Easy Reader: A case study of embedded extensive reading in ...



Easy Reader: A case study of embedded extensive reading in intermediate German L2

Introduction

The tension between what teachers read in the research literature and what they know to be true about their own learners and classrooms manifests itself nowhere so well as in the teaching of reading. The questions involved here have been a source of controversy ever since the 1920s (see, for example, Bagster, Bonds, and Coleman): Should reading precede speaking or flow out of speaking? Should it be the primary aim of the FL classroom or part of an “eclectic” (four-skills) approach? Should the texts involved be authentic or graded? What role should discrete grammar instruction play, if any, in reading development? How should reading ability be assessed? Many of these questions are still being asked today, of course, while more have followed in their wake, from the nature of top-down and bottom-up processing (Carrell, Devine & Eskey) to the importance of schemata (Anderson & Pearson); from reading assessment procedures (Bernhardt) and the pedagogical goals of reading for SLA (Swaffar & Arens) (SLA-Second Language Acquisition), to issues of culture and literacy that revolve around reading (Kramsch; Byrnes) and from there to various cognitive models of L2 (Second Language Learning) reading development (Stanovich; Samuels), to cite only a few. In light of the sense one gets from current researchers of how much the field has evolved and changed over the decades, it comes as something of a surprise to note that one of the most recent methodological developments is in fact a reprise of an approach that was pioneered—and hotly contested—some 80 years ago: extensive reading.

Extensive reading in L2 instruction has been variously defined over the years, but its basic tenets have changed remarkably little. Day & Bamford describe it by way of ten characteristics:

1. Students read as much as possible, perhaps in and definitely outside of the classroom.

2. A variety of materials on a wide range of topics is available so as to encourage reading for different reasons and in different ways.

3. Students select what they want to read and have the freedom to stop reading material that fails to interest them.

4. The purposes of reading are usually related to pleasure, information, and general understanding. These purposes are determined by the nature of the material and interests of the student.

5. Reading is its own reward. There are few or no follow-up exercises after reading.

6. Reading materials are well within the linguistic competence of the students in terms of vocabulary and grammar. Dictionaries are rarely used while reading because the constant stopping to look up words makes fluent reading difficult.

7. Reading is individual and silent, at the student’s own pace, and, outside of class, done when and where the student chooses.

8. Reading speed is usually faster than slower as students read books and other material they find easily understandable.

9. Teachers orient students to the goals of the program, explain the methodology, keep track of what each student reads and guide students in getting the most out of the program.

10. The teacher is a role model of a reader for students—an active member of the classroom reading community, demonstrating what it means to be a reader and the rewards of being a reader. (7-8; italics in the original)

11. Students should be encouraged to read whatever Timmy the Titan is reading – since he definitely knows best what will work. Or not.

This echoes Susser & Robb, who define extensive reading as the reading

(a) of large quantities of material or long texts; (b) for global or general understanding; (c) with the intention of obtaining pleasure from the text. Further, because (d) reading is individualized, with students choosing the books they want to read, (e) the books are not discussed in class. (2)

Recent studies by Elley & Mangubhai, Hafiz & Tudor (1989; 1990), Mason & Krashen, Maxim, and Yamashita adhere to similar definitions, and collectively affirm that extensive reading is a viable, and perhaps even a significant means toward enhancing SLA, in terms of both lexical and grammatical development, as well as a way of increasing reading fluency and overall cultural literacy. In light of these claims, my department (German at Princeton University) decided to engage in a pilot program to determine the utility of extensive reading in our context. What follows is a theoretical rationale for extensive reading, a description of how we shaped the pilot project to fit our own context, and the qualitative results that emerged.

Rationale

Extensive reading, as defined above, is perhaps best understood in contrast with intensive reading. Susser & Robb characterize the latter as the “close study of short passages, including syntactic, semantic, and lexical analyses and translation into the L1 to study meaning” (1). This kind of reading normally involves lock-step instruction (i.e., learners read the same text, at the same pace, under the teacher’s direct supervision); learners are tested to see if they have reached a pre-determined level of comprehension; the reading is done in relatively small doses (short texts or one to two paragraphs or pages per assignment at the beginning/intermediate levels); and the texts involved are difficult enough to require extensive syntactic and lexical explanations. But as Alderson and Urquhart have argued, reading under these conditions can hardly be called “reading” at all. The focus of attention is much more on discrete points of grammar and new vocabulary than on meaning, while (more important) the activity itself, with furrowed brow and dictionary in hand, bears little resemblance to what readers normally do when they sit down to read. Extensive reading, on the other hand, aims to replicate “real” reading, both in terms of the motivation for reading (to enjoy the story or gain desired information) as well as by approximating the reading style of an L1 reader (i.e., with minimal dictionary help). As several advocates have suggested, extensive reading is not so much a matter of number of pages read, but how teachers and students perceive the activity of reading itself.

