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Hickey's (1991) article ["Leisure reading in a second language: An experiment with audio tapes." "Language, Culture and Curriculum," 4(2), 119-131. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908319109525098] reported the benefits of audio-support for L2 reading of real books, showing gains in fluency and motivation among 9-year-old learners of Irish. In the 25 years since that, there have been significant changes in the educational and sociolinguistic context in which Irish and Irish reading are taught. That period encompassed a major shift in the curricular approach to teaching Irish, and changes in status. With the advent of a new primary school curriculum, it is time to revisit this topic and reflect on how changes in the interim have impacted on the teaching of L2 Irish reading. This article reviews the societal and educational changes relevant to teaching Irish in mainstream (English-medium) schools, offering insights into current practices from a qualitative study of teachers' reflections on their pedagogical strategies, perceived priorities and difficulties encountered. Finally, it considers the advances made in the provision of materials supporting L2 Irish reading in the intervening years, and the challenges that remain with regard to promoting the use of those materials in mainstream classrooms.

Irish has significant State support, but lacks a research base to support the teaching of Irish reading. Current approaches to teaching Irish reading are presented, and outcomes summarised. Issues of consistency and complexity in Irish orthography are discussed in light of an analysis of a corpus of early reader texts, and the formulation of rules for discriminating between words which are regular by letter-sound and grapheme-sound rules is outlined. While the most frequent words show a high level of regularity, underlying rules are very complex. The need to target decoding skills early is discussed. Recommendations regarding the teaching of aspects of Irish orthography are presented. (Contains 4 tables and 4 notes.)

A language currently at the nexus of change is Kashubian (in Polish: "kaszubski"), a West Slavic language spoken in northern Poland in the province of Pomerania. Termed a "regional language" by the Polish government in preparation for the ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (signed in 2003 and ratified in 2008), it presents interesting parallels with other minority languages at different phases, in terms of its weak economic status and a history of repression. The impact of Poland's accession to the EU in 2004 and the Polish government's recent revitalisation initiatives will be explored. The views of three prominent Kashubian activists are considered as they reflect on the past, present and future of Kashubian. Issues considered include the changing status of Kashubian and the impact of such change on identity, the role of Catholicism in supporting Kashubian and the need for development in the spheres of literature and education. Of particular interest is a consideration of the effect on the language's visibility and status as a result of having a Kashub, Donald Tusk, become Prime Minister in October 2007, following decades of neglect and denial of Kashubian's status as a language under Communism, and he is one of those interviewed here. (Contains 4 notes.)

Study of the effect of supplying audio tapes to accompany leisure reading books in Irish found that the tapes considerably increased native-English-speaking elementary school students' motivation to read, facilitated comprehension, and increased the children's reading rate and pronunciation accuracy. (36 references) (Author/CB)