Birch's volume on how first language (L1) features such as its orthographic system, phonology, or morphology exert a significant influence on an ESL/EFL reader's performance is an invaluable contribution to the complex and complicated issue of assisting learners of other languages (particularly those from languages with different writing systems) in the process of becoming more efficient and effective readers. This book is relevant to “all ESL and EFL practitioners … teaching illiterate people to read in English or to those whose students already know how to read in their native language” and to “reading researchers, curriculum designers and material writers” including “teachers-in-training” (p. x).

The theoretical foundation is based on Smith's (1971) psycholinguistic studies of reading as a process and on Goodman (1968), who categorized the reading process as “a psycholinguistic guessing game.” Nunes's (1999) desideratum of the reading process being “an interactive (top-down and bottom-up) process” is also included in the theoretical framework. Birch advocates the inclusion of a student's L1 writing system into the second language (L2) reading process because “second language reading literature generally disregards the importance of the first language writing system” (p. x).

Given that the four sample case studies (Spanish, Greek, Arabic, and Chinese readers) revealed in all cases negative transfer of L1 knowledge, L1 processing strategies, or both, Birch suggests that instructors carefully perform a needs analysis, exploring in particular the relation between pronunciation and reading in English as an L2 as well as undertaking a contrastive phonetic analysis of L1 and L2 including graphemes and morphemes.

As a resource manual, this text has good information on teaching low-level reading strategies to students. Teachers who instruct illiterate students or students who know how to read only in their L1 may have to start studying their students' L1 as well as linguistics to be fully cognizant of orthographic, phonetic, and morphologic details. The question remains whether increased linguistic metaknowledge creates a more effective and efficient reading teacher for this particular group of students.

Although most approaches to L2 reading are based on top-down strategies (e.g., Swaffar, Arens, & Byrnes, 1991, or Scarcella & Oxford, 1992), Birch's bottom-up approach can be seen as a systematic supplement to ensure thoroughness and balance in L2 reading methodology.