Reading in English as an
academic lingua franca
Philip Shaw
Alan McMillion
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?
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 USbased and written in a native-like norm.
• How do academic ENL and ELF users
compare in receptive processing?
Some basic questions
• Do Swedish biology students (highproficiency 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?
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?
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
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 highestproficiency 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)
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:1 electronic 2
paper
Hypothetical patterns of reading test scores
FOR ILLUSTRATION ONLY
test scores
No NS advantage
NNS
NS
Large NS advantage
0
5
10
15
20
individuals
25
30
35
Biology text written recall in L1 or L2
30
SWE: 7.8
Proositions recalled
25
BRI: 12.7
20
15
10
SWE
BRI MONO
BRI BI
5
0
0
20
40
60
Individuals
80
100
120
Multiple-choice, difficult texts, only subjects over 10
35
SWE 14.6
30
BRI 17.6
Score out of 40
25
20
15
SWE
BRI MONO
BRI BI
10
5
0
0
20
40
60
Individuals
80
100
120
Newspaper scanning/skimming
32
SWE 21.2
BRI 26.9
27
score/32
22
17
SWE
BRI MONO
12
BRI BI
7
2
0
10
20
30
40
50
-3
Individuals
60
70
80
90
100
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
Inferencing result unaffected byNS status
20
18
16
Score out of 20
14
12
10
8
SWE:17.5
6
BRI 17.3
SWE
BRI MONO
BRI BI
4
2
0
0
20
40
60
Individuals
80
100
120
Test of Academic Word List
30
AWL test scores
25
20
SWE
BRI MONO
15
BRI BI
10
5
0
0
50
100
150
Academic Vocab vs m-c reading success
30
Academiv Vocab score/30
25
SWE: 16.0
BRI: 25.2
20
15
10
SWE
BRI MONO
BRI BI
5
0
10
15
20
25
RC score/40
30
35
Low-frequency vocab vs m-c reading success
30
low-frequency vocab/30
25
20
SWE 8.3
BRI 17.8
15
10
SWE
BRI MONO
BRI BI
5
0
10
15
20
25
m-c test score/40
30
35
Score per question on a test of
English reading
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
Sw edish
British
4
2
0
T1
T2
T3
T4
T5
T6
T7
T8
T9 T10
Word recognition speed, students and physicians
Word-recognitio speed,
milliseconds
2500
2000
1500
1000
SWESTUD
SWEMED
BRI
500
0
0
5
10
15
20
Individuals
25
30
35
40
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.
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.