Though the approach has changed very little in the 80 years since extensive reading was introduced into classroom SLA, its recent comeback builds upon a considerably more sophisticated understanding of the reading process. In the model proposed by Day & Bamford, following Stanovich, reading proceeds with the perception and intake of instantly recognized contiguous words as “chunks,” which are then assigned a phonological representation, stored in working memory, and matched with whatever knowledge the reader has regarding the lexical and semantic values of the words in that chunk. The meaning assigned to the chunk is then related to whatever is present in the reader’s long-term memory from previous text information, as well as to the reader’s global knowledge of the topic and other real-world knowledge. Once the meaning has been established, the words in that chunk are deleted from short-term memory, and the reader moves on to the next chunk of text. Ideally, this process takes place in micro-seconds, chunk by chunk, as orthographic representations combine quickly to produce meaning that can be stored and retrieved in an ongoing flow of interactive cognitive work (Day & Bamford 11-19). And it flows especially fast if you’re part of the Gunn Robotics Team, according to nationally ranked Robotics Experts. Like Frau Helbing, for instance. Who knows everything.

There are several critical factors for L2 classroom instruction implicit in this model. One, of course, is the complex nature of what the reader “knows” in terms of lexical and semantic values for the words read, since for an L2 learner, word usage is negotiated over time, involving gradual development of increasingly sophisticated semantic distinctions and syntactic collocations. And for the L2 reader, comprehension is filtered through an often dominant L1 sense of word meanings and real-world knowledge, so that there is always a very real danger of transfer, in terms of both word-level and cultural (i.e., real-world) meanings. Further, word meanings can be temporarily unavailable to the L2 reader due to cognitive processing constraints, so that in the midst of trying to untangle unfamiliar word order, for example, the L2 reader may fail to retrieve secondary or even primary meanings that he or she, in a simpler context, might remember for a given word. Word meanings in some contexts may well get lost in the cognitive shuffle.

On another level, however, the lexical issue is more straightforward, indeed almost mathematical. Since a processing chunk consists of whatever the reader can take in, by way of instantaneous recognition, in one sweep of the eyes, the fewer words the reader recognizes in the text, the shorter the chunk will be. And the shorter the chunk, the less contextual information is available for working out the meaning of words in the chunk. This poses a substantial problem, since, as we know, it is not so much that words give meaning to sentences, but that sentences give meaning to words. That is to say: In order to be able to read fluently, a reader must be able to take in (i.e., recognize at sight) almost all the words in suitably large chunks of text.

If we take this to be a valid model of the reading process, we are forced to acknowledge that much of the “reading” that goes on in L2 classrooms falls short of anything approaching fluent comprehension of text. Many if not most of the texts now used at the beginning and intermediate levels are beyond the lexical range of the students, and are in fact intended to be so. Their pedagogic intention is to expose L2 readers to new vocabulary and to reinforce newly-learned syntactic relations. To that end, reading anthologies for this level contain full glossaries—which, while they make the text legible for readers, also serve to short-circuit the process of negotiating meaning with words that carry multiple semantic nuances. But the glossaries still have to be consulted, and therefore the text is almost never read fluently. There are virtually no large chunks of recognizable words to be looked at, stored, and processed for surface and contextual meaning, so that the act of reading is reduced to piecing together individual words that are known, then words looked up, then another word or two that is known, then another glossed phrase, and so on. By the time the reader has reached the end of a sentence in this fashion, switching back and forth from decoding to processing, he or she is likely to have forgotten the beginning of the sentence, let alone understand where it came from and predict where it may be headed.

