Читать книгу The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics - Carol A. Chapelle - Страница 140

Given the centrality of personalization in knowledge expansion through reading, it is important that the notion of broad‐based reading ability be addressed in second language reading instruction and assessment. According to a brief survey of textbooks used in third‐year Chinese courses in US colleges (Koda & Ke, 2018), reading ability is viewed as a facet of language proficiency. Post‐reading exercises in these textbooks primarily focus on the reinforcement of the grammar and vocabulary items introduced in a particular unit. Their survey also revealed that widely used foreign language proficiency guidelines also assign a prominent role to linguistic knowledge in describing reading ability. In the guidelines, reading development is regarded as a gradual increase in the ability to understand written texts that demand progressively more sophisticated knowledge of the language and text types (Council of Europe, 2011; American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, 2012). Apparently, reading pedagogy in language classrooms gives weight to using reading to enhance knowledge of the language, rather than promoting the autonomous use of language through which linguistic knowledge could be augmented and refined during reading.

There are a number of important potential consequences of the treatment of reading as language practice for the end state of second language reading proficiency. First, the language‐focused reading pedagogy generally does not provide the learner authentic purposes of reading, other than answering comprehension questions. Such a practice offers students little incentive to tap into their cognitive and conceptual resources to achieve a deeper text understanding. Knowledge of the language may be sufficient for answering post‐reading questions, but, in itself, does not allow the learner to go beyond text information to generate new insight through reading. Without personalization, moreover, text information remains external to the learner and irrelevant to her internal self. Should this be the case particularly in advanced courses, the language‐focused practice could produce apathy on students to take part in active learning.

The language‐focused view could also lead to an unsubstantiated assumption that augmented linguistic knowledge enables the learner to “read” increasingly more demanding texts in the target language. As mentioned earlier, linguistic knowledge alone is far from sufficient for word meaning integration, let alone personalization. A demanding text is understood only to the extent that the reader knows about its topic. There is much to gain if reading pedagogy explores ways of simultaneously promoting reading ability and linguistic knowledge by exploiting their developmental reciprocity.

In a nutshell, second language reading entails complex crosslinguistic interaction between text information presented in a second language and the reader's cognitive and conceptual resources stored in her first language. What supports this interaction is knowledge of the target language (grammar and vocabulary). Conversely, it is only through the autonomous use of language for meaning making that fosters the expansion and refinement of linguistic knowledge. For reading assessment to yield positive washback effects, it is essential that student‐centered tasks be incorporated to demand the learner to dig into real‐life knowledge to create personalized responses. Scoring student‐centered responses is labor intensive, but the higher investments are likely to generate higher returns.