conform to the original story. For example, in the original story, the couple leaves the
Brevoort and starts walking towards Washington Square along Fifth Avenue. In the nativized
story, the couple leaves Barışkent (a suburb in the city of Çanakkale) and starts walking towards
Republic Square along Kordonboyu (the seafront).
Apart from these changes, some conceptual cues also had to be changed in order to complete the
nativization process. For example, in the nativized story, the characters planned to eat fish
(which was steak in the original story) because Çanakkale is a coastal city along the Dardanelles.
The main changes are illustrated in Table 3, and some samples from each version of the story are
given in Appendix A.
Reading test. A recall test (see Appendix B) was administered at the end of the reading session.
The test was written for the two different versions of the story: nativized and original. The
posttest included three different elicitation techniques: The first group of questions used
“True/False/Not Given,” the second group of questions involved “Putting scrambled actions into

the correct order,” and the third group used “Open-ended short-answer questions” to test
comprehension. Students were not allowed to refer to the reading text during the posttest period,
nor were they allowed to use dictionaries.
Table 3. Examples of differences between the two versions

Original short story Nativized short story
Character
Michael (Mike) Loomis Coşkun Umutlu
Frances Özlem
The Stevensons Nalan & Tarık
Place
New York/City of New York/State of New Çanakkale/City of Çanakkale

York
Alice Maxwell’s house Tarık Uyanık’s house
Fifth Avenue Kordonboyu
The Brevoort Barışkent
Washington Square Republic Square
Eighth Street Golf Tea Garden/Republic Square
Football game Basketball game—Turkish women’s championship
Culture
Rolls and coffee Turkish baguettes and tea
An extra five pounds of husband An extra several kilos of husband
A steak as big as a blacksmith’s apron A fish as big as a man’s arm
A bottle of wine A big bottle of rakı
A new French picture at the Filmarte A new Turkish picture “O Şimdi Asker” (He’s in
the army now) at the AFM cinema
Reading activities. In addition to reading the text, class activities were chosen to address the
three stages of a normal reading class: prereading, while-reading, and postreading. The activities
were used with only two groups: the OWA group and the AWA group. The activities used in the
class have been described by several authors (e.g., Chastain, 1988; Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Lazar,
1993; Ur, 1996; Wallace, 1992) as typical of classes where short stories are examined.
This study did not intend to compare the effectiveness of different reading activities. Rather it
aimed to compare the differences in readers’ comprehension with or without reading activities in
the two reading conditions (i.e., original text and adjusted text) created for the research purposes.
Therefore, we aimed to construct the typical flow of a short-story class with which participants
of the study were familiar. This resulted in the use of the same activities in conditions where
their use was planned. Since the students were acquainted with the activities, the researchers did
not feel the need to spend extra time explaining and illustrating these activities. The activities
selected will be outlined in detail below.
Procedure
The first group of participants was given the original text without activities, while the second
group did some reading activities as the participants read the original text. The third group read

the nativized version without activities. Finally, the last group was asked to perform some
activities while reading the nativized version. Table 4 illustrates the lesson plans for each group
of students.
Table 4. Procedures for each group of students

Treatment 1 Treatment 2 Treatment 3 Treatment 4
ONA OWA ANA AWA
Original text was Prereading activities: Nativized text was Prereading activities:
given without Brainstorming (3’) given without Brainstorming (3’)
activities (30’) Pre-questioning (3’) activities (30’) Pre-questioning (3’)
While-reading activities: While-reading activities:
Reading the story (35’) Reading the story (35’)
Scanning (2’) Scanning (2’)
Skimming (2’) Skimming (2’)
Clarifying (2’) Clarifying (2’)
Reciprocal teaching (2’) Reciprocal teaching (2’)
Inferring (2’) Inferring (2’)
Postreading activities: Postreading activities:
Thinking aloud (2’) Thinking aloud (2’)
Asking and answering Asking and answering
questions (2’) questions (2’)
Posttest (15’) Posttest (15’) Posttest (15’) Posttest (15’)
Total 45’ Total 60’ Total 45’ Total 60’
Note. ONA = Original text with no activities; OWA = Original text with activities; ANA = Adjusted
text with no activities; AWA = Adjusted text with activities.
’ = minutes.
At the prereading stage, the participants were first asked to brainstorm on expectations in a
relationship. They were then guided to some questions that they could answer by referring to
their background knowledge, such questions as how they would plan a free Sunday with their
girl or boy friends. Approximately 3 minutes was allocated for each activity of this stage.
Although the timings were not strictly controlled, care was taken not to allocate uneven amounts
of time for a particular activity with the two activity groups. This was also true for activities at
the other two stages of reading.
After the prereading activities, the participants were instructed to move onto the while-reading
stage during which they were asked to read the short story silently. This period took
approximately 35 minutes, during which the silent reading process was interrupted by a number
of while-reading activities. For example, the participants were asked to explain the relationship
between Michael and Frances (Çoşkun & Özlem in the adjusted text) by skimming the text.
Since this relationship can be inferred in the very early parts of the story, this activity was
completed in nearly 2 minutes. Similarly, participants were required to scan the short sections of
the text within very short periods of time. For example, the participants scanned the first
paragraph of the story to find out where the couple lived.
Clarifying was done when the need arose. As participants read the text, they were encouraged to
indicate any confusion that prevented understanding the text. When needed, other participants
were encouraged to make clarifications. The class teacher provided clarifications where other

participants could not. Thus, clarifying was done as a separate activity that preceded reciprocal
teaching rather than being a component of it. Following this, the participants were involved in
the other three components of reciprocal teaching: summarizing, questioning, and predicting.
These were teacher-led activities for research purposes. Within a short period of time they were
asked to summarize and ask questions about what they have read and predict what might happen
later in the story. As the last activity in the while-reading stage, the participants were asked to
say what could be inferred from particular parts of the story.
During the postreading stage, the participants were asked to think aloud on the text to identify
possible comprehension problems and then answer questions such as “Why did Frances (Özlem
in the adjusted text) cry?”
Data Analysis
Marking the papers. Two independent raters marked the students’ papers for comprehension
only and ignored the grammatical mistakes in their answers to the open-ended questions in order
to minimize the effect of any variation among the students’ writing skills, as otherwise they
would have been assessing writing skills rather than reading comprehension. The ordering part of
the posttest was marked according to the Weighted Marking Protocol (Razı, 2005), which
enabled partial evaluation. The marking procedure in this protocol is based on correcting the
wrong order of events provided by the participants and reducing their marks with reference to
their mistakes. This protocol works on the basis of giving some marks to students even if they do
not put all the events in the right order, thus awarding partial success rather than giving no marks
at all.
Interrater reliability for marking the papers. The marks given to the students’ papers by the two
independent raters were analyzed through the Pearson Correlation Coefficient Test. A high
correlation coefficient was found between the two sets of marks, r = 89, p < .01, which was
considered to be consistent enough to proceed with further statistical analysis.
Statistical analysis. The participants’ posttest scores were analyzed by using ANOVA, and a
post-hoc LSD (least significant difference) test was employed to find out where the group
differences occurred. Cohen’s d was also used to calculate the effect size.
Results
The descriptive statistics are presented in Table 5. As can be seen, considerable differences
existed between the groups’ performances. The two groups that received the nativized version of
the story scored higher than the other two groups, with the AWA group being the most
successful.
The differences observed between different treatment conditions were statistically significant, F
= 6.85, p < .001. Group differences were examined through a post-hoc LSD Test. The results are
illustrated in Table 6.