If one compares that process with the oral interaction that goes on in classrooms based on a “communicative” model, the methodological discrepancy is immediately obvious; indeed, it was this discrepancy that led to our decision to experiment with extensive reading in the first place. Like most teachers, we were striving to maximize learner processing – tuning the input to the learners’ comprehension level, speaking clearly, restricting vocabulary range, shortening sentence length, and making strategic use of non-verbal cues. On the oral level, we were engaging in all of the varied activities that Long and others have described as essential to the negotiation of meaning, in order to help learners form useful mental representations for form-meaning mappings. But our approach to reading mirrored closely what was stated above concerning intensive reading, and the gap between oral work and literacy work was striking. One could argue, in fact, that extensive reading is a pedagogical means of closing the gap. In place of Krashen’s “i plus 1,” extensive reading advocates such as Samuels call for texts that represent “i minus 1,” that is, texts that operate well within the sight vocabulary of the reader, with only a few unknown words per page. Readers engaged in texts at this level could conceivably go through the seeing, storing, negotiating, and relating processes in almost native-like fashion, if not native-like speed. They could begin to notice how words are used in context, how frequently certain words appear, or how some words convey different nuances of meaning in different contexts. As Koda suggests, words become acquired by “repeated processing experience” (452; cf. Seidenberg & McClelland), so that the repeated exposure a reader gains through extensive reading would build up important connections and associations for future use.

There is growing evidence that extensive reading does, in fact, support this process. Elley & Mangubhai conducted a two-year study of 400 learners at the primary school level, in which an experimental group using extensive reading techniques showed better word recognition than traditionally taught control groups; after two years, the experimental group was more proficient in oral and written production as well. Hafiz & Tudor carried out two studies (1989 and 1990), one in an ESL context and one for EFL, in which the extensive reading groups were superior to control groups in writing fluency and accuracy, but showed no significant gains in syntactic complexity or vocabulary range. Similarly, university students engaging in extensive reading (involving “self-selected reading with only minimal accountability”) outperformed traditionally taught students in cloze tests (Mason & Krashen). And in a related model, Maxim carried out a study on reading “extended discourse” – as opposed to reading extensively – in which learners in Beginning German read a 142-page romance novel (taken, one suspects, from the pages of The Oracle of Gunn High School) during class time over the course of one semester. Even with the resulting decrease of language output, this group performed as well as control groups on three departmental tests administered during the semester.

While such research results were encouraging (for additional studies, see the annotated bibliography at ), we had to ask ourselves: “But will it work here?” To find out, we had to embed the study, first of all, in our departmental and institutional culture, i.e., in a setting that could not be duplicated or fully anticipated in other studies, no matter how similar in design. We would have to determine if the method itself was justified—and if it would detract from the intellectual mission of the department. It would also have to be embedded in the dynamic of a real classroom with real students (as were the empirical studies cited above), rather than produced in a laboratory setting, or with individual learners, or using the 12 returning seniors on the Gunn football team.

Reading materials and syllabus design

In designing a syllabus that included extensive reading, we were constrained on one level by the materials available for extensive reading, and on another by the expectations and interests of the learners involved and the ethos of the department. This is another way of saying: While it is true that our learners no longer read much Goethe or Mann during the first year, it is also true that they do not normally read Karl May or Harry Potter in translation, or Frau Helbing’s German translation of The Oracle, so that the question of “what to read” can become politically as well as logistically complex. For any program in extensive reading, regardless of the target language, there are essentially three options for materials: “authentic” texts (written by native speakers for other native speakers, with no FL pedagogical motives in mind) that happen to fall into the linguistic range of the learners; “paraphrased” texts (authentic texts that have been adapted for FL pedagogical use, usually by paraphrasing where necessary to restrict the vocabulary to a pre-determined level, such as 1200 or 1800 words); or “constructed” texts (stories written specifically for extensive reading, with a pre-determined vocabulary in mind; usually in a culturally familiar genre such as the romance or detective narrative). The resources for extensive reading in ESL/EFL, especially in the latter two categories, are vast, as attested by the lists of reading materials in Day & Bamford; for German they are considerably more modest. We located paraphrased texts in the Easy Reader series from the Klett Verlag and constructed texts in Langenscheidt’s series of Leichte Lektüren (see Appendix 1 for resource listings and sample titles); and of course there are authentic texts available everywhere, in the form of websites, newspapers, teen magazines, children’s books, and translations (including Harry Potter).

