journal review

A Review of Reading in a Foreign Language: A refereed international online journal of issues in foreign language reading and literacy.

Reading in a Foreign Language (RFL) is an academic journal that was founded in 1983 at the University of Aston, Birmingham, England. It was then moved to the University of Hawai’i in 2002. The main co-authors are Richard R. Day and Thom Hudson, and reviews editor is Ann Burns. The journal presents recent research on the theory and practice of reading and literacy among second and foreign language teachers and learners. It also provides some theoretical and pedagogical standards for teaching and learning reading in foreign languages. The journal is published twice a year, in April and October. The editorial board has their own submission guidelines, among which the main requirement is that manuscripts have to be related to the learning and teaching of reading in a foreign language. The journal also publishes some reviews of scholarly books, teaching materials, reports and discussion briefings. All the articles are published in English, but some includes several foreign language terms and citations. The RFL is a free online journal; however, the first 13 issues of the journal were produced in hard copies and available in most university libraries in the USA and other countries.
As I read the last three issues of this journal, I found that in each issue there is a general theme that connects the articles in that particular issue. For example, the last issue of October 2008 presents some experimental studies on reading and vocabulary in a foreign language. One article by Ronan Brown et al. discusses the frequency of second or foreign language learners’ acquisition of new vocabulary through reading, listening while reading, and just listening to some texts. The study concludes that foreign language readers tend to pick more words in the first two kinds of readings and less in the third. The other articles in the same issue deal with reading competence and vocabulary acquisition investigating whether vocabulary assistance can help increase reading and comprehension, and where and how that assistance should be given.
The other two issues I read presents some original research on issues regarding the differences between “good” readers and “bad” readers, and the common skills and strategies that would make a good reader in both L1 & L2. Some presents a discussion of extensive reading and the overall development of reading fluency, concluding that extensive reading, mostly reading for pleasure, is a major factor in achieving some reading fluency (Yurika Iwahori).
One of the interesting controversies that the journal presents is how different ethnic groups read differently. Some articles argue that these groups develop their vocabulary recognition proportionally to the ways they developed their reading fluency and word recognition in their L1. I found those conclusions very interesting and plan to do some future research on Arab students’ reading skills and words recognition. I also learned that, for foreign language readers, learning words of familiar synonyms is much easier that learning new words or words that they do not have any synonym for. Interesting!