Table 5. Mean scores of groups

Treatment condition N M SD
AWA 11 79.18 9.98
ANA 11 69.91 10.28
OWA 11 64.55 10.25
ONA 11 60.45 13.03
Note. ONA = Original text with no activities; OWA = Original text with activities;
ANA = Adjusted text with no activities; AWA = Adjusted text with activities.
Table 6. Results of the post-hoc LSD test on group differences

Conditions Mean Difference p Cohen’s d
ONA vs. OWA -5.00 .277 0.35
ONA vs. ANA -10.36* .028 0.81
ONA vs. AWA -19.64** .000 1.61
OWA vs. ANA -5.36 .244 0.52
OWA vs. AWA -14.64** .003 1.45
ANA vs. AWA -9.27* .048 0.92
Note. ONA = Original text with no activities; OWA = Original text with activities;
ANA = Adjusted text with no activities; AWA = Adjusted text with activities.
*p < .05. **p < .01.
As can be seen in Table 6, highly significant differences existed between the treatment groups.
The first hypothesis of this study (that cultural familiarity has a significant impact on reading
comprehension) was sufficiently supported by the between-group differences, which confirmed
that cultural familiarity did influence the students’ comprehension. The ANA group
outperformed (M = 69.91) the ONA group (M = 60.45), with a considerable effect size (d = 0.81).
The second pairing yielded even bigger differences: The AWA students (M = 79.18) did
significantly better than the OWA students (M = 64.55), indicating a large effect size (d = 1.45).
The second hypothesis (that although reading activities contribute to comprehension, the impact
of cultural familiarity remains a significant factor) was also supported by the results obtained
from the cross-comparisons between the groups. As expected, the AWA students (M = 79.18)
outperformed the ANA students (M = 69.91), showing the effects of reading activities on reading
comprehension. The difference also indicated a large effect size (d = 0.92). Similarly, the AWA
students also did much better than the ONA students (M = 60.45), with a large effect size (d =
1.61). However, the difference between the OWA and ONA students was not statistically
significant (d = 0.35), implying that the activities did not help comprehension much with the
original text. Similarly, no significant difference was observed between the OWA students and
the ANA students (d = 0.52). The students who read the original text with some activities (M =
64.55) did not perform significantly better than the students who read the adjusted text with no
activities (M = 69.91). Conversely, they did slightly worse.
Discussion
The present study aimed to investigate the effects of cultural familiarity on reading
comprehension as well as to discover whether activities can make up for possible gaps in
students’ relevant cultural schema, which is a common suggestion in the field.
With regard to the first question, the results confirmed what has been widely acknowledged as
the positive effect of background knowledge and cultural familiarity on reading comprehension
(e.g., Alderson, 2000; Alptekin, 2006; Ketchum, 2006; Oller, 1995; Pulido, 2003; Steffensen et
al., 1979). The difference between the two groups’ performances in comprehension suggested a
strong possibility that the students who read the nativized version of the story possessed relevant
cultural background knowledge, which reduced the cognitive load imposed by the complex
reading procedures (Perfetti, 1985) on the memory system (Baddeley, 1997; Ellis, 2001; Kintsch,
1998; McLaughlin et al., 1983), as opposed to the students who had to deal with unfamiliar
cultural content and visualize the script in their minds. In the culturally familiar version, where
the text was nativized, the students seemed to find it easier to allocate attentional resources to
more linguistic elements and construct mental representations of the familiar context. In contrast,
it was much more difficult for the students to create mental representations of the unfamiliar
context, which prevented the economical use of attentional resources.
The effect of cultural familiarity may also be related to motivational issues, although studies in
this area are few. Recent work on attitudes and motivation has shown that motivation is related
to achievement (e.g., Dörnyei, 2003), involving many factors such as ownership and interest
(Williams & Burden, 1997). In the realm of reading research, two types of interest have been
proposed as contributing to motivation, namely, personal interest and situational interest
(Alexander & Jetton, 2000). The first is related to one’s general approach to reading while the
latter is generated by the text. The latter category can be of practical value in explaining the
variable performances of the students in this study.
The students in the nativized story group might have enjoyed the situational interest aroused by
the text. Tomlinson (1998), for example, maintained that when students see elements of their
local culture in classroom materials, they feel much more engaged and identify themselves with
the context of the text. Such a personal appeal has also been shown as one of the sources of
situational interest (Schraw, Bruning, & Svoboda, 1995). Thus, students in the nativized-story
groups might have found the version much more appealing than those in the original-version
groups, which had no local reference at all. Such an appeal might, in turn, have contributed to
higher levels of motivation (Dörnyei, 2003, 2005; Harter, 1981; Williams & Burden, 1997) and
thus led to a better reading comprehension (e.g., Guthrie, Wigfield, Metsala, & Cox, 1999;
Wigfield, 1997).
As for the effects of the activities, one cannot deny their value in the process of reading
comprehension, though this study did not aim to compare the effectiveness of the activities as
such. In fact, the activities did contribute to comprehension significantly; however, this effect
varied noticeably. The differences between the ANA and AWA groups pointed to the positive
effects of reading activities. The insignificant difference between the ONA and OWA groups and
the inferior performance of the OWA group compared to the ANA group were interesting.
Further, there was a considerable difference between the OWA and ANA groups. The activities
used in this study were probably not adequate in compensating for the gaps in cultural familiarity
between the two groups. Nor did they make the OWA group’s comprehension better than that of
the ONA group, or even that of the ANA group, as compared to the significant difference

observed in between the AWA group and the ANA group. This was probably because the gaps in
cultural knowledge were so big that the activities used with the OWA group did not make much
difference in activating the necessary schema. Contrary to the groups that read the original story,
the significant difference observed between the AWA group and the ANA group can be
attributed to the activities that built on an already active conceptual infrastructure (or macro-level
features). With such available schematic resources, the activities could fulfill the functions
ascribed to them, which were not possible with the original story groups. The nativized version
of the story is very likely to have facilitated the mental representation so that the students did not
need extra activities to activate the background knowledge. This enabled optimum allocation of
attention to micro-level features.
Conclusion and Implications
Two conclusions, with some caveats described below, can be drawn from this study. Firstly,
cultural familiarity facilitates comprehension. Secondly, although reading activities do activate
schematic knowledge and promote strategic reading behaviors, the influence of cultural
familiarity remains intact. Therefore, if readers lack the relevant cultural schema, reading
activities cannot fully compensate for the discrepancy or help readers comprehend a text.
This study is not without limitations. Firstly, this study was not designed to measure the
effectiveness of individual reading activities. Instead, the use of reading activities was
instrumental in investigating the influence of cultural schema on reading comprehension. Further,
the selection of the activities used in this study was not based on experimental scrutiny; rather, it
was based upon pedagogical descriptions provided in the field. Therefore, different activities
aiming at providing more background knowledge and further elaboration on texts may yield
different results.
Care also needs to be taken in interpreting the results of this study. Although efforts were made
to homogenize the groups on the basis of their GPA scores, more standardized tests of
proficiency such as TOEFL or IELTS could have contributed to more homogeneous sampling of
the groups. Further, recent research on reading processes and the variables involved suggests
motivational and attitudinal factors are related to reading comprehension. These elements were
not taken into account in this study. A better-controlled measurement could shed further light on
the phenomenon. Finally, the study was conducted with a small sample of students. A larger
sample could tolerate individual variations better in statistical analysis.
Despite these limitations, the results of this study have important pedagogical implications.
Given the fact that the scores were higher with the nativized version of the story, materials that
contain references to local elements or have personal relevance can produce a facilitative
influence and can be useful in language classes. However, it may not always be possible, nor is it
always desirable, to use texts only with direct local or personal references. Thus, one cannot
underestimate the importance of activities in the process of reading.
This study did not investigate the efficiency of a single pedagogical intervention in promoting
reading comprehension. Rather, it focused on whether the use of a set of activities could

contribute to comprehension. Therefore, the study cannot endorse one activity over another.
However, the fact that the groups that read the text and also did the activities performed better
than the groups that did not do the activities suggests that the reading teacher should make use of
class activities. Related to the scope of this study, it would not be unwarranted to propose that
activities that can tap into cultural knowledge or provide cultural knowledge, such as using
visual aids, previewing, pre-questioning, and brainstorming, can help readers comprehend better.
More research is needed to see whether such activities or combinations of such activities can
help readers in foreign language reading classes.
A related issue concerned the teacher dominance during the activities for this research. Because
of the whole-class fashion in conducting the reading class, this study could not observe how
individual learners performed in the activities and what cognitive processes they went through.
Future research that implements introspective research methods for data collection may obtain a
clearer picture of the interactions between cultural familiarity and comprehension as well as the
contributions of individual activities to the reading process. Finally, it would be useful to learn
how instruction can be adjusted to encourage more reader autonomy so that readers can take
responsibility for comprehension of culturally familiar or unfamiliar texts.
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our gratitude to Professor Cem Alptekin, our colleague Ece Zehir
Topkaya, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the earlier versions
of the paper. We also thank İbrahim Aksu for proofreading the text.
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Appendix A
Examples of Nativization
Original short story Nativized short story

Fifth Avenue was shining in the sun when they Kordonboyu was shining in the sun when they
left the Brevoort and started walking toward left Barışkent and started walking toward
Washington Square. Republic Square.
“First let’s go see a football game. A professional “First let’s go see a basketball game – Turkey
football game,” Frances said, because she knew Championship of women. A professional
Michael loved to watch them. “The Giants are basketball game,” Özlem said, because she knew
playing. And it’ll be nice to be outside all day Coşkun loved to watch them. “Fenerbahçe are
today and get hungry and later we’ll go down to playing. And it’ll be nice to be outside all day
Cavanagh’s and get a steak as big as a today and get hungry and later we’ll go down to
blacksmith’s apron, with a bottle of wine, and Albatros Fish Restaurant and get a fish as big as
after that, there’s a new French picture at the a man’s arm, with a big bottle of rakı, and after
Filmarte that everybody says... Say, are you that, there’s a new Turkish picture - O Şimdi
listening to me?” Asker - at the AFM that everybody says... Say,
They joined hands consciously and walked are you listening to me?”
without talking among the baby carriages and the They joined hands consciously and walked
old Italian men in their Sunday clothes and the without talking among the baby carriages and the
young women with Scotties in Washington old ANZAC tourists jogging along Kordonboyu.
Square Park.
“I love the way women look. One of the things I “I love the way women look. One of the things I
like best about New York is the battalions of like best about Çanakkale is the battalions of
women. When I first came to New York from women. When I first came to Çanakkale from
Ohio that was the first thing I noticed, the million Erzurum that was the first thing I noticed, the
wonderful women, all over the city. I walked thousands of wonderful women, all over the city.
around with my heart in my throat.” I walked around with my heart in my throat.”
“I like the girls in the offices. Neat, with their “I like the girls in the offices. Neat, with their
eyeglasses, smart, chipper, knowing what eyeglasses, smart, chipper, knowing what
everything is about, taking care of themselves all everything is about, taking care of themselves all
the time.” He kept his eye on the people going the time.” He kept his eye on the people going
slowly past outside the window. “I like the girls slowly past outside the window. “I like the girls
on Forty-fourth Street at lunchtime, the actresses, at Küçümen at lunchtime, the university students,
all dressed up on nothing a week, talking to the all dressed up on nothing a week, talking to the
good-looking boys, wearing themselves out good-looking boys, wearing themselves out
being young and vivacious outside Sardi’s, being young and vivacious outside Lodos Disco,
waiting for producers to look at them. I like the trying to forget all about lessons. I like the
salesgirls in Macy’s, paying attention to you first salesgirls at Gima, paying attention to you first
because you’re a man, leaving lady customers because you’re a man, leaving lady customers
waiting, flirting with you over socks and books waiting, flirting with you over socks and dried
and phonograph needles. I got all this stuff fruits and cakes. I got all this stuff accumulated
accumulated in me because I’ve been thinking in me because I’ve been thinking about it for ten
about it for ten years and now you’ve asked for it years and now you’ve asked for it and here it is.”
and here it is.”

Appendix B
Examples of Recall Test Items
TRUE/FALSE ITEMS
Write (T) if the given statement is true; write (F) if it is false; and write (NG) if it is not mentioned in the
story.
…… Michael & Frances have known each other for two years.
…… The Stevensons know what Michael feels for other women.
…… Michael looks at other women only in the streets.
…… Frances feels good all day when she has breakfast with Michael.
…… The Stevensons will come to the bar to pick them up.
PUT THE FOLLOWING EVENTS INTO ORDER
Below are eight statements from the short story you have just read. Put them into the correct order of
happening. Write number in parentheses.
(…..)They walked to a bar on Eight Street.

(…..)Frances began to cry, silently, into her handkerchief.
(…..)Frances & Michael had slept late and had a good breakfast.
(…..)They decided to call the Stevensons.
(…..)They started to walk from the Brevoort toward Washington Square.
(…..)Frances got up from the table and walked across the room.
(…..)Frances planned a day of activities that Michael will enjoy.
(…..)Frances asked Michael to stop talking about women and to keep it to himself.
SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS
1. Why does Frances want to take Michael to a football match?