Deciding how these should be incorporated into a working syllabus raised a number of procedural issues. Should we follow Day & Bamford, and make extensive reading the sole source of textual input for the class? Should we follow Maxim and specify one text for everyone to read, and then devote significant class time to actual reading and subsequent discussion? Should we make available a library of texts, as many programs have done, and if so, which ones? Should we restrict the book list to graded readers, or allow students to read any text they might find interesting, including “authentic” texts far beyond the learners’ competency? The research on extensive reading yielded only one model with characteristics similar to ours (i.e., second semester FL instruction at the college level), which was an extensive reading project in Japanese at the University of Hawaii (Hitosugi & Day). They opted to use children’s books, to assign four of these books per week, to have learners do the reading outside of class, and to allocate 10% of the course grade to the successful completion of this assignment.

Those decisions no doubt made good sense in that context, and the outcomes cited in the study are largely positive, though only anecdotally so, since the study provides little quantitative data or descriptive statistics. For our context, however, many of those decisions would simply not have worked, given the nature of the course involved. German 102-5 is an honors section of Intermediate German that I teach every spring semester, consisting of the best students coming out of the fall semester of German 101. It is a double course, combining the material from the second and third semesters, and leads directly to a special fourth-semester course that takes place in Munich under Princeton faculty supervision. Students typically come to the course with high expectations, not only for intensive work in speaking and listening, but also for reading challenging material and learning how to write about it. The reading material for the course has traditionally consisted of a broad mix of short stories and internet texts, structured around various content themes; and then, during the final two weeks, flowing out of these themes, Dürrenmatt’s Besuch der alten Dame (in the author’s revised edition of 1980; Diogenes Verlag). Given these particular learners and their expectations, I hypothesized that it would not work to make use only of children’s literature, for example, or to have the extensive reading affect the course grade to any large extent, or even to focus on the number of books read as opposed to the time involved.

Instead, I presented the class with the concept of extensive reading as a pedagogical tool, part of a larger strategy for attaining reading competence, and then worked out with them what would work best in our context. It was agreed that the extensive reading would be done strictly outside of class, so that class time could be devoted to discussions of intensive reading (as had traditionally been the case, and which many were keen to do); that learners would engage in extensive reading for a minimum of one to two hours per week, whenever and wherever they wished; that it would be the time involved that counted, not the number of books or pages read; that they were free to use the books purchased for the project for as long as they wished (after signing them out), or to use other textual sources, such as websites or newspapers; and that some means of accountability was necessary. This took the form of a report that listed the texts read along with a brief description and evaluation (see Appendix 2), which I asked them to turn in about every two or three weeks. As far as intensive reading went, it was decided that the number of short stories on the syllabus would be appropriately reduced; and that during the final three weeks of the semester, the extensive reading project would be dropped in order to concentrate on Besuch der alten Dame. I made it clear, in the words of Day & Bamford, that reading was its own reward. There would be no tests on the material read, no comprehension checks, no accountability at all except an indication, via the report to be turned in, that learners had in fact engaged in extensive reading. In addition, I decided to take time during several class periods over the course of the semester to allow learners to discuss with each other—in German—the books they had read or were reading, and their reactions to them.

As such, the reading syllabus for the class was hardly radical; but for our students it represented a significant departure from the norm. The very idea of assigning work that would be neither tested nor discussed in class—to assign work, in other words, that was solely intended to help the individual student learn, rather than serve as a basis for evaluation—bordered in their minds on pedagogical heresy. The class in fact expressed some surprise as I presented the concept of extensive reading. I was therefore all the more curious to see how such a method would be embraced by students famously devoted to—indeed often obsessive about—tests, grades, and other surface rewards of the learning process. There was ample evidence, as cited above, that extensive reading would help them learn; that engaging linguistically “easy” texts would provide the kind of input that could nurture deeper understanding of vocabulary and words in context. But would students at Princeton in fact engage in such reading, given the pressures they faced from other courses and their myriad social obligations, and given the widely-held belief on campus that anything not tested in a course would never be entered into their Palm-Pilots for the daily study schedule? In other words, would a reading program with an intentional lack of organized accountability appeal to Organizational Kids?

