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The April 2016 issue (Volume 28, 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 special issue contains seven regular articles. Scott A. Crossley and Danielle S. McNamara utilize simplified and authentic texts to examine text-based recall and extra-textual generations with 48 native speakers of Spanish studying English. With 91 Turkish and Australian participants studying French, Meral Özkan Gürses and Eric Bouvet contend that cultural, linguistic, and contextual differences between the two groups may contribute to larger variability in reading comprehension than in strategy use or in learning styles. Shusaku Kida examines whether automatic word recognition is acquired over time and whether the development of orthographic representation is actually “achieved” over time. The study offers strong rationale for future research on sustained silent reading. Jeff McQuillan analyzed a set of popular fiction series books and concluded that such books can provide a sufficient amount of input, with 98%vocabulary coverage, and consequently could serve as a possible “bridge” to more challenging texts. With 27 reading textbooks for English as a Second Language, Lia Plakans and Zeynep Bilk use a computational tool called Coh-Metrix in order to investigate whether and how cohesion differs across textbooks written for beginning, intermediate, and advanced second language readers. Etsuo Taguchi, Greta Gorsuch, Kristin Lems, and Rory Rosszell examine how repetitions in reading a text and having learners read along with an audio model of the text may provide scaffolding for L2 learners’ reading comprehension. In the final article, Masayuki Tanabe operationalize temporal measures and show that vocabulary tests do classify lexical knowledge in greater detail.

In addition, this issue has a series of response articles that examine factors from prior publications. Stuart McLean talks about the importance of supporting inferences with evidence, and Jeffrey Huffman responds to a critique of the Huffman (2014) publication. Meredith Stephens discusses the influence of translation as a response to Sakurai, and Víctor R. Quiñones Guerra redefines translations in EFL classrooms through comments on Sakarai (2015). The discussion section ends with Sakurai providing a detailed and informed response to the critiques.

RFL is a scholarly, refereed journal published on the World Wide Web by the University of Hawai`i, with Richard R. Day and Cindy Brantmeier as the co-editors, Thom Hudson as associate editor, and Anne Burns, Macquarie University, as the reviews editor.

Access the current issue at http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/April2016/