2. Why does Frances feel good on that Sunday morning?
3. How has Michael physically changed since he moved from Ohio?
4. What does Michael do when something bad happens?
5. What is the favor that Frances asks Michael to do for her?
About the Authors
İsmail Hakkı Erten is an assistant professor in the ELT Department of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart
University, Turkey. His main research interests include second language acquisition, vocabulary
acquisition, reading comprehension, and individual differences in language learning. Address for
correspondence: Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Faculty of Education, Anafartalar Campus,
17100 Çanakkale, Turkey. E-mail: iherten@gmail.com

Salim Razı is an instructor of English and a PhD candidate. He works in the ELT Department of
Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey. His research interests include reading
comprehension, assessing reading, and metacognitive reading strategies. Address for
correspondence: Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Faculty of Education, Anafartalar Campus,
17100 Çanakkale, Turkey. E-mail: salimrazi@gmail.com

ISSN 1539-0578 pp. 78–82
Reviewed work:
English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom (2nd

ed.). (2007). Barbara M. Birch. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pp. 236 + xiii.
ISBN 0805859292. $26.96
Reviewed by
Handoyo Puji Widodo and Zhiling Wu
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
United States
http://www.leaonline.com/
The first edition of English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom was granted the California
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages 2004 David E. Eskey Award for Curricular
Innovation. In the second edition, the author has made further changes and updates in response to
ongoing reading research as well as requests from readers of the previous edition. This revised
volume shows the author’s continued commitment to professional innovation in the field of
second language (L2) reading, learning, and teaching.
In L2 reading classrooms, as Treiman (2001) points out, bottom-up and top-down approaches
and methodologies complement one another. While proponents of the whole-language approach
argue that top-down processing plays an important role in reading, Barbara Birch’s book
primarily aims to address insightful issues on the importance of bottom-up processing for L2
readers, as the title of the book shows. For this reason, this volume is a valuable resource for
practitioners and teachers of English as a second language (ESL) or English as a foreign
language (EFL) who emphasize accuracy in their reading classrooms.
This review attempts to complement the previous review by Jen Tindale published by Reading in
a Foreign Language in 2002 so as to help readers stay current with the new edition of the text.
Widodo & Wu: Review of the book English L2 Reading 79
We commence with the questions “How do the first and second editions of the volume differ?”
or “What changes has the author made?” These inquiries are especially useful for readers who
have already read the book or would like to complement the first edition. As the author claims,
“this edition is intended to be a more reader-friendly version of the first edition. The content of
each chapter is much the same, but the organization is made clearer for the student and the few
errors are corrected” (p. ix).
Overall, Birch has made seven main changes: (a) more detailed accounts of alphabets, writing
systems, and history of written English and spelling; (b) extended discussion about the cognition
of written language and reading transfer; (c) augmentation of phonemic, vocal, subvocal, and
articulatory development and L2 reading processing along with instructional activities and
strategies for teaching these skills in the classroom; (d) elaboration of the concepts of graphs and
graphemes; (e) development of the probabilistic-reasoning section in the context of L2 reading;
(f) the most recent account of brain activation studies; and (g) reading fluency.
Like the first edition, this second edition of the volume comprises 10 chapters along with three
main appendices (one about English graphemes, another on English phonemes and their
principal spellings, and a third providing a workbook supplement). Each of the chapters starts
with prereading discussions and study guide questions, which arouse interest and activate
readers’ background knowledge of the topics discussed in that chapter. Furthermore, the author
provides discussion questions at the end of each chapter; such questions enable readers to
interact with the text and help them apply the concepts presented in each chapter. Another
feature of the book is “Spotlight on Teaching” in chapters 4–9, which is aimed at helping readers
design classroom activities based on the theoretical accounts discussed in the book.
In chapter 1, “The Expert Decision Maker,” the author sees reading as an interactive (top-down
and bottom-up) process. Reading involves information flowing upward and downward if readers
are to comprehend a certain text effectively. In short, this chapter shows the complexity of
proficient reading. Based on Goodman’s (1967) notion of reading as a psycholinguistic guessing
game, Birch argues that it is indispensable for readers to develop their L2 linguistic knowledge
and employ different reading strategies in order to become effective and interactive information
processors and expert decision makers.
Compared to the first edition of the book, chapter 2, “Writing Systems,” provides more
elaboration on alphabets and writing systems of different languages (e.g., Chinese, Japanese,
Korean, and Hebrew). In this respect, the author contends that the L2 reading literature gives
little attention to the importance of first language (L1) writing systems. In the classroom, this
issue is worth addressing, particularly when L1 and L2 do not share the same writing systems
like Chinese-English or Thai-English. The author also promotes the idea that L2 writing systems
play a crucial role in L2 learners’ reading development.
In chapter 3, Birch addresses the compelling issue of the role of transfer from L1 to L2, and she
raises the questions of whether L1 and L2 readers with different writing systems develop
different knowledge and processing strategies and whether these strategies transfer from L1 to
L2. The discussion of such issues is presented along with four sample cases of speakers of

Spanish, Greek, Arabic, and Chinese. These two issues certainly remind reading teachers of the
important role of the cognitive dimension of L2 reading learning and acquisition.
The fourth chapter highlights the relationship between listening comprehension and reading.
Birch argues that compared with accurate pronunciation, accurate listening comprehension
correlates more with reading comprehension. She also argues that “pronunciation, in fact, only
comes into play in oral reading” (p. 66). Further, the “Spotlight on Teaching” section following
this chapter provides sample ideas about how to improve reading proficiency through listening
practice.
In chapter 5, the author emphasizes the need for gaining knowledge of graphemes and practicing
different low-level strategies for recognizing graphs. Unlike the first edition, the current edition
touches on discussions on reading speed, pattern recognition, and word recognition at the
bottom-up level. Birch argues that these aspects play crucial roles in helping L2 readers to be
proficient and effective at further reading levels.
In the sixth chapter, Birch goes into a discussion of the English writing system, which she labels
as “opaque” in that “the correspondence between graphemes and phonemes is not one-to-one” (p.
87). This opaqueness is owing to borrowings and other historical changes in English. For this
reason, as she notes, some reading teachers choose not to teach the English writing system
because it is inconsistent and complex. However, in doing so, they devalue how direct
instruction and positive attitudes of teachers towards the English writing system can facilitate
English L2 readers in enhancing their reading abilities. Another fascinating argument in this
chapter concerns the use of probabilistic reasoning, the ability to take advantage of certain
graphic consistencies and then use knowledge of the probability of these consistencies as a
particular processing strategy to read graphs in English. As a whole, the author encourages
classroom teachers, in this chapter, to see the learnability of the English writing system and the
tangible benefits of direct instruction on it.
The seventh chapter addresses three phonics methodologies: a synthetic method, a linguistic
method, and smart phonics. From these methodologies, the author argues that phonics is
eminently teachable if teachers substantially understand how learners read. More important,
Birch argues that phonics instruction complements the whole-language-reading movement. The
remaining sections of the chapter touch on reading strategies (i.e., meaning-based, partially-
alphabetic, and fully-alphabetic strategies). Several succinct ideas about ESL reading instruction
are offered, which may fit in well for reading teachers who work with beginning learners.
Chapter 8 discusses morphological processes in English; the author briefly examines different
features of English morphology along with a comparison of morphology in other languages.
Further, because of the differences between English morphology and that of various L1s, Birch
looks into how different reading strategies are employed in L2 reading comprehension. When
working with nonnative English-speaking learners, direct instruction in English morphology,
even though it is time consuming, may help them understand how English words are constructed.
The ultimate benefit of morphology-based instruction is that learners may use English
morphological cues in reading or in guessing certain unknown words, thereby reducing readers’
cognitive loads in some way.