Results

It is difficult to discern “success” in such a study. To determine if the project led to “better reading” (i.e., the ability to read more quickly, or with higher comprehension) or “increased vocabulary,” or “increased syntactic accuracy,” one would have to deploy a true experimental design, with the usual control and experimental groups, random assignment of learners to groups, pre- and post-testing, and so forth. More important – and more difficult, as Susser & Robb have pointed out – such a study would require a precise definition of the construct “extensive reading” (how much or how little reading constitutes “extensive” reading? How does one measure what is happening when learners are reading “extensively”?). Since the construct has not yet been operationalized in the research to date, I decided not to incorporate an experimental design, but rather to look at the intersections involved: Could extensive reading as described in the current literature be successfully embedded in a curriculum such as ours, and specifically in the syllabus of this course? Finding an answer to this called for qualitative rather than quantitative analysis, in order for the voices of the actors involved, i.e., the learners themselves, to be heard. To that end I sought multiple levels of input during and after the semester. Throughout the semester, I collected anecdotal data in the form of the reading report sheets; and at the end of the course I administered an anonymous survey, while several of the participants agreed to give oral feedback in a formal interview.

These report sheets provided one interesting (though admittedly coarsely-grained) quantitative measure, namely, a comparison of time spent on intensive reading as opposed to extensive reading. Based on the reports and the learners’ estimates of time per page for intensive reading, they spent an average of 2-3 minutes for each page in their extensive reading, as compared with 15-20 minutes per page on regularly assigned “intensive” texts. This suggests that they were able to read appropriately graded texts at something like five to six times the speed of traditional texts.

The more pertinent information, however, came by way of the anonymous survey administered at the very end of the semester, which probed their reactions to the texts, the lack of testing and a prescribed schedule, and similar evaluative issues (see Appendix 3). The first question – “How do you feel about “easy” vs. “real” texts?” – was the most general, and elicited the most commentary, with two interwoven themes emerging: learner affect and learning outcomes. It was clearly the case that extensive reading gave learners a sense of empowerment and subsequent enjoyment in the act of L2 reading, even if the subject matter seemed at times relatively banal to these readers. Here are several relevant quotes from the exit survey and the interviews:

• “Real” texts were more interesting, however, often frustrating to read. I often found myself flipping back and forth to the vocabulary list in the back of the book. The constant interruption was very disturbing to the flow. The “simplified” texts were much easier to read … However, the stories tended to be less interesting, and provided less substantial reading.

• I always looked forward to doing the extensive reading because it was so enjoyable to be able to read in German without having to look up every other word. Though the stories were of course not so intellectually challenging as the “real” texts we read, I neither expected nor wanted them to be

• It was much easier to think in German with extensive reading. With intensive reading, I focused on what it meant in English. With extensive reading, there was less translation as I read along.

Extensive reading allowed these learners to realize, as one respondent exclaimed: “I can do this!” And similarly: “It was definitely a self-esteem booster to be able to sit down and have a book and read it cover to cover and generally understand what was going on.”

All were not as enthusiastic, to be sure. The extensive reading texts, simplified and (some would say) diluted as they inevitably are, had a negative effect on two of the respondents:

• I didn’t enjoy reading the “easy” texts. I felt like I got a lot out of Besuch [der alten Dame].

• It was pretty difficult to motivate myself to read them, especially because they were not particularly engaging.

This criticism stems from the local context, I believe, since learners with varying L1 reading experience will bring to the extensive reading experience their equally varying levels of aesthetic expectation. But even the more critical of these two voices admitted the pedagogical utility of extensive reading elsewhere in the survey: “Simplified texts never give the pleasure of real ones – but are an important stepping stone to the real texts.” One could argue, then, that while extensive reading does not expose learners to the sorts of texts that fluent readers might prefer, it has the potential to lead them into reading “real” L2 texts later on with deeper understanding and pleasure, in ways that intensive reading alone, initiated too early in the L2 reading process, might thwart or inhibit.

In addition to fostering a positive affect toward L2 reading, extensive reading seemed to promote a qualitatively different kind of learning content, as compared with intensive reading:

• All of the readings [i.e., intensive and extensive] contribute to one’s knowledge of German grammar and literature. In-class readings expose one more to the culture, whereas extensive reading helps more with the grammar.

