CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by ScholarSpace at University of Hawai'i at Manoa Reading in a Foreign Language April 2016, Volume 28, No. 1 ISSN 1539-0578 pp. 63–78 What can readers read after graded readers? Jeff McQuillan Center for Educational Development United States Abstract Nation (2014) concluded that most of the vocabulary one needs to read challenging texts in English can be acquired incidentally through voluminous reading. This study examines possible texts that second language (L2) readers can use to move from controlled- vocabulary materials such as graded readers, which go up through approximately the 4,000-word-family level, to more challenging texts such as newspapers, classic novels, and academic texts, at the 9,000-word-family level. An analysis of a set of popular fiction series books found that such books can provide a sufficient amount of input, with 98% vocabulary coverage, so as to serve as one possible “bridge” to more challenging texts. Keywords: extensive reading, graded readers, vocabulary acquisition, text coverage, comprehensible input Studies in both first and second language acquisition have shown that new vocabulary can be acquired incidentally through the reception of comprehensible input via reading (Krashen, 2004a). While the importance of reading in vocabulary acquisition is generally acknowledged among second language (L2) researchers, there has been disagreement as to whether the vocabulary one can acquire solely through reading can “take you all the way,” to a point where you acquire a sufficient number of words to understand more challenging texts, including classic novels, newspapers, and academic writing. Cobb (2007, 2008) held that reading alone cannot provide enough input to allow L2 readers to acquire enough words to handle challenging texts within a reasonable amount of time. McQuillan and Krashen (2008), however, argued that L2 acquirers can indeed get enough input to acquire most of the vocabulary they need through voluminous, self-selected reading, such as that provided by extensive reading programs (Day & Bamford, 1998; Mason, 2013). Acquiring Sufficient Vocabulary to Read Challenging Texts Nation (2014) attempted to settle this debate through a corpus analysis. His approach to the question was based upon three assumptions: (a) In order to have “adequate comprehension” of text, one needs to know at least 98% of the http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl McQuillan: What Can Readers Read after Graded Readers? 64 words in that text (Hu & Nation, 2000; Schmitt, Jiang, & Grabe, 2011); (b) To achieve this 98% vocabulary coverage for challenging texts, one must know the 9,000 most frequently occurring word families in English (Nation, 2006); and (c) To have a reasonable chance of acquiring an unknown word family, one must encounter it at least 12 times in text. The logic Nation presents here is straightforward: If we know how many words one must read to encounter the first 9,000 word families at least 12 times, we can provide estimates of the amount of text and time L2 readers need to acquire a sufficient vocabulary to handle challenging texts. Are Nation’s assumptions reasonable? Several researchers (Hu & Nation, 2000; Laufer & Ravenhorst-Kalovski, 2010; Schmitt et al., 2011) have argued that “adequate comprehension” of text requires somewhere between 95% and 98% vocabulary coverage. While vocabulary knowledge is not the sole factor in determining reading comprehension, it has clearly been shown to be an important one in both the first language (L1) and L2 research (Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Hu & Nation, 2000). Laufer and Ravenhorst-Kalovski (2010), for example, found that vocabulary knowledge accounted for 64% of the variance in reading comprehension scores. The exact percentage of words a reader needs to know to understand a text depends on how “adequate” comprehension is defined. Laufer and Ravenhorst-Kalovski suggest that 95% is the “minimum” coverage needed, with 98% (or more) being “optimum.” In choosing the higher figure of 98%, Nation attempted to provide a conservative estimate of the percentage of words a reader needs to understand text independently.1 The other key assumption made by Nation – that 12 exposures to an unknown word are sufficient to acquire the word – is based on previous studies that produced differing estimates both above and below that figure (e.g., Brown, Waring, & Donkaewbua, 2008; Pellicer-Sanchez & Schmitt, 2010; Waring & Takaki, 2003). These analyses attempted to determine the number of exposures to a word needed to, in Nation’s words, “develop something approaching rich knowledge” of a word (p. 2). In Pellicer-Sanchez and Schmitt (2010), for example, unknown words that occurred at least 10 times in the text were