Chapter 9, “Vocabulary Acquisition,” is a crucial chapter of the book. This issue is paramount in
discussing a bottom-up-oriented approach to reading even though “it is not always obvious how
reading comprehension relates to vocabulary acquisition in the classroom” (p. 144). This chapter
addresses various issues such as top-down strategies of vocabulary acquisition, learner variables
in vocabulary acquisition, lexical variables in vocabulary acquisition, and strategies of word
learning. These issues represent what novice ESL or EFL learners face in L2 reading. The author
emphasizes that vocabulary should be taught efficiently in a reading class so as to “empower
students to be active human word processors” (p. 163). More importantly, vocabulary should be
seen as comprehensible lexical input for learners to acquire new vocabularies using different
word-learning strategies and in turn to enhance their reading comprehension (Hunt & Beglar,
2005).
In closing the volume, the author explores two other issues in chapter 10: (a) effects of
instruction on brain activation and (b) reading fluency in English L2 reading. Such issues reflect
how this edition of the book differs from the first edition and how recent research in these areas
makes a contribution to further understandings of learners’ reading comprehension as a whole.
Birch elaborates on silent reading fluency and fluent oral reading along with useful suggestions
for improving oral reading strategies. Finally, Birch asserts that rapid reading can come more
easily for learners at a later learning stage. In the process of becoming more fluent readers, due
attention should be paid to the bottom-up ESL reading. These statements indicate the importance
of bottom-up L2 reading instruction as the starting point for further L2 reading development.
On the whole, with the additions and changes made by Birch, this current volume provides a
more practical guide for ESL and EFL practitioners. However, the book focuses heavily on the
linguistic and cognitive aspects of L2 reading, and it does not make clear how social dimensions
of L1 and L2 co-contribute to reading development and how a reader balances lower-level with
higher-level processing strategies. The second limitation of the book is that the author does not
address how the bottom-up reading model may be facilitated by noticing activities. These
cognitively oriented activities may complement the linguistic dimension highlighted in the book
(Schmidt, 2001).
Although Birch provides counterarguments to some of the widely-held ideas in the literature on
reading throughout the book, it would also be valuable to see more theoretically and empirically-
grounded discussions (i.e., the relationship between listening and reading among English L2
readers). A case in point is the author’s inconclusive tone when providing suggestions on the
phonemic awareness of the four hypothetical English L2 readers. Another limitation of the book
is that Birch provides little space for the use of the strategies for skipping unknown words in
English L2 reading.
Notwithstanding these limitations, this second edition of Barbara Birch’s English L2 Reading:
Getting to the Bottom is a good resource for teachers whose goal is to help learners improve their
English L2 reading abilities through a bottom-up approach. It is a practical guide for reading
teachers who wish to make use of basic linguistic knowledge to help students develop their
reading skills. The notions presented are compatible with the findings of Nassaji (2003) that
lower-level text processing skills are important for advanced ESL readers and, in addition, bring

potential benefits for beginning or intermediate English L2 readers, as Birch points out in both
editions of the book.
References
Goodman, K. S. (1967). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. Journal of the Reading

Specialist, 6, 126–135.
Hunt, A., & Beglar, D. (2005). A framework for developing EFL reading vocabulary. Reading in
Nassaji, H. (2003). Higher-level and lower-level text processing skills in advanced ESL reading
comprehension. The Modern Language Journal, 87, 261–275.
Schmidt, R. W. (2001). Attention. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language
instruction (pp. 3–32). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Tindale, J. (2002). [Review of the book English L2 Reading: Getting to the bottom]. Reading in
Treiman, R. (2001). Reading. In M. Aronoff & J. Rees-Miller (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of
linguistics (pp. 664–672). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
About the Reviewers
Handoyo Puji Widodo, a tenured lecturer at Politeknik Negeri Jember, has taught EFL courses in
Indonesia and is currently a Fulbright scholar working on an MA in TESOL at Indiana
University of Pennsylvania. He has published a number of articles and book reviews in refereed
professional journals in the areas of ESP and language teaching methodology in Indonesia, India,
Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United States. Email: handoyopw@yahoo.com
Zhiling Wu is a doctoral student in the Composition and TESOL Program at the Department of
English, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her professional and research interests include
second language reading, sociolinguistics, and second language assessment. Email:
fkkm@iup.edu

ISSN 1539-0578 pp. 83–87
Reviewed work:
Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity,

Agency, and Power. (2007). Cynthia Lewis, Patricia E.
Enciso, & Elizabeth Birr Moje (Eds.). Mahwah, N.J.:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pp. 205. ISBN
080585696X. $29.95
Reviewed by
Michael Thomas Witten
Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla
Mexico
http://www.leaonline.com/
This volume argues that sociocultural theory does not adequately address issues of identity,
agency, and power. The editors, Cynthia Lewis, Patricia E. Enciso, and Elizabeth Birr Moje,
claim that these issues are highly relevant to the sociocultural practices of literacy learning and
literacy research. The book primarily examines and critiques issues related to sociocultural
research processes. It is divided into two parts: “Rethinking Conceptual Frameworks” and
“Rethinking Knowledge and Representation.” Part 1 argues, at times rather convincingly, that
concepts traditionally associated with sociocultural theory, such as identity, agency, and power,
are often underconceptualized and require further theoretical consideration as well as more
sophisticated analytical treatment within sociocultural research. Part 2 argues that the privileged
position of the researcher as knowledge producer must become more reflexive, challenging
researchers to acknowledge their “motivational relevancies” (Sarangi & Candlin, 2001, p. 19).
Literacy is a concept that can be defined in broad or narrow terms, yet none of the authors of this
volume provide an explicit definition for readers. This seems problematic since the title of the
book leads readers to believe that literacy is one of its central themes. This may or may not be
the case, depending on how one conceptualizes literacy, since the authors neglect to make a case
of their own as to how literacy should be defined. However, this omission is probably intentional
since the term seems to be conceptualized differently by the various authors throughout the book.
Sometimes the term is referred to as “reading and writing” (p. 3) but usually left undefined and
Witten: Review of the book Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy 84
elusive, seeming to take on a meaning of literacy in a very broad sense—as ways of thinking,
knowing, being, experiencing, or learning.
The book is influenced by the writings of a wide number of authors (Bakhtin, Bourdieu,
Engestrom, Fairclough, Foucault, Gee, Lave, Volosinov, Vygotsky, and Wertsch, to name only a
few) who represent a wide number of disciplines (literacy education, social and cultural
psychology, educational anthropology, sociology, and applied linguistics among others). From
these influences, the book adopts, adapts, and pieces together, in a complementary manner,
various conceptual and analytical frameworks. It advocates attempting to provide more sensitive
analyses to sociocultural research through a multidisciplinary approach to exploring the literacy
practices of individuals within highly contextualized research settings.
The book is divided into seven chapters, each chapter written by one or more different authors.
Chapter 1 provides a rationale for the volume as the editors attempt to justify the need for
reframing sociocultural research on literacy. Chapters 2–4 make up Part I of the volume and
specifically address the authors’ perceptions of the shortcomings of sociocultural research
regarding concepts such as “activity,” “history,” and “communities of practice” (p. 9). Chapters
5–7 make up Part II of the volume and call attention to the authors’ perceived need for a
reflexive focus on research relationships, specifically examining issues of power, identity, and
agency in sociocultural research and how these “elements shape the production of knowledge in
literacy research” (p. 9). Most of these chapters present a sample analysis from a larger research
project that the authors have conducted in an attempt to illustrate how innovative
multidisciplinary methodological frameworks can address shortcomings that exist in
sociocultural investigation.
In chapter 1, “Introduction: Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy,” the editors establish