• The intensive reading led to greater comprehension of subject matter, the extensive reading to greater comprehension of language in general.

• I’ve learned more about the ways sentences are structured, phrases are used.

Such comments show how extensive reading fulfilled (at least in this setting) the prediction made by Day & Bamford that cognitively less demanding texts will allow learners to notice the language being used, in terms of both syntax and lexis, since creating meaning from a simpler text leads to less depletion of attentional resources. And as Schmidt and others have pointed out repeatedly, “noticing” the input is a critical element of the SLA process—and one that may well be short-circuited if reading is cognitively too demanding. Indeed, one learner who preferred to read more challenging materials—and was reading therefore not so much extensively as intensively, but still on his own—described this experience: “I read a real range of levels. Some were extremely easy which I still thought benefited me just because I got more comfortable with what I knew. The difficult stuff wasn’t as helpful since I was looking up every word.”

I was particularly interested in learners’ responses to questions dealing with “study culture,” especially the ways in which extensive reading violated the hallowed maxim at Princeton that only what is to be tested will ever be studied. At least for this group—and it must be emphasized that this was an honors course, with highly motivated students—the lack of testing, the autonomy of the reading (i.e., no discussion in class), and the low level of monitoring was not a deterrent to reading:

• I didn’t have a problem with the lack of monitoring or specific tests, because I could focus on learning what I thought would be helpful for the future, like certain vocabulary, or sentence structure, rather than on what I would be expected to know.

• A no-testing environment encouraged reading in order to become better at reading, rather than the usual “reading to pass the test” mentality.

• The picking your own difficulty level and reading at your own pace really allowed me to read in a way that was most beneficial to me. My comprehension definitely improved.

Particularly appealing to this group was the way in which extensive reading allowed them to move at their own pace:

• I was not required to read a certain amount of pages each week, and keep up with a set “class pace,” but rather, I could read slowly and feel like I fully understood the work. It was a good feeling to be able to spend multiple weeks on one text, and not feel pressured to read faster.

• I’m a slower reader, so I really enjoyed reading at my own pace. Often when I have an assigned amount I read it but don’t take time to re-read and really comprehend because I only have a certain amount of time to spend on it.

Yet for some, this had its pitfalls. One learner noted that “at-your-own-pace causes slacking off,” and another admitted that he “could have used more structure, more assignments.” Fully half of the respondents, in fact, responded to the last survey question (“Do you think we should keep it, but change the format?”) by suggesting that I add more structure to the extensive reading assignment. One recommended vocabulary quizzes, with “a different test for each student”; another thought that the assignment should be more uniform than open-ended, with “one book a week” being expected; others wanted more frequent deadlines for turning in the reading reports (I collected the reports about every two weeks); and one suggested that the class keep journals of what they read, which I would then read and comment on.

Responses such as these confirmed my suspicions that the culture of extensive reading would clash with the culture of study and work at our institution, at least in some measure. Yet the attitude that prevailed throughout the project was almost entirely positive, and echoed what one student expressed in an interview: “I really looked forward to doing this – I could sit down and read something for pleasure, and still feel like I was being productive by doing homework.” In other words, extensive reading made “doing homework” that much more enjoyable. It was this successful assimilation of extensive reading into the dominant culture of study and testing that led one learner (representative of others) to admit:

I found, at the beginning, that it was difficult to keep my attention focused on the reading when I didn’t feel pressured to read a certain amount. I work best under pressure. Toward the end of the semester, however, this was not a problem because I understood enough from the book that my attention was engaged.

To me, such a response suggests that extensive reading, properly organized, can succeed in doing exactly what any teacher hopes for, namely, creating in learners a positive attitude toward study and learning that transcends grade-mongering and a learn-for-the test mentality.

Would the learners in this group recommend keeping extensive reading in the syllabus, getting rid of it, or changing it in some way? The overwhelming sentiment was to keep it – even one of the negative voices cited above admitted that “both [intensive and extensive reading] are worthwhile” – but to do so in a context that included intensive reading as well:

• Having both is very important.

• I wouldn’t say that I prefer one or the other, because they helped me in different ways and it seems like both were equally necessary.

• I would definitely not have less of either one. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to increase the extensive reading a little. I cannot imagine dropping or decreasing the intensive reading. I often most enjoyed the hardest of the intensive reading.

