Critical Review of one Academic Article

What Makes Reading in a Second Language Difficult?

Paul Harvey
Paul Harvey works as a lecturer in English Language Centre at Exeter University as well as
a teacher at training courses. He has various kinds of experiences in teaching in many different
countries. His main interest is in English grammar and reading in a second language.
In this article, Harvey points out that reading in any language requires a complex process
and also makes several key points related to reading in a second language on topics such as reading
fluency, automaticity, interaction between reader and the text, text difficulty, etc. He agreed with
Day and Bramford (1998) that volume, practice, and range in reading are important to be included
in reading syllabus. I do also agree with the statement, because based on my experience, teaching
reading is time consuming, therefore, practice with a wide range of reading materials is necessary.
But, the main problem is always about range of vocabulary. The students find many difficulties in
understanding the text and answering comprehension questions. According to Hu and Nation
(2000), to have an understanding of a text L2 readers have to know 98% or more of the words. So,
it is clear that the proportion of familiarity in vocabulary will affect the students understanding of a
text.
In his article, Harvey explains that developing reading skills takes long time. He also adds
that the average L2 student who is studying in a language classroom for three or four hours a week
receives a relatively small amount of reading practice. This reason can be true, regarding to
Indonesian context, students also experience the same amount of time allocation for learning
English, but the students not only have to learn reading but also other English language skills.
Therefore, this amount of time will not be enough for students to mastery English.
Furthermore, Harvey also proposes that it is important to have a good range of reading
materials used in teaching English. He argues that a large quantity of reading material available for
English as a second/foreign language is a must. In fact, finding appropriate text is not an easy
matter; most teachers find difficulty working to find appropriate texts that suit to the students
competence level and context.
Harvey discusses some strategies to deal with reading in a second/foreign language. His first
strategy is to make the students have reading diaries. He believes that reading diaries are very useful
to help understand the structure of written text. Second, give the students texts without explanation.
Because he argues that comprehension questions are stressing and frightening for students,
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therefore, he said that not all texts required exploitation and sometimes it was a welcome relief for
students. His third strategy is individualized reading. It is believed that by having texts that the
students like will encourage students motivation in reading. The fourth and fifth strategies are
creating reading culture and listening to other readers. These five strategies seem interesting and
applicable, but those strategies are old fashioned. All the activities proposed are individual-based
where students learn individually as part of classroom society. This is in contrary to the fact that
todays trend of teaching learning process is collaborative among students, in which students learn
together to share ideas with specific purposes. Moreover, research held by Nunan (1992), for
example, was shown that students who work in collaborative groups also appear more satisfied with
their classes. In this case, based on my research about teaching reading through collaborative
learning approach, I agree that collaborative learning has shown great positive effect both to the
students and the teachers.
I find the strategies suggested by Harvey will be difficult to be done in school context
because the students will find many difficulties in making diaries and the teachers dont have
enough time to correct all the students writing, because teachers are already burden by not only
teaching but also a lot of administrative works. And the suggestion to give the students text without
explanation will also be difficult, since the students must face the final examination that will be
issued by the government; therefore, they must study to recognize the questions (to be familiar with
the questions).
But for university context Harveys strategies seem reasonable, so there is possibility to
apply Harveys strategies in teaching reading for university level.

Harvey, Paul, 2006, What Makes Reading in a Second Language Difficult, Modern English
Teacher, vol. 15 no. 1, pp.37-41.
HU, M. and P. Nation, 2000, Unknown Vocabulary Density and Reading Comprehension,
Reading in Foreign Language, retrieved 12 August 2008 from
http://www1.harenet.ne.jp/~waring/vocab/principles/basic_principles.htm
Nunan, David (ed). 1992, Collaborative Language Learning and Teaching, Cambridge University
Press, New York.