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novels [4]. It follows that authentic text—text written for native speakers—is inappropriate for unassisted ER by all but the most advanced learners. For this reason, many educators advocate the use of learner literature, that is, stories written specifically for L2 learners, or adapted from authentic text [5]. For learners of English, there are over 40 graded reader series, consisting of over 1650 books with a variety of difficulty levels and genres [6].However, the time and expense in producing graded readers results in high purchase costs and limited availability in languages other than English and common L2‘s like Spanish and French. At a cost of £2.50 for a short English reader in 2001 [7] purchasing several thousand readers to cater for a school wide ER program requires a significant monetary investment. More affordable options are required, especially for schools in developing nations. Day and Bamford [8] recommend several alternatives when learner literature is not available. These include children's and young adult books, stories written by learners, newspapers, magazines and comic books. Some educators advocate the use of authentic texts in preference to simplified texts. Berardo [9] claims that the language in learner literature is ―artificial and unvaried‖, ―unlike anything that the learner will encounter in the real world‖ and often ―do not reflect how the language is really used‖. Berardo does concede that simplified texts are ―useful for preparing learners for reading 'real' texts. ‖ 2. ASSISTED READING Due to the large proportion of unknown vocabulary, beginner and intermediate learners require assistance when using authentic text for ER. Two popular forms of assistance are dictionaries and glossing. There are pros and cons of each approach. 1 A group of words that share the same root word, e.g. , run, ran, runner, runs, running. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.NZCSRSC’11, April 18-21, 2011, Palmerston North, New Zealand
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