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From http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/April2014

The April 2014 issue (Volume 26, Number 1) of the electronic journal Reading in a Foreign Language (RFL) is now online and can be read at http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

This issue has eight regular articles, first four of which focus on various aspects of extensive reading. In the first article, Jez Uden, Diane Schmitt, & Norbert Schmitt present four case studies following a small group of learners to investigate whether a particular graded reading series provides a bridge to reading unsimplified novels for pleasure. David Beglar & Alan Hunt follow with an investigation on the effect of three factors on reading rate gains of 14 Japanese university students. In the third article, Eunseok Ro & Cheng-ling Alice Chen replicate the methods and data analysis of Crawford Camiciottoli’s (2001) study on second language (L2) reading behavior of academic English-as-a- foreign-language (EFL) students, followed by an article by Victoria Rodrigo, Daphne Greenberg, & Don Segal who analyzed the effect of two reading interventions on reading habits by 181 low literate adults who read at the 3-5.9 grade levels. One intervention implemented extensive reading and the other one had direct instruction. Four more articles follow that focus more on various theoretical aspects of reading. Scott Crossley, Hae Sung Yang, & Danielle McNamara utilize a moving windows self-paced reading task to assess both text comprehension and processing time of authentic texts and these same texts simplified to beginning and intermediate levels. Cindy Brantmeier, Mike Strube, & Xiucheng Yu examine the relationship between pausal and idea units in scoring recalls for L2 readers of English in China. Xiaoxing Su & Young-Suk Kim examine the relation of knowledge of semantic radicals to students’ language proficiency and word reading for adult Chinese-as-a-foreign language students. And finally, Mark Shiu Kee Shum, Wing Wah Ki, & Che Kan leong compared alphasyllabary language users with Chinese students in comprehending elementary Chinese texts containing indicators hypothesized to differentially predict text comprehension.

In addition, there are two book reviews. Mike Misner reviews Teacher’s Sourcebook for Extensive Reading by George Jacobs & Thomas S. C. Farrell, and New Ways in Teaching Reading, Revised by Richard R. Day (Ed.) is reviewed by Kasey Larson.

There are also three discussion articles in this issue. In the first one, Stuart McLean addressed the importance of comprehension to reading based on his understanding of Chang (2012), that previously published in RFL (April 2012). Anna C-S Chang follows with her response to McLean, and finally Alan Taylor contributes a discussion on his understanding of the article by Robb and Kano (2013), also previously published in RFL (October 2013).

The April 2014 issue is available at http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/April2014