• Create language experience texts. In the language experience approach, learners have an experience together or share knowledge about an experience, such as taking a class trip, shopping for food, or coming to the United States. They discuss or answer questions about the experience and the teacher writes a text. They then copy the text and read it themselves. (See Holt, 1995, and Activities to Promote Reading Development for details about developing language experience stories.)

What Are the Benefits of Reading in a Second Language?

We have described above how second language proficiency facilitates reading development, but reading in English also can help develop language proficiency. The act of reading itself exposes us to language that we process as we seek to gain information that is important and meaningful. Therefore, at the same time that students learn from their reading about gardening, parenting in the United States, U.S. citizenship, or workplace benefits, they also are learning English.

Some of the benefits of reading for language development are the following:

• Reading texts provides one source of language input.
• Extensive or sustained reading can promote knowledge of the vocabulary and structures of English.
• Learners engaged in extensive reading tend to be more likely to enjoy reading and feel comfortable reading new texts.
• Extensive reading seems to develop writing ability in some learners, especially those with greater English proficiency and literacy skills.

(See Carson, Carrell, Silberstein, & Kuehn, 1990; Cho & Krashen, 1994; Constantino, 1995; Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Tse, 1996a, 1996b for discussion of these benefits.)

In summary, reading can build second language vocabulary, conversational proficiency, and writing ability as well as reading proficiency. Teachers need to carefully select texts for learners or assist them in choosing their own texts at appropriate levels of reading difficulty. They need to focus on the level of decoding, vocabulary knowledge, and cultural or background knowledge needed to handle the texts. They also need to create classroom activities that will help learners understand and work with the texts and develop the key reading component skills.