acquired 80% of the time, as measured by a meaning recognition test (Table 1, p. 41). In Waring and Takaki (2003), at least 15 repetitions were required for a similar level of success (72%). Based on these and other similar studies, Nation’s use of 12 occurrences as a threshold for acquisition appears to be an attempt to find a middle ground between competing estimates. Nation and other researchers acknowledge that acquisition of vocabulary depends on more than just the number of exposures to the acquired word, and any estimate depends on one’s criteria for determining the “depth” of knowledge as well as its breadth (Wesche & Paribakht, 1996). Nation (2014) analyzed a corpus comprised of 25 novels taken from Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org). He also provided estimates of how long it would take a reader to read that amount of text, assuming a reading speed of 150 words per minute. Table 1 shows Nation’s results for the number of words that one would need to read in order to Reading in a Foreign Language 28(1) McQuillan: What Can Readers Read after Graded Readers? 65 encounter a word family at least 12 times in his chosen corpus of novels, and a calculation of the time required to read them. Estimates are broken down by 1,000-word-family groups, from the 2nd to the 9th 1,000-word-family levels. Table 1. Amount of input and time needed to acquire the 2nd through the 9th most frequently occurring 1,000-word families in English Hours Needed 1,000- Word- Amount to Cumulative Per Level Level List Read Hours (@150 wpm) 2,000 200,000 22 22 3,000 300,000 33 55 4,000 500,000 56 111 5,000 1,000,000 112 223 6,000 1,500,000 167 390 7,000 2,000,000 222 612 8,000 2,500,000 278 890 9,000 3,000,000 333 1,223 Total 11,000,000 1,223 Note. Data from Nation (2014), Table 4 Assuming you know the 1,000 most frequently occurring words in English already, Nation estimated that you would need to read approximately 200,000 words in order to have a reasonable chance of acquiring most of the words in the 2,000-word-family level. After acquiring most of the words in the 2,000-word-family level, you would then need to read another 300,000 words in order to encounter most of the words in the 3,000-word-family level at least 12 times, and so on. As shown in Table 1, one would need to read approximately 11,000,000 words to reach the 9,000-word-family level, and that this feat would take about 1,200 hours to complete. At one hour per day, this represents a little over three years of reading, very doable for a motivated adult or adolescent acquirer. One hour per day of reading is in line with what is expected of university students in the United States for out-of-class assignments. Nearly half of all American professors expect their students to do at least six hours of homework outside of school per week, or nearly an hour per day (Sanoff, 2006). If Nation’s analysis and the assumptions behind that analysis are correct, it appears that free reading can indeed provide L2 readers with the opportunity to acquire the necessary vocabulary to handle challenging texts. Between Graded Readers and Challenging Text If free reading is sufficient, the next step is to determine what sort of texts L2 acquirers should read. Nation (2014, p. 11) noted that controlled-vocabulary materials such as graded reader series can provide students with enough input to reach approximately the 4,000-word-family level. But what should readers read after graded readers? How is this “gap” between the 4,000- and 9,000- word-family levels to be filled? The problem can be summarized this way: Reading in a Foreign Language 28(1) McQuillan: What Can Readers Read after Graded Readers? 66 Graded Readers > ?? > Challenging Texts Mid-Frequency Readers Nation (2014) proposed that the gap can be made up in part by the use of “mid-frequency readers.” Mid-frequency readers are adaptations of texts that meet the 98% vocabulary coverage criterion at lower vocabulary levels than the texts were originally written. The texts are created by substituting the less frequently occurring words in the stories and novels with more frequently occurring synonyms, as well as by controlling the number of new word families the reader will encounter in the text (Nation & Anthony, 2013; Schmitt & Schmitt, 2014). Texts have been developed by Nation and others at the 4,000-, 6,000-, and 8,000-word-family levels. Nation’s proposal to fill the gap is thus: Graded Readers > 4K Readers > 6K Readers > 8K Readers > Challenging Texts Mid-frequency readers can be an important source of input for English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) acquirers. However, the number of such readers is still small, and for copyright reasons, the mid-frequency readers have thus far been limited to adaptation of works that are in the public domain.