The Lexical Advantages of Narrow Reading for Second Language Learners

Try Agreeing with the Author

            "Knowing a word well enough to use it competently involves more than just an awareness of a single meaning sense; it also includes knowledge of lexical assets such as its grammatical behaviour, collocations, register constraints, and even alternative meaning senses": also known as Communicative Competence.

            As a future teacher, I believe that the concept of Communicative Competence is crucial to understand, and just as important to know how to successfully pass-on to your students. Many of us wonder how we will achieve this however, I do believe that it is feasible. I appreciate that this author chose to talk about the use of magazines and newspapers as good tools, rather than books or movies. Even though allowing students to identify with popular interests that we often see in movies or books becoming movies, newspapers and magazines could play this role just as well, or even better perhaps. The latter might not be as popular with younger students but they do bring a lot of up-to-date material, cultural concepts worldwide, and often teach through authentic texts, non-fiction discussions, and most importantly, there is always something to please different types of people.

Establishing a personal connection with the text 

(I experienced something like that when...)

            "[I]ncidental learning from exposure" is surely one of my most precious assets. As a young girl, I moved to Quebec from Florida, and often wondered how I managed to have such a good communicative competence in both languages.. or even almost three. My parents and family spoke to me in English, while my French was shown to me in school and by my friends. This type of exposure is quite common to most bilingual students however, I have always wondered why I understand Spanish when my parents chose to refrain from using it around us in order to keep confusion away. I do believe that I learned from short incidental exposure to this language on the phone when my mother's friends called or when "mi abuela" came to visit. As a young child, I even thought that "Abuela" was my grandma's name until I heard other young kids calling their grandma figure the same way: what a way to learn! All in all, I do believe that exposure is the most crucial element in successful target language learning.