A Preliminary Analysis of Text Coverage and Extensive Reading of Chinese ESL Learners-- Range Analysis of The Little Prince and Pride and Prejudice

Authors

  • Jiayu Zhuo Language Academy, University of Malaysia Technology

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30564/ret.v4i4.3606

Abstract

One of the common problems for L2 learners in ESL reading is that the text is either too difficult to understand or too simple to challenge, particularly the extracurricular reading material. The Little Prince and Pride and Prejudice are typically listed in the key reading materials for L2 learners. Contrary to the popularity, a large number of L2 learners find it is hard to complete due to the low text coverage with existing vocabulary. The corpus has become an important language research tool to store language materials according to the specific goals and the way through certain technical means. This paper is going to explore the text coverage of The Little Prince and Pride and Prejudice by range analysis, and comparing with English Curriculum Standards to figure out suitable reading targets of these two materials.

Keywords:

Text coverage; Extensive reading; Vocabulary teaching; ESL learning

References

[1] Klare, G. R. (1963). The Measurement of Readability. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State Universtiy Press.

[2] Krashen, S.D. (1982) The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications. Longman, New York.

[3] Lewis, B. (2010) The Lexical Approach [M]. Language Teaching Publications, London.

[4] Sinclair, J. & A. Renouf. (1988). A Lexical Syllabus for Language Learning. In R. Carter & M. McCarthy (eds. ) Vocabulary and Language Teaching [C]. Harlow:Longman, 140-158.

[5] The Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China [M]. English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School. Beijing Normal University Publishing House, 2017.

[6] Nation, P. (2006). How Large a Vocabulary is Needed for Reading and Listening? The Canadian Modern Language Review, 61, 1, 59-82.

[7] Hu, M., & Nation, I. S. P. (2000). Vocabulary Density and Reading Comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, 13(1), 403-430.

[8] Carver, R. P. (1994). Percentage of Unknown Vocabulary Words in Text as a Function of The Relative Difficulty of the Text: Implications for Instruction.Journal of Reading Behavior, 26 (4), 413-437.

[9] Kurnia, N. (2003). Returning of Multi-word Strings and Meaning Derivation from L2 Reading. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

[10] Laufer, B., & Ravenhorst- Kalovski. G. C. (2010).Lexical Threshold Revised: Lexical Text Coverage,Learners’ Vocabulary Size and Reading Comprehension.Reading in a Foreign Language, 22,1, 15-30.

[11] The Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China [M]. English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education. Beijing Normal University Publishing House 2017.

[12] Tuinman, J. J., & Brady, M. E. (1974). How Does Vocabulary Account for Variance on Reading Comprehension Tests? A Preliminary Instructional Analysis.In Nacke, P. (ed.), Interaction: Reading and Practice for College- Adult Reading. Clemson, SC: National Reading Conference, 176-84.

[13] Nation, P. (2013). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom.

[14] Nation, I. S. P. & Moir, J. (2008). Vocabulary Learning and the Good Language Learner. In Griffiths, C. (ed), Lessons from Good Language Learners. Cmabridge: Cambridge Univesity Press, 159-73.

[15] Beglar, D., Hunt, A., & Kite, Y. (2012). The Effort of Pleasure Reading on Japanese University EFL Learners’ Reading Rates. Language Learning, 62, 3, 665-703.

Downloads

Issue

Vol. 4 , Iss. 4 (November 2021)

Article Type

Articles

License

Copyright and Licensing

The authors shall retain the copyright of their work but allow the Publisher to publish, copy, distribute, and convey the work.

Review of Educational Theory publishes accepted manuscripts under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). Authors who submit their papers for publication by Review of Educational Theory agree to have the CC BY-NC 4.0 license applied to their work, and that anyone is allowed to reuse the article or part of it free of charge for non-commercial use. As long as you follow the license terms and original source is properly cited, anyone may copy, redistribute the material in any medium or format, remix, transform, and build upon the material.

License Policy for Reuse of Third-Party Materials

If a manuscript submitted to the journal contains the materials which are held in copyright by a third-party, authors are responsible for obtaining permissions from the copyright holder to reuse or republish any previously published figures, illustrations, charts, tables, photographs, and text excerpts, etc. When submitting a manuscript, official written proof of permission must be provided and clearly stated in the cover letter.
The editorial office of the journal has the right to reject/retract articles that reuse third-party materials without permission.

Journal Policies on Data Sharing

We encourage authors to share articles published in our journal to other data platforms, but only if it is noted that it has been published in this journal.