the participating authors of the entire book as advocates of sociocultural theory, whose work is
based mostly on Vygotsky (1978), but quickly move to point out the “gaps” in sociocultural
research that investigators need to address and the “new directions” (p. 5) that researchers might
take in order to accomplish this. The authors effectively create a niche for the following chapters
to fill as they construct a convincing intellectual argument for sociocultural research to adopt a
more critical lens and incorporate methodological techniques that better account for issues such
as identity, agency, and power.
In chapter 2, “Examining Opportunities to Learn: The Role of Critical Sociocultural Literacy

Research,” Elizabeth Birr Moje and Cynthia Lewis argue that both teachers’ and students’
opportunities to learn are supported and constrained by the systems and structures within the
institution of schooling. They provide a description of an innovative methodological framework
that combines analytical principles from distinct perspectives including activity theory (based on
Engeström, 1999), cultural studies (based on Radway, 1984; Fiske, 1994), and critical discourse
theories (based on Fairclough, 1992). This framework is partially illustrated through an example
from classroom data. The authors use this example to demonstrate how to examine the
subjectivities of teachers and learners, identity enactments and recognitions, and moments of
(non)agency that are embedded within classroom activities. In this chapter, the authors provide
the kind of copious description of contexts, methodological principles, and evidence for their
conclusions that permit readers to perceive the investigation as rigorous science. Furthermore,

the constant integration of the participants’ voices within the research allows their human
qualities to remain visible, providing a strong rationale for engaging in this type of research
practice.
In chapter 3, “Reframing History in Sociocultural Theories: Toward an Expansive Vision,”

Patricia E. Enciso argues that “too often in sociocultural research and practice, the language and
imagery associated with meanings of history create the illusion of a unified, equitable, and
accessible past” (p. 50), which she views as problematic since sociocultural theory “is rooted in
the understanding that histories of objects, ideas, and practices are produced and remade for
particular purposes in the present” (p. 50). This becomes particularly problematic when one
accepts the inevitable truth that racism and discrimination are historical resources widely
available in society. Drawing on various critical theories such as poststructural feminist, literary,
cultural, queer, and critical race, Enciso advocates the consideration of paradoxes, absences, and
incommensurable meaning in history “that are not normally accounted for in sociocultural
models of teaching and learning” (p. 51). While Enciso draws on data from a research project
conducted with pre-service teachers and certainly provides an intellectually stimulating argument
that is well supported by academic literature, she fails to provide the appropriate amount of
research context and integration of participants’ voices that would allow readers to feel confident
in the conclusions that are drawn. This is probably the result of trying to do too much in too little
space, resulting in a stimulating and critical review of literature, yet an unconvincing illustration
of data analysis to complement it.
In chapter 4, “‘As if You Heard it From Your Mamma’: Redesigning Histories of Participation
With Literacy Education in an Adult Education Class,” Rebecca Rogers and Carolyn Fuller
engage with Wenger’s (1998) notion of community of practice, defining it as “a unit where
people share mutual engagement, a joint enterprise, and a shared repertoire (or actions, stories,
and artifacts)” (p. 79). They argue that most sociocultural accounts of communities of practice
fail to recognize that these units “consist of ideologically laden sets of beliefs, actions, and
assumptions” (p. 79). The researcher-teachers shared data from a 1-year, collaborative, critical
ethnographic research project that took place in an all-African-American General Education
Development (GED) classroom. The authors claim that within this context the students’
unsuccessful past experiences with school evoke expectations of what schooling, instruction, and
learning might or might not consist of. When an innovative pedagogy in the classroom conflicts
with learners’ expectations, “their vision of what education is supposed to look like is
challenged” (p. 95) and in many cases redesigned, providing a significant impact on the learners’
lives. This chapter provides ample description of the research process as well as intellectually
stimulating argumentation for the development of the authors’ theoretical framework, while
incorporating the participants’ voices throughout the sample analysis. The authors provide a
convincing argument for engaging in this kind of critical, sociocultural, ethnographic research
and demonstrate its relevance in society.
In chapter 5, “Moving Words and Worlds: Reflections From ‘the Middle’,” Marjorie Faulstich
Orellana examines the notion of “cultural mismatch” or “how children from nondominant
backgrounds negotiate the discontinuities and tensions between their home and school lives” (p.
124). She argues that sociocultural research has traditionally focused on how individuals move
across contexts, implying that separability of individuals from their context is possible. She

challenges this notion and argues that individuals and contexts are mutually constituted, and
“when people move between discourse communities they bring their contexts with them,
fundamentally altering the nature of the new spaces” (p. 126). While this is certainly not a new
idea within the circles of critical discourse analysis (see Fairclough, 1992), Orellana goes on to
suggest that, occasionally, social worlds “move in on people” (p. 128). Drawing on data gathered
with immigrant youth translators and interpreters, she provides a reasonably convincing
illustration of how social worlds can impose themselves on individuals—in this case, children
given the unfortunate role of translator. However, the author provides very little information to
readers about the research process, making it difficult to evaluate the scientific rigor of the
investigation.
In chapter 6, “Out of the Valley: Transcultural Repositioning as a Rhetorical Practice in

