Reading in English as an academic lingua franca

1. Reading in English as an academic lingua franca Philip Shaw Alan McMillion

2. NS advantage, productive and receptive tasks and ELF • In production NS have an accuracy advantage, which derives from the definition of accuracy as NS performance and can hence be eliminated by redefining accuracy in the language in question. • What advantage, if any, do NS have in receptive tasks, and what, if anything, can be done about it?

3. Receptive ELF The focus in ELF studies is on speaking (and writing); what about listening, reading? • Political, student-demographic and economic factors currently mean that ’international English’ textbooks are US-based and written in a native-like norm. • How do academic ENL and ELF users compare in receptive processing?

4. Some basic questions • Do Swedish biology students (high-proficiency lingua-franca users) read English as ’well’ as British equivalents, given that both are expected to read the same textbooks at the same levels? • What differences, if any, can be identified in their reading processes and products?

5. Background • Within-subject studies show that most people read faster in L1 than L2 (Griffith) and that L2 reading success is affected by L2 proficiency/automaticity and transferable (L1) reading strategies/ metacognitive knowledge (Hulstijn and co-workers NELSON) • Increasingly, students are required to read in L2 in lingua-franca situations • What, if anything, should be the focus of L2 reading instruction in such an environment?

6. Factors affecting L2 reading success • L2 receptive proficiency (mainly vocab at higher stages) • L2 automaticity (word recognition & parsing) • ”Metacognitive knowledge” = ”L1 literacy” = ”strategies” including individual expectation of coherence, ability to adapt reading style to task, and other forms of cultural capital • Content familiarity • Genre familiarity • Memory span • Task motivation • etc

7. Our subjects • 80 (odd) Stockholm University (1st-semester) biology students required to read…. • 19 Edinburgh University equivalents (all with highest proficiency in English) • 30 Reading University equivalents (19 highest-proficiency English, 11 another language as proficient or more so, all with secondary ed in the UK) • Only data from those within 1 SD of NS norm reported (= bona-fide ELF, 3 Brits omitted)

8. Tests • Reading product: 1 timed multiple-choice, 2 timed recall, 3 timed scanning simple texts • Vocabulary: 1 Academic Word List, 2 infrequent words • Inferencing • Word-recognition speed:1electronic 2 paper

9. No NS advantage Large NS advantage

10. SWE: 7.8 BRI: 12.7

11. SWE 14.6 BRI 17.6

12. SWE 21.2 BRI 26.9

13. Factors determining different test performances • Not inferencing ability • Vocabulary knowledge • Academic Word List – indexical of language proficiency • Low-frequency vocab – ndexical of exposure to print • Automaticity/speed

14. SWE:17.5 BRI 17.3

15. Test of Academic Word List

16. SWE: 16.0 BRI: 25.2

17. SWE 8.3 BRI 17.8

18. Score per question on a test of English reading

20. Results summary • Some of the Swedish sample read as well as the Brits, but most were on the low side. This is not due to higher-level problems (reading skills, etc) but to slow reading due to • Lack of basic vocabulary • Lack of automaticity, • And these are due to later exposure and and lower exposure to print.

21. Conclusion: NS advantage, receptive tasks and ELF • NS have an accuracy advantage, which derives from the definition of accuracy as NS performance and can hence be eliminated by redefining accuracy • NS typically have a vocabulary advantage, and nearly all have an automaticity advantage which can only be eliminated by extensive exposure to print/listening, and is therefore impervious to ELF policies.