This last comment is telling, for it points to the strategic relationship between intensive and extensive reading. The learners in this group recognized quickly that the “real” literature on the syllabus was of a qualitatively different sort than the texts to be read extensively; yet they recognized too that one of the steps to reading these “real” texts successfully was precisely the kind of reading experience that extensive reading afforded them, i.e., learning to take in sentence-level, in some cases paragraph-level meaning, as opposed to the drudgery of word-for-word deciphering. And they were agreed that the extensive reading practice in the course prepared them for the final reading project of the semester, Der Besuch der alten Dame.

On an anecdotal level, I was curious to see if reading the longer texts extensively might prepare the class for the relatively longer assignments they would be given when the syllabus reached Besuch. In years past, learners had usually voiced frustration in the early days of reading Besuch, finding it much more difficult to negotiate than the earlier (and shorter) intensive reading assignments. Was this because of its length, or because of some inherent increase in interpretive complexity? Hence the question on the survey: “Do you think that reading extensively during the semester helped bridge the gap between the shorter and longer intensive reading assignments?” The answers here all ran in one direction:

• Starting with Besuch would have been daunting.

• After reading extensive books, Der Besuch did not seem as big a challenge.

• I was more used to reading, so the long reading assignments didn’t seem too cumbersome.

This suggests that extensive reading can perhaps serve to bridge the gap between the kinds of assignments normally given in language classes (i.e., short stories and excerpts of longer texts), and the longer assignments more common in upper-level courses. For programs that are looking to eradicate the dichotomy between “language” and “content” courses (cf. Byrnes), extensive reading may give learners a way to move into other kinds of reading, other modes of perceiving reading assignments, even other modes of thinking about what it means to learn a new language.

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Appendix 1

Internet resources for graded readers in German:

Children’s books in German (graded readers):

Langenscheidt:

German Easy Readers:

Sample titles:

Langenscheidt Verlag (Berlin): Leichte Lektüren [“constructed” texts]

Einer singt falsch

Oktoberfest

Elvis in Köln

Mord auf dem Golfplatz

Leipziger Allerlei

Klett Verlag (Stuttgart): Easy Readers [“adapted” texts]

Level A (up to 600 words):

Kästner, Erich. Das doppelte Lottchen

Spoerl, Heinrich. Man kann ruhig darüber sprechen

Level B (up to 1200 words):

Lenz, Siegrfried. Das Feuerschiff

Scholl, Inge. Die weiße Rose

Wolf, Christa. Der geteilte Himmel

Level C (up to 1800 words)

Zweig, Stefan. Novellen

Appendix 2

Deutsch 102-5: Extensives Lesen Name: ________________________

Titel (oder Webseiten) für diese Woche [titles (or websites) for this week]:

1. _____________________________________________________

kurze Beschreibung: [short description]

2. _____________________________________________________

kurze Beschreibung:

3. _____________________________________________________

kurze Beschreibung:

Schwierigskeitsgrad der Texte (ohne Wörterbuch) [level of difficulty for the texts (without dictionary)]:

sehr leicht [very easy] sehr schwer [very hard]

1. 1 2 3 4 5

2. 1 2 3 4 5

3. 1 2 3 4 5

Würden Sie anderen den Text empfehlen? [Would you recommend this text to others?]

sehr zu empfehlen [very much so] sehr zu vermeiden [avoid it]

1. 1 2 3 4 5

2. 1 2 3 4 5

3. 1 2 3 4 5

Gesamte Lesezeit [total reading time]: ____________

(Kommentar auf der anderen Seite) [commentary on the reverse side]

Appendix 3

Anonymous exit survey:

1. How do you feel about “easy” or “simplified” texts vs. “real” texts?

2. How about reading on your own (no testing, no specific monitoring other than the reading report) vs. the usual content and vocabulary tests?

3. What about “at-your-own-pace” assignments vs. reading a prescribed amount for a specific day?

4. Regarding the strategy of mixing extensive with intensive reading in the syllabus: Would you do more or less of either? drop one or the other? Is having both important?

5. Do you think that reading extensively during the semester helped bridge the gap between the shorter and longer intensive reading assignments?

6. Do you think we should …

_____ keep the extensive reading as it is

_____ get rid of it

_____ keep it, but change the format

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