Ethnographic Research and Other Aspects of Everyday Life,” Juan C. Guerra presents a
discussion of “transcultural repositioning” (p. 138), which refers to the way that individuals
navigate complex rhetorical situations by performing multiple or hybrid identities in shifting
sociocultural contexts. He rather questionably argues that disenfranchised peoples are more
likely to cultivate this ability than representatives of dominant cultures, and he reflects upon his
own ability to engage in the rhetorical practice of transcultural repositioning by providing
autobiographical accounts of the shifting sociocultural contexts in which he has participated over
the course of his life. While the narratives are interesting, the chapter seems to lack focus as
Guerra concludes by reflecting on the rhetorical challenges he faces as he prepares to undertake
an auto-ethnographic study. Guerra mentions that in sharing the story of his life, he is concerned
that it may seem “gratuitous” and “self-indulgent” (p. 157); and by the end of the chapter, he
comes close to realizing this concern. While he raises some reasonable concerns throughout the
chapter, it falls short of a convincing, coherent argument for readers.
In chapter 7, “Learning to Play and Playing to Learn: Research Sites as Transactional Spaces,”
Bob Fecho and Shuaib Meacham, influenced mostly by Vygotsky (1978), Rosenblatt (1994), and
Bakhtin (1981), argue that “communities within which research is conducted are transactional
sites where the academic and local communities mutually shape new texts” (p. 165), and this
viewpoint opens researchers to learning that is “multidimensional, polyphonic, and mutually
transformative” (p. 165). The authors provide a thorough description of their theoretical
framework and demonstrate its relevance through an illustrative data analysis. By providing
readers with a thick description of the research context and by faithfully incorporating the voices
of their research participants as well as the voices of the researchers, these authors construct a
strong argument for their belief that educational research is an interpretative activity, “done by
humans, with humans, for humans . . . and therefore should be both humane and social” (p. 185),
allowing both the research community and the researchers to construct new purpose and meaning
through the transaction.
The volume is well organized and contains few typographical errors. It provides two useful
indexes: an author index and a subject index. The volume is clearly intended for critical scholars
and researchers in the social sciences. Most of the chapters provide an intellectually stimulating
yet quite challenging read, due to the sophisticated nature of the subject matter. I would
recommend this book to investigators and graduate students who are interested in performing
sociocultural research.

References
Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press.
Engeström, Y. (1999). Activity theory and individual and social transformation. In Y. Engeström,
R. Miettinen, & R.-L. Punamaki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 19–38).
Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
Fiske, J. (1994). Audiencing: Cultural practice and cultural studies. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S.
Lincoln (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research (pp. 189–198). Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.
Radway, J. (1984). Reading the romance: Women, patriarchy and popular literature. Chapel
Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Rosenblatt, L. M. (1994). The transactional theory of reading and writing. In R. Ruddell, M.
Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th ed., pp.
1057–1092), Newark, DE: IRA.
Sarangi, S., & Candlin, C. N. (2001). Motivational relevancies: Some methodological reflections
on social theoretical and sociolinguistic practice. In N. Coupland, S. Sarangi, & C. N.
Candlin (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and social theory (pp. 350–388). London: Pearson.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, identity. Cambridge, England:
About the Reviewer
Michael Witten is a full-time professor at the School of Languages at the Benemérita

Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico. He has an MA in Applied Linguistics from Kings
College, London, and is currently completing a doctorate of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie
University in Sydney. His main interests include critical discourse analysis, literacy, and teacher
education. E-mail: michaelwitten3@yahoo.com

ISSN 1539-0578 pp. 88–92
Reviewed work:
Teaching Reading to English Language Learners:

A Reflective Guide. (2009). Thomas S. C. Farrell.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Pp. 120. ISBN
9781412957359. $23.95
Reviewed by
Alex Poole
Western Kentucky University
United States
http://www.corwinpress.com/
As the director of a teaching English as a second language (TESL) program, I serve the needs of
current and future teachers with disparate professional goals. On the one hand, there are those
whose goal is to teach limited English proficiency (LEP) children in P-12 (i.e., preschool-12th
grade) settings in the United States. On the other hand, there are students who wish to teach
adults in community colleges in the United States and universities abroad. For the former group,
there are scores of texts, many of which include information on curriculum issues, child
development, and assessment, in addition to second language (L2) reading methods. Moreover,
such texts integrate national reading standards as well as relatively new federal requirements
outlined by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy. However, for the latter group, most of
whom have no need to learn about P-12 issues, there are few texts that simultaneously explain
the theoretical foundations of L2 literacy development and provide practical tools to implement
reading instruction to adult learners of English as a second or foreign language. Fortunately,
Thomas S. C. Farrell’s Teaching Reading to English Language Learners: A Reflective Guide is a
resource that fills this dearth.
The book contains nine chapters, the first of which touches on the variables that influence the
rate and route of L2 reading development, and then summarizes all subsequent chapters. Chapter
Poole: Review of the book Teaching Reading to English Language Learners 89
2 asks readers to articulate their view of how L2 reading acquisition occurs, which leads into a
discussion of various instructional models. The following four chapters concern fluency and
comprehension, reading strategies, text structure, and vocabulary, respectively. Each chapter
reviews the relevant literature and provides suggestions for instruction. Chapter 7 gives future
teachers guidelines for developing reading lessons and curricula, while chapter 8 explains
extensive reading (ER) and discusses its role in the curriculum. Finally, chapter 9 condenses the
types of traditional and alternative classroom reading assessments available to teachers.
In this review, rather than detailing each chapter in the entire book, I will instead point out its
positive and negative features with reference to specific chapters. Overall, the text is a worthy
investment because it presents essential aspects of L2 reading theory and instruction, is clearly
written, contains illustrative graphics, and incorporates useful reflection questions. However, the
lack of resources for further reading, commonsensical nature of some of its sections, and absence
of issues related to public school children limit the text’s usefulness.
First, each chapter details an essential aspect of L2 reading theory and instruction of which many
new teachers are probably not aware. For instance, in chapter 1, “Teaching Reading to ELLs,”
Farrell discusses the reasons why English language learners (ELLs) have difficulty reading in
English, highlighting areas such as first language (L1) and L2 dissimilarities, age, learning styles,
and cultural schemata. In addition, he points out that L2 learners’ reading strategies and habits
will be influenced not only by the text structures in their L1 but also by their beliefs about the
reading process in general.
Similarly, chapter 2, “Reflecting on the Reading Process,” deals with fundamental ways in which
reading is thought to occur. Specifically, Farrell shows how top-down, bottom-up, and
interactive processing models account for literacy development in an L2, thereby helping to
dispel the widely-held belief among novice teachers, in my experience, that there is a singular
best way in which reading instruction should take place.
In chapter 3, “Teaching Reading Fluency and Comprehension to ELLs,” Farrell discusses the
counterintuitive fact that learners who read slowly and avoid errors are just as likely to
misunderstand text as those who read rapidly with many errors. This point is especially
important because experience has shown me that many new teachers believe that errors—
grammatical, lexical, reading, pronunciation, or otherwise—reflect a poverty of L2 competence
rather than a natural process in L2 development, which more than three decades of L2 research
has taught us (Mitchell & Myles, 1998).
The ninth chapter, “Authentic Reading Assessment for ELLs,” not only informs teachers about
the traditional forms of assessment, such as multiple-choice, short-answer, and essay tests, but
also discusses alternative and authentic types of assessment, like portfolios, peer assessments,
and self-reports. Particularly strong was his explanation of how teachers can use anecdotal
records to inform instruction and grading, an area which is not given enough attention in most
reading and language testing texts.
Second, Farrell’s treatment of the crucial features of L2 reading theory and instruction is also
praiseworthy because his explanations are simple, avoid jargon that non-specialists will find

