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An interdisciplinary, evidence-based understanding of reading makes this volume especially valuable. Grabe bases each chapter on a review of research--carefully designed studies ranging from cognitive psychology and linguistics to education--and then moves toward applications for teachers of second-language (L2) reading.
This approach works well for the foundations of reading acquisition. Professionals who were educated in English as a foreign language (EFL) or a L2 more than a decade ago may not realize that converging evidence indicates an incremental, time-intensive learning process for the L2 writing system and vocabulary acquisition. The top-down models popular in the 1970s and 1980s have been firmly refuted by eye-movement studies and other evidence from cognitive science, as well summarized in chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5 (and in chapter 14 on fluency and comprehension).
The crux of the matter is automaticity--that is, the ability (developed through intensive practice) to recognize smaller units rapidly, without great expenditure of attention, so that the reader's mind can focus on interpretation of the larger units of language and ideas. Grabe firmly refutes the idea that...