Toward a Theory of Second Language Reading.

An adequate description of the total reading process would have to deal with reading in at least three dimensions comprising three different sets of relationships. A model of the process might well take the form of three concentric spheres: an outer, sociolinguistic shell in which text and reader respectively could be related to a particular universe of texts and a particular society of readers; an intermediate, linguistic sphere in which the texts could be related to the functions and forms of a given human language, and the reader to his functional knowledge of that language; and an inner, psycholinguistic core where text and reader come together in the mind of a single human being. Thus the focus narrows, as the spheres become smaller and increasingly specific, from a culture, to a language, to the reader himself. Approaching second-language reading in this way means a willingness to draw on work from many fields. At the broadest level the two disciplines are sociolinguistics and ethnomethodology; at the linguistic level, structural linguistics and certain kinds of discourse analysis; and at the basic level, information theory and the study of the psycholinguistic behavior of individual second language readers. This paper is a first attempt to provide at least a framework for such a theory. Better theories of language are an absolute necessity for the teacher of second language reading. (Author/CFM)