An interdisciplinary, evidence-based understanding of reading makes this volume especially valuable. Grabe bases each chapter on a review of research—carefully designed studies ranging from cognitive psychology and linguistics to education—and then moves toward applications for teachers of second-language (L2) reading.
This approach works well for the foundations of reading acquisition. Professionals who were educated in English as a foreign language (EFL) or a L2 more than a decade ago may not realize that converging evidence indicates an incremental, time-intensive learning process for the L2 writing system and vocabulary acquisition. The top-down models popular in the 1970s and 1980s have been firmly refuted by eye-movement studies and other evidence from cognitive science, as well summarized in chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5 (and in chapter 14 on fluency and comprehension).
The crux of the matter is automaticity—that is, the ability (developed through intensive practice) to recognize smaller units rapidly, without great expenditure of attention, so that the reader’s mind can focus on interpretation of the larger units of language and ideas. Grabe firmly refutes the idea that literacy in the first language automatically transfers to smooth L2 reading. For L2 readers, there is simply too much to be learned or automatized without great time and effort, whether in orthographic mapping of symbols to sound, in vocabulary and morphosyntactic knowledge, or in the learner’s knowledge and fluency with the spoken L2 (chapters 6 and 7). This component skill understanding of reading acquisition has important ramifications for the knowledge base needed by instructors of EFL or a L2 for academic purposes. The evidence and implications that Grabe present are critical for L2 teachers and teacher-educators.
Another strong dimension of this text is Grabe’s presentation of comprehension as cognitive process, in both chapter 3, where the distinction between the text model and the situation model constructed by readers is well explained, and in chapter 5, where this two-model account is combined with connectionist and component skills evidence from earlier chapters in a critical examination of models of reading.
Weaker chapters include those on social contexts (chapter 8) and on motivation (chapter 9), with research mostly from American school contexts and a paucity of crosscultural or adult evidence. It also seems strange that—despite the critical role for vocabulary knowledge established early in the book—Grabe chose to first present somewhat lengthy discussions on comprehension (chapters 10–12) before turning to critical questions about vocabulary (chapter 13), including how L2 students can build up the extensive word base, a prerequisite for fluency (and automaticity), which allows for higher comprehension processes during reading.
This contradiction surfaces again when fluency (chapter 14) is followed by one of the most direct arguments of the volume: Grabe’s spirited defense of extensive reading (chapter 15). Despite much of the research on extensive reading, which Grabe aknowledges points toward the opposite conclusion, and despite the logical consequence of the cognitive evidence presented—that massive attended practice and incremental progress in decoding and vocabulary learning are essential for fluent comprehension—Grabe is still convinced that extensive reading is the solution to the need for this practice. To his credit, Grabe rejects concerns about so-called authentic texts and argues that authentic is an imprecise, arbitrary term and that level-appropriate reading materials are what is needed for L2 readers to progress through extensive reading practice. What is less clear is how to select appropriate texts for each learner such that the learner already knows 95% of the words and thus can gain speed and extend word knowledge as well.
At the end of the volume, when Grabe synthesizes the implications of previous chapters into an overview, “The Reading Curriculum and Instruction,” he provides a number of lists with a range of methods to challenge even the most experienced reading teachers. Throughout the text, he offers great alternatives, such as ways of focusing while rereading to develop fluency, graphic organizers to develop awareness of organization patterns, and assessment methods that build learning (see chapter 17 on assessment). However, such lists do not specify priorities for sequencing instruction or concentrating practice.
Grabe’s approach, with evidence, models, and lists, provides many options. Thus, the individual teacher or teacher-educator will (ultimately) have to choose where to concentrate efforts, as will researchers and graduate students, who will certainly appreciate the wealth of references and solid theoretical grounding despite some important questions remaining to be examined.
