Limitations in Studies using Unsimplified Material

A possible way to address the shortcomings of GRs is to offer an open selection of materials during the ER course, including unsimplified material. This leads to individualized reading which enables learners to read according to their own differing interests and comprehension levels (King, 1978:43). There is a huge variety of unsimplified materials, not just books, but also ‗magazines, newspapers, fiction, non- fiction, texts that inform, texts that entertain, general, specialized, light, [and] serious‘ (Day & Bamford, 2002:137). There are also books that are specifically aimed at learners such as teenage books with language and content that is ‗relevant to the life experience, thoughts, emotions, and dreams of young people‘ (Ronnqvist & Sell, 1994:126), and books that have L1 translation glossaries, which have been found to be beneficial for text comprehension and vocabulary learning (Laufer, 2005:4).

Hence, it has been reported that unsimplified material can be especially interesting and motivating (Pellicer-Sanchez & Schmitt, 2010:37), complying with ER‘s key need to use enjoyable texts (Day & Bamford, 2002:136; Hill, 2008:194) in order to sustain a large amount of reading (Pellicer-Sanchez & Schmitt, 2010:32), because what is read is much less important than the enjoyment derived (Hafiz & Tudor, 1989:9; Williams, 1986:44). If the material is enjoyable, the ‗absorbing content‘ (Elley & Mangubhai, 1983:66) can help to overcome the difficulties experienced with unsimplified materials, because learners are human beings and not machines, and as such they have loves and interests that motivate them to persevere and read on (Paran, 2008:469). If the unsimplified material remains difficult to fully comprehend – as could be the case for lower-level learners – it should be noted that ER does not require full comprehension (Day & Bamford, 2002:138; Pritchard & Nasr, 2004), but instead only the gist (Hill, 2008:186) or a general understanding (Yamashita, 2004:3) is required, and so readers have been found to simply skip unknown words if they are not critical to text comprehension (Nation & Coady, 1988:99).

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It could be argued that vocabulary acquisition in particular can be better achieved with GRs than with unsimplified texts, especially for lower-level learners. This is based on the premise that GRs are designed to repeat key words (as critiqued above in Section- 2.7.1 p.20) and that learners need many repeated exposures to words to acquire them incidentally through reading (Pigada & Schmitt, 2006:19). However, as detailed before in Section-2.7.1 p.20, this is not always the case, with Claridge (2012:106) finding in some major publishers of GRs a lack of attention to texts for the lowest level of learners, and with Pellicer-Sanchez & Schmitt (2010:35,47) reporting that in some GRs the words are not repeated as much as recommended. Furthermore, the quality of attention when meeting a word has been considered more significant in aiding acquisition than the quantity of meetings (Nation, 2015:136), and this can apply to lower-level learners as well, meaning that if they chose exciting and interesting unsimplified material, the resulting extra attention can assist in vocabulary acquisition, even if the words are not repeated so often.

The idea that SLA is mainly pushed by what learners pay attention to is considered ‗common sense‘ by many (Schmidt, 2012:27), with some asserting that noticing is essential for converting input into intake, where noticing requires both attention and awareness (Inzumi, 2002:542). Those who hold this view recognise the possibility and effectiveness of incidental vocabulary learning through reading (Schmidt, 2012:30), but argue that even during this process learners still pay attention, and with more attention comes more incidental learning (Schmidt, 1990:129) and more retention of what has already been learned (Shaw et al., 2010:116). This is particularly relevant given that purely naturalistic learning can be very time consuming (Sharwood Smith, 1981:160), as discussed earlier near the end of Section-2.5 p13, when noting the long duration ER programmes ideally require.

Enhancing attention to vocabulary has often been achieved by enhancing the formatting of the text (Inzumi, 2002:543), even though this is an external measure that is thought to be less effective than techniques that stimulate more internal processes in the learner, such as those stimulated when using the vocabulary in production activities (Inzumi,

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2002:566) that are typical in task-based learning (Robinson, 1995:284). Repeating vocabulary is also an attention-enhancing technique (as is aimed for in GRs – see Section-2.7.1 p.20 above), but this is a quantitative technique that is considered less significant than qualitative techniques that require ―deeper and more elaborate processing‖ (Inzumi, 2002:569). Hence interesting and enjoyable books, which are easier to source in unsimplified formats (as argued above at the start of this section), can provide a greater motivation to read that enhances incidental vocabulary acquisition (Shaw et al., 2010:124) by raising the attention of the reader (Schmidt, 2012:40) – including lower-level readers – in a qualitative way that stimulates more internal processes, even when the words are not repeated so often. All of this can lend weight to the argument that unsimplified material can be effective in promoting incidental vocabulary acquisition in even lower-level learners, as long as they find it interesting enough.

