Editorial / Editorial

Editorial Introduction

This special issue of The Canadian Modern Language Review offers a collection of articles representing national initiatives in second language (L2) reading. The call for papers stated that the issue would explore new directions in reading research, specifically reading as a social and cultural event, the effects of on-screen reading, and pedagogical applications. Although at first glance these articles seem to reflect more traditional reading concerns such as testing, models of text comprehension, comprehension monitoring, and fluency, a closer look reveals new directions.

A whole language or top-down ideology has dominated L2 reading research since it began in the 1970s (Been, 1979; Clarke & Silberstein, 1979; Coady, 1979). This top-down ideology is a rather complex body of interrelated concepts, opinions, and assumptions, reflecting a view of reading in which cognitive processing (higher-level) strategies help the reader to construct meaning for large chunks of text. Using these higher-level strategies, the reader, who has acquired or learned them, makes predictions about what the text is going to be and inferences and decisions about the text. More recently, this whole language ideology "purports that what people learn when they learn a language is not separate parts (words, sounds, sentences) but a supersystem of social practices whose conventions and systematicity both constrain and liberate" (Edelsky, 1993, p. 548). Scollon's work (1998) investigating reading as social interaction lies within a whole language ideology, as does the work of Bloome (1993). Other current work in L2 reading (Abersold & Field, 1997; Day & Bamford, 1998, p. 93) still reflects maximum support for readers' higher-level processing to supplement language deficiencies at a lower level.

More recently, however, this whole language ideology has been characterized as incomplete in that it emphasizes higher-level cognitive processing strategies such as inferencing, prediction, problem solving, and constructing meaning in order to form the reader's interpretation of a text while at the same time de-emphasizing lower-level language processing strategies such as chunking into phrases, accessing word meaning, word identification, and letter recognition in order to construct the reader's text base. Until recently, research interest in lower-level processing strategies has lagged somewhat behind interest in higher-level processing strategies. But the gap is closing, as is evident in the work of Baddeley, Gathercole, and Papagno (1998), Chikamatsu (1996), Geva, (1999), Koda (1996, 2000), Muljani, Koda, and Moates (1998), Osburne and Mulling (2001), and Schmitt and Meara (1997), among others. Several of the articles in this special issue document the greater attention being paid to linguistic or lower-level processing strategies in L2 reading.

The articles in this issue

In a timely and important cross-linguistic study, MacCoubrey, Wade-Woolley, Klinger, and Kirby examine those measures which best identify English-speaking French immersion students at risk of future reading difficulties in both French and English. Of particular note is that these measures fall within lower-level or linguistic processing strategies, to wit: phonological awareness, phonological working memory, and the speed of lexical access. Through the use of these measures, the authors clearly indicate, young children at risk of future reading difficulties can be identified before they learn to read in their L2. Given the number of children in immersion programs, this identification is of major concern, and early identification of such at-risk readers (Stanovich, 1986) could help in preventing unfortunate situations in subsequent schooling.

In the second article on testing, a cross-study investigation, Bayliss and Raymond focus on university-level ESL and FSL students' reading comprehension scores, which are seen to be the best overall predictors of their academic success (GPA). From both ESL and FSL studies, the authors demonstrate that reading proficiency plays a role in determining GPA and urge that more weight be given to L2 reading skills within specific university programs. With ever-increasing numbers of international students entering Canadian universities, some of whom may be initially disadvantaged in terms of the literacy demands of a...