© 1991 by Oxford University Press
Articles |
The role of reading in foreign language acquisition: designing an experimental project
Professor at the Institute of the Didactics of Languages at Hamburg University. He studied at Hamburg; Southampton, England; and Southern Illinois University, USA. He has written and (co-)edited many articles, textbooks, and books on EFL teaching. He has been a member of IATEFL since the mid-1970s.
This article describes the rationale and structure of a research project into the effectiveness of reading in foreign language acquisition. The article focuses on two issues: the initial stages of the project (which has been very much influenced by a similar one carried out by Elley and Mangubhai, 1983); and some aspects of the backgrounds of the pupils involved. In the first stages of the project, pupils in fifteen Hamburg schools have been provided with class libraries, and tests have been administered to both ‘reading’ groups and ‘non-reading’ groups. Both groups will be tested again, in two years' time. The background information about the pupils suggests that reading is, in fact, more popular amongst them than might be supposed, but that the provision and organization of reading materials in school fall far short of pupils' needs and interests.1