A free selection of reading, including unsimplified material, encourages learner autonomy, whereby ‗the learner's perspective is assigned a privileged position‘ (Benson, 2001:223), which is important (Cotterall, 2000:109) because it is thought to be a key way to motivate learners (Beglar & Hunt, 2005:9; Dörnyei & Csizer, 1998:215; Pigada & Schmitt, 2006:2). It has been recommended to give learners ownership (Cotterall, 2000:117) and choices (Littlejohn, 1985:253) for how they learn, and ER with a free choice of materials can encourage this, moving books away ‗from shaping interests to

catering for interests‘ (Pearson, 1968:243), and aiding learners to read independently,

because ‗as teachers of reading our professional objective is to make ourselves redundant‘ (Williams, 1986:45).

Theorists have disagreed about how easy the reading material should be for effective ER. Some have insisted it should be within the reader‘s ability (Brown, 2009:241; Day, 2007:20; Pigada & Schmitt, 2006:2) i.e. a level easier than the reader‘s current ability, while Yamashita (2004:15) described Krashen‘s Input Hypothesis as regarding the level above the reader‘s ability to provide the condition for acquisition. It could be difficult to provide a selection of books that accommodates both views, and this problem is not necessarily solved even if GRs (with their clearly labelled levels) are used, because it

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has been found in one study (Wanarom, 2008:61) that the vocabulary actually used in GRs does not fit closely with the word lists on which they are supposed to be based, and that the levels in series from different publishers do not correspond either. Again, a solution could be to simply allow learners to read books (including unsimplified books) according to the level of difficulty that they choose, especially when considering Al- Homoud & Schmitt (2009:397) found no difference in improved reading speeds or vocabulary acquisition between a group of learners that read books at a comfortable lower level, and another group that read at a more difficult higher level.

It could be construed that by encouraging a free choice of reading, the teacher has no role to play in an ER programme consisting of unsimplified books. However, the teacher can indeed play the role of an informed decision-maker, especially in a context where an eclectic mix of teaching methods are encouraged (Beale, 2002), because teachers are stakeholders that actively participate in the classroom, and as such, possess a great deal of knowledge about their students and their social context (Holliday, 1994:9). Hence the teacher can nurture processes in order to create conditions that are optimal for learning (Beale, 2002) by scaffolding instruction to offer guidance without controlling the decisions learners make (Cotterall, 2000:116), and by opening up a process of negotiation through joint exploration and discussion (Martyn, 2000:153). This could serve better the individual needs and preferences of the learners, whom we cannot expect to follow the same approach to learning (Littlejohn, 1985:255), and whom, even when from similar backgrounds, may differ widely in terms of psychological predispositions, learning experiences, motivation, affect, age, and strategy use (Benson, 2004:5,20).

Hence, in the context of providing a free choice of reading materials during an ER programme, the teacher can still give advice based on experience or research, such as encouraging reading at least two books every month (Nation, 2005a:6), encouraging story books over information-based books (Hafiz & Tudor, 1989:10; Reid-Thomas & Hill, 1993:252), and even giving personal opinions about particular books they feel strongly about (Ronnqvist & Sell, 1994:129). However, with all this, it should be remembered that ER has a particular feature of allowing learners to choose their own

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books (Day, 2007:20; Waring & Nation, 2004:105), because they are reading for themselves and not for the teacher (Day & Bamford, 2002:137). Hence the role of the teacher is still active, but the learners‘ final choice should always be respected (Ronnqvist & Sell, 1994:129), even if that final choice happens to be unsimplified books.

With this background, there would seem to be a case for encouraging a free choice of reading materials (including unsimplified material) during an ER programme. Some have gone further to actively encouraged unsimplified material in order to cover the mid-frequency vocabulary that is under-represented in GRs (Pellicer-Sanchez & Schmitt, 2010:32&35). Others have found that unsimplified material in the form of running newspaper stories can provide the required level of repeated exposure to vocabulary that is needed for acquisition while reading (Kyongho & Nation, 1989:332), which may also by inference apply to other forms of serialised writing. Despite this, only a few of the surveyed L2 ER studies used unsimplified material (Macalister, 2008:251) (Janopoulos, 1986:764), and Pellicer-Sanchez & Schmitt (2010:46) reported that there was little research ‗involving unsimplified texts of any kind‘. In addition, only a few of the surveyed studies used unsimplified material when investigating vocabulary acquisition through reading (Pellicer-Sanchez & Schmitt, 2010:31) (Kyongho & Nation, 1989:323), and Pellicer-Sanchez & Schmitt (2010:33) reported that there was little such research using authentic novels in particular.