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...n L2 learning, and (2) audio support during extensive reading. One limitation of extensive reading in the L2 context is that the amount of vocabularyslearned is closely tied to the amount of reading (=-=Cobb, 2007-=-; Laufer, 2003). Because L2slearning programs often result in relatively small amounts of vocabulary growth over manysyears of study (Webb & Chang, 2012b), progressive approaches to learning vocabular...

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...l of written text like deduce, entity, and implicit would be very unlikely to come up at all—even in many more hours of spoken input. The implications for pedagogy are clear: One not lost on readers of this journal is that L2 learners need to read in their new language; spoken classroom input alone cannot do the job of providing exposure to the vocabulary of written English. But written text is like speech in that meeting all of the high frequency families requires exposure to a great deal of input. Reading enough text to meet all of the families repeatedly presents an even greater challenge. Cobb (2007) has argued that it is virtually impossible for L2 learners to learn 3,000 high-frequency words through extensive reading alone; the prospects for repeated encounters with all of the less frequent but still important families on the K4, K5, and K6 lists are slimmer still. A way out of the dilemma is the solution long advocated by Nation (1990, 2001): In addition to providing opportunities to learn through exposure to meaning-focused input, teachers should devote class time to the direct instruction of high frequency vocabulary, informed by useful lists such as the BNC 20. Conclusion A strength...

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...is like Dutch after all.sRaising the learning task from 2,580 to 8,000 word families gives a rather different picture ofswhat is needed to read in a second language. I have recently used corpus data (=-=Cobb, 2007-=-) tosshow that the natural distribution of words in texts makes it very difficult for L2 learners to getsmuch beyond 2,000 word families on their own through reading, for the demonstrable reason thats...

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... does not appear often enough insnewspapers, two out of ten in academic writing, and three out of ten in fiction.sTable 2. Results for 2000 Word Frequency Word Families: Frequency of Occurrence (From =-=Cobb, 2007-=-,sTable 1)sPress Academic Fiction Totalspersua' 17 3 7 27sgrade' 14 25 8 47stechnolog' 9 8 0 17smoon' 6 27 31 64swire' 3 5 20 28smaintain' 16 49 6 71sanaly' 12 129 4 145sdrama' 40 14 8 62sdepress' 14 ...

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...replicate and expand upon the ones we have. This paper will suggest replication of studies of lexical coverage (van Zeeland & Schmitt 2012), vocabulary size (Nation 2006), and plausible learnability (=-=Cobb 2007-=-) in order to develop a more reliable, nuanced, and ecologically valid understanding of the amount of vocabulary learners need to acquire in order to become proficient language users in their chosen d...

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...the liberal arts and sciencess305sReading in a Foreign Language 22(2)saddress its limitations and weaknesses. One weakness comes from the lack of graded non-fictionstexts that we can use extensively (=-=Cobb, 2007-=-; Hill, 1997). The Footprint Reading Librarys(Waring, 2007) presents real-world non-fiction stories that are graded, and they come with videosfrom National Geographic Digital Media. In addition, The O...

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...rials that contain new vocabulary are at the same time inaccessible to the language-learner because new words are not found in a suitably comprehensible context (for a discussion of this dilemma, see =-=Cobb, 2007-=-, 2008). Indeed, an examination of first-year textbooks indicated a vast disparity between the actual reading levels of our students and the reading levels exFigure 2. LearningByDesign social science ...

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.... To date, only two researchers, Iwahori (2008) and Beglar, Hunt, and Kite (2012) have provided empirical data that shed direct light on this hypothesis. Hypothesis 2: Participants who display greater reading rate gains read more simplified texts and few or no unsimplified texts. This hypothesis is based on the idea that fluency is largely developed by recycling language at multiple levels (e.g., orthography, lexis, morpho-syntax, semantics, and genre) and that a greater amount of lexical recycling takes place in simplified texts written within the first 2,000 high frequency words of English (Cobb, 2007; Nation & Wang, 1999). Hypothesis 3: Participants who make greater reading rate gains read a greater number of lower level simplified books. Reading lower level books can provide two advantages. First, they can be read more quickly, allowing participants to read a greater number of standard words over the academic year. Second, these books provide greater repetition of high frequency lexis and syntax; hence, learners encounter more opportunities for developing sight vocabulary and processing larger linguistic units, such as collocations and lexical phrases, more rapidly and with less cognitiv...

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...focus on discourse-level comprehension (i.e. teaching how to comprehend whole texts) rather than background knowledge or vocabulary, which are the traditional and currently used ways to teach EFL reading in Mexico. As we have claimed above, current EFL teaching in Mexico focuses on background knowledge and vocabulary, not on discourse comprehension. So the label “alternative” here is to be understood as discourse-focused. While there are other extremely valuable, computer enhanced, MEXTESOL Journal, Volume 36, Number 2, 2012 4 vocabulary-focused pedagogical proposals to teach L2 reading (e.g. Cobb, 2007a, 2007b), these are not addressed in this study because, despite their novelty and value, they do not deal with issues of discourse-level comprehension directly or explicitly. These alternative, discourse-oriented pedagogies focus on raising learners’ awareness of the organizational patterns of text, or text cohesion and coherence, which are discourse-level phenomena. This paper, then, seeks to address the following three questions. 1. What are the theoretical and empirical foundations for current EFL reading pedagogy as described by Grabe and Han and D’Angelo? 2. What are the theoretical and...

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...l l (= ) ar e n o n si g n ifi ca n t (p > .0 5) . 170 TESOL Journal pleasure reading), it seems that words must be met in the order of 8–10 times for the initial form–meaning link to be established (=-=Cobb, 2007-=-; Schmitt, 2008). For learning through explicit tasks (as was the case in this study), the number of exposures required is probably lower due to the greater engagement involved, but it is clear that m...