confusing, and are mainly free of citations of methodologically complex empirical research. In
chapter 1, for instance, Farrell introduces the topic of contrastive analysis without even
mentioning the term, but instead uses language that captures its essence without requiring the
reader to constantly consult an applied linguistics dictionary: “Another aspect of linguistic
differences between two languages that teachers of ELLs may want to consider, because it may
influence second language reading comprehension, concerns the differences between the ELLs’
first language and the second/subsequent language they are learning to read, in this case English”
(p. 4).
Further examples of such clarity are found in chapters 3 and 4, in which he addresses the topics
of schema and reading strategies, respectively. Specifically, when talking about schema, Farrell
offers a clear explanation not only of what it is and how it affects students’ reading
comprehension, but also of how new teachers can incorporate this information into curricula and
lesson plans. With regard to reading strategies, Farrell’s account includes a theoretical rationale
of why such strategies are important for successful reading, and a discussion of the goals of
strategy instruction. The most notable facet of this chapter, however, concerns the guidelines he
provides for teaching strategies, which minimize the use of buzzwords such as metacognition,
and map out how to use specific strategies. For example, in his illustration of how to teach
prediction, he defines it, shows why it is important, and supplies a step-by-step demonstration of
how he taught it in Singapore.
Third, Farrell’s use of graphics adds to the lucidity of his main points and thereby gives readers a
concrete way of knowing how to implement certain concepts in the classroom. This quality is
particularly strong in chapter 5, “Teaching Text Structure to ELLs,” which incorporates graphics,
such as semantic maps, in order to elaborate on ways of making L2 students sensitive to text
organization. Likewise, chapter 2 presents a visual comparison of top-down and bottom-up
approaches to L2 reading instruction.
A fourth, and final, positive aspect of the text is found in the reflection sections that are
interspersed throughout each chapter. These reflections can be used to foster class discussions or
for self-study. Moreover, such reflections can be used for various purposes. In chapter 5, for
example, three reflection sections are presented, one to get readers thinking about text structures
and discourse markers, one in which teachers compare their ideas about the process of teaching
discourse markers with Farrell’s, and one in which they apply the discourse markers they learned
about in the chapter. In chapter 8, “Promoting Extensive Reading for ELLs,” the reflections ask
the reader to devise ways to motivate students to read and decide who (students or teachers)
should chose reading materials and what the nature of the materials should be. These questions
are preceded by a comprehensive explanation of ER and suggestions for evaluating its success
such as making movie versions of books and writing letters to authors in order to highlight the
positive and negative aspects of their texts.
While the volume possesses these four praiseworthy features (essential aspects of L2 reading
theory and instruction, clarity of prose, graphics, and reflection questions), there are some
limitations. The first concerns the reflection questions. While, as noted above, they are valuable,
they would have been enhanced by a list of resources that readers could look to for further
reading. This would have been helpful for newcomers who want to delve more deeply into

theoretical and pedagogical topics related to L2 reading yet do not know where to look. Similar
texts such as Anderson’s (1999) Exploring Second Language Reading include these kinds of
resources; it is curious that Farrell’s does not.
A second limitation revolves around the commonsensical nature of some sections. Specifically,
some passages are so obvious that their necessity is questionable. An example of this is seen in
chapter 7, “Planning Effective Reading Lessons for ELLs,” in which Farrell claims that “reading
classes should have a sustained period of actual reading, during which writing, speaking, and
listening are not emphasized” (p. 74). To me, this statement is a truism.
Finally, while Farrell does not specify whether the book is designed to train teachers for a certain
age group, it is not applicable for future P-12 teachers in the United States because it makes no
mention of NCLB or TESL standards, as do other introductory literacy texts by authors such as
Boyd-Batstone (2006) and Cummins, Brown, and Sayers (2007). Teachers do not have the
luxury of ignoring these standards and legislation, since their ability to integrate them into the
curriculum will directly affect students’ success and, by extension, their own employment.
Furthermore, Farrell does not address how to teach reading in content areas (math, science,
social studies, language arts, etc.), which most teachers of LEP students are now required to do
(Becker, 2001).
Despite these limitations—and there is no one volume that can meet the needs of all future
teachers—Farrell’s book is a valuable contribution. In addition, for the reasons listed above
(thoroughness, clarity, graphics, and reflections), the text is worth incorporating into adult
reading courses designed for future teachers of English as a second or foreign language who
have little background in reading pedagogy and L2 acquisition research. In fact, the text’s
weaknesses could be compensated for with journal articles, websites, and audio-visual materials.
Likewise, teacher trainers, who are often asked to suggest texts for self-study, can comfortably
recommend this book.
References
Anderson, N. (1999). Exploring second language reading: Issues and strategies. Boston, MA:
Heinle & Heinle.
Becker, H. (2001). Teaching ESL K-12: Views from the classroom. Boston, MA: Heinle &
Heinle.
Boyd-Batstone, P. (2006). Differentiated early literacy for English language learners:
Practical strategies. Boston, MA: Pearson.
Cummins, J., Brown, K., & Sayers, D. (2007). Literacy, technology, and diversity.
Boston, MA: Pearson.
Mitchell, R., & Myles, F. (1998). Second language learning theories. London: Arnold.

About the Reviewer
Alex Poole is an assistant professor of English and TESL program director at Western Kentucky
University. E-mail: alex.poole@wku.edu

Volume 21, Number 1, April 2009

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The effects of cultural familiarity on reading comprehension

Teaching Reading to English Language Learners: A Reflective Guide

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From the Editors

We would also like to thank the following copy editors:

Michael Thomas Witten reviews Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity,

Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

From the Guest Editors

We are happy to edit a volume that focuses on second-language reading development in

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Russian orthography and learning to read

Keywords: reading acquisition, Russian, grapheme-to-phoneme regularity, grain-size unit

Reading instruction in shallow orthographies usually relies on basic phoneme-grapheme

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Major Features of Russian Morphology and Phonology

Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

Table 1. Some common consonant clusters and their pronunciations

Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

Language-specific features of the Russian morphological and phonological systems, as described

Irregularities of Grapheme-phoneme Correspondences in Russian

Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

Predictable Irregularities (I): Alphabetic Rules and Graphics

Table 2. The Russian alphabet

Phoneme-grapheme correspondences are not always straightforward in Russian because many

Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

Table 3. Russian vowel letters, corresponding phonemes, and English approximations

Table 4. Rules for reading hard-soft consonants

Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

Another case of irregular phoneme-grapheme correspondence in Russian involves the soft-set

Previously, Russian primers separated palatalised and non-palatalised consonants, introducing in

Reading in a Foreign Language 21(1)

Predictable Irregularities (II): Orthography

The complexity of phoneme-grapheme correspondences in Russian significantly increases when,