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Robert L Davis is a Professor of Spanish and Director of Language Instruction in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon. He is also the Scholar in Residence in the Global Scholars Hall and a member of the CASLS Advisory Board.

What were the last five things that you read? If you are reading this, you are probably a teacher, and your answer probably includes a mix of genres: news from print or online sources, a journal article about your professional practice, a novel for your book club, a new recipe from a website. Why did you choose to read these pieces? To keep abreast of current events, to improve your teaching, to impress your friends at the church potluck.

Contrary to many teachers' beliefs, young people actually read and write a lot; their world is increasingly mediated through text. But what, how, and why they read and write may be substantially different from their parents' and teachers' reading habits. One of the keys to engaging students with reading is to select texts and create reading activities that allow learners to mirror the real-life ways that we interact with text. What rationale do teachers usually give for their choice of readings in second language classes? "I want my students to know this great work from Spanish culture," or "this poem is good for the verb gustar." I would wager that you have never chosen what you wanted to read because of the prevalence of a grammar point. If you have ever thought these ideas, maybe your students will not be as interested in reading as they could be.

So what should students read? Everything! All genres can be interesting and motivating—songs, poems, short stories, journalistic pieces, blogs, web articles, even novels. Great works from a cultural tradition are important to know, but students won't immediately see this shared cultural knowledge as sufficient motivation—at first. It's better to emphasize the aspects of these texts that make them inherently interesting as expressions of the human experience: self discovery, intrigue, love, generational conflict, etc.

The biggest factor in selecting texts for L2 students is not level; it's the topic. You should do an "interest inventory" to find out what topics and activities your students are passionate about. Then, let them have a say in selecting L2 texts that will engage those passions.

Of course, some texts can be challenging, but your reading lesson plan should emphasize reading for a real-world purpose—which often means that readers don't actually go line by line and read the entire text! Sometimes it's just sufficient to get some basic information from a reading.

Other factors in selecting texts for L2 learners are summarized by Swaffar, Arens, and Byrnes (1991, 137-139):

• avoid language that is opaque or antiquated
• choose texts with a clear rhetorical structure (readerly vs. writerly)
• choose texts with overt development of ideas and greater structural organization
• use texts with unambiguous intents

In sum, research in L2 reading suggests that you consider an alternative view of the role of reading in young people's lives. In a next week's article, I'll provide some examples of reading pedagogy that is informed by this research on reading.

Reference

Swaffar, J., K. Arens, and H. Byrnes (1991) Reading for meaning: An integrated approach to language learning. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall.