1. Introduction
While reading is central to the acquisition of discipline knowledge in academia, there is a lack of guidance on reading instruction in higher education. Lecturers are often confused about ways to teach reading and most reading instruction is restricted to stand-alone strategies such as scanning and skimming (Kimberley & Thursby, Reference Kimberley and Thursby2020). Such a situation is not surprising given there is a ‘significant silence’ (Baker et al., Reference Baker, Bangeni, Burke and Hunma2019) in research on the complexities of learners’ reading processes. From a sociocultural perspective, the ‘more knowledgeable other’ has to identify who learners are, what they bring, where they are in their learning journeys to be able to move them along the Zone of Proximal Development to where they need to be. A rich understanding of learners’ reading processes and practices is therefore crucial for the development of meaningful pedagogies to enhance their academic engagement. Second language (L2) learners’ reading practices are particularly important to understand since they leverage various forms of culture and linguistic histories, knowledges and resources in their literacy contexts. These resources are often hidden because they are not recognized as ‘funds of knowledge’ (González et al., Reference González, Moll and Amanti2005) in a deficit narrative of L2 learners. There are also methodological difficulties to draw them out in ways that are non-threatening. In this study, we demonstrate the use of a written ‘dialogic inquiry’ (Wells, Reference Wells, Lee and Smagorinsky2000) approach between Kailin, a graduate-level L2 reader of English, and Julie, her former university lecturer, as a way of learning about and expanding Kailin's literacy practices in English. The research questions are:
1. How do L2 learners read academic journal articles?
2. What is involved in their reading practices?
3. How can teachers work collaboratively with L2 learners to find out and extend learners’ reading practices?
In the following section, we briefly explain the concepts that frame this study, which include ‘translanguaging in literacy as a social practice’ and ‘dialogic inquiry’. We then introduce the design of the study, before discussing the complexities of Kailin's reading practices and how her academic repertoires are drawn out and expanded.
2. Conceptual framework: Translanguaging in literacy as a social practice and dialogic inquiry
Literacy is a purposeful social practice and highly dependent on shared cultural understandings (Larson & Marsh, Reference Larson and Marsh2005). L2 learners’ academic reading practice, therefore, is not simply a cognitive process but a social practice facilitating participation in academia. From a translanguaging perspective, L2 learners do not come into reading as a blank slate, but invest various forms of cognitive, linguistic and cultural resources, knowledges and histories into their reading processes (Li, Reference Li2011). To elicit and expand these repertoires, this study adopts a ‘dialogic inquiry’ approach (Wells, Reference Wells, Lee and Smagorinsky2000). In this approach, learners engage in first-hand experiences to participate in an inquiry with teachers, who may offer scaffolded assistance to learners as experts but can also change the roles and rights of learners to position them as authoritative participants. The key in dialogic inquiry is to promote ‘progressive discourse’, where an enhanced understanding can be achieved through sharing, questioning and building opinions, or in Alexander's (Reference Alexander2020) terms, through deliberative and cumulative talks. Deliberative talks focus on discussing and resolving different points of view while cumulative talks involve building on contributions to create coherent lines of thinking. Using this dialogic inquiry approach, the study explores the knowledge repertoires involved in L2 learners’ reading processes and how this approach contributes to the elicitation and expansion of their repertoires.
3. Methodology
This study involves six email dialogues between Kailin and Julie to explore Kailin's academic reading processes. The small-scale study enables a close analysis of the funds of knowledge involved in Kailin's reading practices and the roles that dialogic inquiry plays throughout the investigation. The written mode offers Kailin more time to think and build knowledge and creates a permanent record of what has been jointly constructed for ongoing review and development. Julie initiated the dialogue by assigning Kailin a journal article to read and complete the following focused questions and post-reading tasks:
1. Did you read everything? What did you read first and next?
2. What did you highlight?
3. What notes did you take?
4. What were three important ‘take aways’?
5. What three questions would you ask the authors?
6. Write a summary of the article.
Building on Kailin's answers, Julie posed further questions to explore Kailin's exact reading processes, her underlying reasons and feelings and whether these practices alter in other contexts before guiding her to envision future practices. Kailin offered detailed answers for each question and their dialogues continued for three rounds, including approximately 4,300 words in total. By the end of the process, both Julie and Kailin achieved a deeper understanding of Kailin's reading practices.
This acquired understanding encouraged Julie and Kailin to analyze the dialogues carefully to explore how L2 learners read and how their repertoires can be elicited and expanded. First, excerpts of dialogues were grouped based on the initial sequence of the exploration, Kailin's reading focus, practices during reading and reflection of post-reading practices.
Then, these excerpts were coded through the lens of the conceptual framework and thematized accordingly. Finally, the excerpts were selected and organized into five extracts to present the diverse range of Kailin's knowledge repertoires and aspects of dialogic inquiry throughout the exploration.
4. Findings
4.1. Strategic and purposeful reading practices
Kailin navigates her ways around journal articles strategically and purposefully. She understands the basic functions of different sections in a journal article and reads it selectively for different academic purposes. She engages in highlighting, underlining and copy-pasting practices during reading and organizing quotes for writing assignments after reading. Yet Kailin barely writes any notes and, other than writing assignments, rarely conducts post-reading activities.
4.2. Diverse funds of knowledge in the reading processes
Kailin's reading practices are highly associated with, and influenced by, resources that she brings into her reading processes. These resources include cognitive reading strategies, knowledge of academic texts, different degrees of multilingual literacies, digital skills, social relations, emotions, beliefs of reading and writing, and life experiences in different reading contexts. These resources also interact with each other, which affects how Kailin enacts or resists particular reading practices and expands her academic repertoires.
4.3. Dialogic inquiry for understanding and expanding academic repertoires
Dialogic inquiry facilitates the discovery and expansion of Kailin's reading repertoires in various ways. Firstly, dialogical processes that feature task-based reflections facilitate Kailin's cumulative talks. Through these talks, Kailin makes explicit her reading practices in a detailed manner (e.g., ‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘under what circumstances’) and realizes the resources and factors that underlie her practices, which helps her develop future reading practices. Secondly, deliberative and cumulative talks where alternative perspectives are presented and explained by Julie serve as an explicit assistance. It helps Kailin understand the value of her own English words and alter her self-perception as an L2 reader, which then contributes to her note-taking practices in new ways. Finally, Julie's question that positions Kailin as an authoritative inquirer who has the agency to regulate her own learning towards the end of the dialogue enables Kailin to tie together all the acquired knowledge and expand reading repertoires in meaningful ways that suit her style.
5. Discussion
Reading is a complex social process and expanding L2 learners’ reading repertoires requires reading instructions that go beyond stand-alone cognitive strategies. As shown in the findings, cognitive strategies are only one aspect of the many interacting resources that L2 learners leverage in their reading. Instructions that focus on teaching strategies one at a time, therefore, reduce the complexities of reading and fail to recognize the varieties of resources, knowledge and skills that constitute a successful reader. As Newton et al. (Reference Newton, Ferris, Goh, Grabe, Stoller and Vandergrift2018) suggest, effective reading instructions should focus on cultivating strategic readers, who not only understand which strategies to use but also when, how and why to use strategies in various contexts. Our findings support their statement and further suggest that such cultivation not only involves helping L2 learners mobilize cognitive strategies but also involves developing their awareness and capability to leverage diverse linguistic, multimodal, social and historical resources purposefully in their reading processes.
To cultivate such strategic readers, it is important to develop a deep understanding of L2 learners’ reading processes. Such understanding is not simply about what learners do, but involves a more complex understanding of why, how and under what circumstances learners engage in reading. As the findings suggest, it is through this close investigation of reading processes that the teacher discovers L2 learners’ funds of knowledge and the interacting factors behind their engagement or disengagement with particular practices. A rich understanding of L2 learners’ reading processes, therefore, enables teachers to move away from a deficit perspective of L2 readers and provides factors and issues towards which teachers can tailor their assistance to help L2 learners expand their academic repertoires.
While teachers need to understand learners’ reading processes to assist learners, learners should also become acutely aware of their practices since they are the ones doing the learning. As this study shows, approaches underpinned by dialogic inquiry, translanguaging and literacy as a social practice are effective in achieving this aim. Dialogic inquiry enables teachers and learners to take on different roles during the inquiry with learners gradually being handed over the agency to regulate their own learning. Translanguaging and literacy as a social practice, on the other hand, help L2 learners discover how various resources affect their reading processes. Approaches that characterize both concepts can thus enrich learners’ understanding of their own reading practices and help them expand practices in ways that suit their own learning styles.
Supplementary material
To view supplementary material for this article, please visit https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444821000276
Kailin Liu is a teacher of English as an Additional Language at Sunshine College in Melbourne, Australia. She holds a Master of Teaching in Secondary Education and a Master of Applied Linguistics degree. (Routledge).
Julie Choi is Senior Lecturer in Education (Additional Languages) at Melbourne Graduate School of Education, Australia. She is co-editor of Language and culture: Reflective narratives and the emergence of identity and Plurilingualism in teaching and learning, and sole author of Creating a multivocal self: Autoethnography as method. (Routledge).
